With climate change, COVID, and war no longer on the horizon but at our front doors do you all also feel like you're living through the start of the end? I'm immunocompromised I can't go out even in small social circles, weather is insane, and everyone that is near the center is a war hawk. I feel like I'm screaming into the void but honestly I'm just scared and want to know I'm not alone in this feeling

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    You know what's kind of sad is that there's only 0.9 billion years left of a habitable Earth for complex life forms. Not because that's when the Earth gets engulfed by the Sun (that happens much later) but the luminosity of the sun will push us out of the habitable range.

    Animals started 900 million years ago, so I guess there can be a rebuilding in that time but... I dunno. Complex animal life isn't what evolution maximizes for, it was probably a few weird accidents that led to terrestrial animal life that forms society and creates technology and starts the Marxist primitive accumulation of capital. Evolution is slow and seems to prefer plants and bacteria going by biomass or number of genes in use by life. So... we might just be it for the future history of Earth, and perhaps in the entire galaxy depending on how rare terrestrial society forming animals are.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah? So we're eventually going to "lose", who's even keeping score? Everything ends eventually.

      What we're here for is to bring some comfort and dignity to humanity, and if none of that exists we create it. Wether we're doing it in a healing world or a world five minutes from collapse, the goal remains the same.

      • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yeah of course. It's just a pity, like any loss. Like if/when the vaquita dolphin goes extinct it'll still be sad, that's all I'm saying. It'll be nice that I won't be around to actually feel sad about it I guess lol.

        • SaniFlush [any, any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I don't know who said it originally, but contrary to popular opinion... pacifists are the angriest people on the face of the Earth. They've seen the cruelty woven into human society and reject it out of sheer disgust. At first I didn't get the idea, but seeing how the global ecosystem is disintegrating out of sheer apathy on the part of a powerful few people...

          yes, I understand that anger.