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“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Climate change is undeniable and destructive, but its exact effects and timescale is difficult to discern. Political and economic changes are, similarly, difficult to predict.
I'm not saying it's all going to be fine. I'm saying "give up" and "watch and see" require the same amount of effort anyway.
yeah this is where I am, there's really no way to know what's going to happen, all we know is shits gonna be wild one way or another
I believe the only surefire guaranteed way to destroy the world is for us to give up, so I won't
Honestly, reading Marx and about dialectical materialism has helped. It's important to understand our world is incredibly dynamic and in a constant state of flux. We cannot look at our present (bleak) situation and assume it will just continue or get worse linearly.
I’m a geologist and climatologist
Climate change is real and a huge threat BUT there are people in the field far more intelligent than I am working on real solutions for carbon sequestration. The technology isn’t quite there yet to do it on a global scale, but we definitely have the method we want to use figured out. This development has only happened in the last 10 years, and at our current rake we might just be able to implement silicate weathering on a wide enough scale to avoid some of the most severe and civilization destroying climate disasters. Look up the carbonate-silicate cycle if you want to know more about it.
Here’s a good place to start if you want more scientific literature But you can just search “silicate carbonate weathering” if you want some cool and concise graphics on how it functions. We are basically trying to accelerate a cycle that happens over tens of millions of years and condense them down into human timescales
My understanding is that this basically involves crushing massive quantities of rock and dumping it into the ocean. It's at best a short term solution (haha).
Pretty much yeah but we have to massively accelerate the process
No, but luckily people are smart. Public universities are going to be the ones that save us
Whether the world is ending or just beginning and conditions are terrible, the imperative is the same: improve conditions and alleviate suffering. We probably won't see a revolution in our lifetimes and maybe the revolution will come too late, but we still ought to take the steps we can to take care of each other and develop our ability to do so in the meantime.
Is being in an alienated, atomized community better when confronting fascism and crisis than being in one with strong community ties? Is holding onto the will to help others worse than wallowing until it's your turn to die?
Even if you believe the end is certain - and for everyone and everything it is, eventually - it is better to work with the time you have to make things better while you can.
P.S. What are you afraid of? Be honest with yourself.
Damn this sounds so stupid but your comment might actually have been the one to snap me out of my doomerism. I don't know how I couldn't bring myself to see things from this perspective before, but you're right. Our lives, and human life on earth, will end, maybe soon, maybe later, but the only thing that could possibly be worth fighting for is to make conditions better for the people living here until that happens. It doesn't matter how many times the left has lost or will lose, all that matters is what we have won and will win, however small or large. Thank you.
Hope is a fuck; give up but keep going anyway. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, and all that
The first thing I do is stop reading a lot of the doomer nihilist shit infecting the left because so much of it isn't based on any actual personal failure as much as never trying to do anything in the first place and trying to reinforce the calculus behind that decision. It's just corporate news running through a human centipede designed to demoralize everyone involved, the simulacrum of the internet transforms that false narrative first into a fake lived experience which then gets internalized as objective truth.
The other is focusing on the immediate community around you because it's the only political sphere any meaningful impact could be had even in a world where capitalism had already fallen and the climate is stable. Also because all the leftist theory in the world is useless if people make no effort to understand their own context.
The other is focusing on the immediate community around you because it’s the only political sphere any meaningful impact could be had even in a world where capitalism had already fallen and the climate is stable. Also because all the leftist theory in the world is useless if people make no effort to understand their own context.
You'll be a lot better organizing and improving your community at the ground level than running for senate
There's way, way more exploited working people than there are capitalist overlords. And it takes a whole lot more work to constantly convince people that the person cracking the whip are actually the "good guys." People are hungry for change. Yeah, it's not inevitable, but it's increasingly more probable.
I feel the second part of that so much. Whenever I talk to people who agree with me, but have basically no idea why and can't argue for what they believe in, I'm worried that being radical will just be a trend or passing moment for them.
I'm struggling with it rn. I'm just tired.
I think the solution is probably inertia. You have to somehow enjoy the fight itself, and more generally enjoy your life, just the experience and process of being alive. You have to fight because it's what you want to do, not because you will never be happy until the fight succeeds. You just gotta wake up, make your breakfast, look out your window at the sky and the trees, and breathe in that you exist. I think somehow we need to find freedom in each moment: your body is still your own, your mind is still your own, your senses are still your own, etc.
Also, to some extent, I think we have to accept what is going to happen. People are going to die, and ecosystems are going to collapse. There's no getting through this unscathed. I don't mean resign ourselves to it, but accept some loss of control. When you're caught in a river, the best you can do is swim toward shore and hope you get there before the water carries you too far downstream.
I study climate change and sustainability. These are not things that have an on/off switch. There are levels of severity. Current decarbonization efforts project the temperature increase to plateau around 3.8 degrees, which is still catastrophic, but it's significantly better than the 4.2 degree model that is business-as-usual. Every inch of sea level rise equates to 100,000's of new climate refugees all across the globe. I need to do my part in decarbonizing our energy, be that through research as well as activism. Minimizing the fucked-up-ness of the future has real consequences for our species and our planet.
I wish I could give up, I pretty much have because even if we get 50 Bernies and 200 AOCs in Congress to pass medicare for all and green new deal it will be way too late to stop climate disaster and/or I'll be dead, but I can't stop caring about electoralism send help