I’m very scared, it feels like the world is about to fall apart. I will also remember a passage that I heard, and which does not seem to be a joke: you will own nothing, and will be happy! And it seems that this is gradually becoming a reality.
What scares you?
I’m pretty sure we’re at the twilight of human civilization, and maybe all biological life, or at least most complex biological life.
Climate change. Shit is going to get super real in the next 20 years. Like half the planet starving real.
This is so true… Here in India shit is hot like 45 Celsius and 34 to 37 whole night… Can’t live normally without AC, i wonder how bad it’ll be in the upcoming years…
A wet bulb event killing a few hundred million in the span of a week or two will do it. The knock on deaths just from the disruption of the initial deaths will be equally catastrophic.
Climate Change is only one aspect of the real problem. Ecological overshoot is probably a better term, but terms like polycrisis and metacrisis have been tossed around.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Planetary Boundaries is probably one of the best synthesis of it.
It’s bad, it’s getting worse. And it’s a motivator behind a lot of the bullshit going on in the world. Russia wants Ukraine for its breadbasket. US wants to end democracy because they don’t believe it will survive what’s coming.
Everyone that matters (Governments and Militaries) knows what’s going on, and the level of public debate is definitely downplaying things to not scare the masses. Meanwhile, we speedrun right into it.
Maybe. It doesn’t make much sense that the same US government Republicans are preparing for the worst that could have just prevented it. Staying under 2C wasn’t that difficult. The hardest part was getting China to go along, and that’s gone reasonably.
Staying under 2C wasn’t that difficult.
Respectfully disagree. Ending fossil fuels is not easy. Technically, politically and economically.
The hardest part was getting China to go along, and that’s gone reasonably.
…China, India, Russia, Japan, Europe, Canada, the middle east, Australia…
No one came close. China’ progress is significant and in some ways commendable, matched only by their failures.
I don’t think we’d have to fully end fossil fuels to stay under 2C. I think getting rid of them in power plants, road vehicles, and ocean vessels would have been enough.
And that probably would have taken less resources than these data center rollouts.
We could have kept oil in airlines and military.
That would just have slowed it down not stopped it. Fossil fuels must end, one way, or as it seems to be the case, the other.
To be fair, I’m not sure we could have eliminated gas from residential heating. That’s a big lift.
If we had gone nuclear and managed to make electricity pretty cheap, maybe.
No. Just no.
It does seem like a daily assault on our well being, doesn’t it? But there is something that helps with this - read history broadly. It helps give you a deeper understanding of current events that lessens the impact of the current moment. And consider the quote “this too shall pass”. It’s attributed to Sufi poets about impermanence. If times are bad it gives you hope that those times will one day, eventually but certainly, be gone. If times are good it makes you relish the moment deeply and do what you can to make it last.
You’re not wrong but maybe not completely right. Someone has thought the world was about to end since at least the beginning of recorded history. Famously the first Pope Saint Peter was strongly convinced the rapture was within his lifetime, 1960 years later, the world is still spinning.
Mostly afraid of the climate
We’re fucked, I just hope I can get with the girl I like and not ride the storm alone. Trying to get a meaningful job that help people
I’m old and this may not happen in my lifetime, but I fear the collapse of the ocean current systems. The resulting global weather chaos would have a drastic effect on my younger family members, some of whom are already struggling to make their way in the world.
The way governments everywhere are backing off green commitments and seems only interested in waging war and/or protecting the greedy makes me despair, but every single day I meet people with warm hearts and open minds, so I do have some hope.
Yes, absolutely, for many reasons.
But greater than the fear is the anger that we will just go on like nothing is wrong each and everyone of us in our personal cage dictated by the perfect system of capitalism where it is impossible to break out and meaningfully influence this.
Being afraid puts one in shackles. There’s no sense in being afraid of a situation you cannot change. So: no, I’m not afraid, but I’m pessimistic and I’m trying to adapt, and prepare myself with my kids for a possibly worse future and try to develop workaround strategies.
Only when I think about it. Mostly I try my best to live in the moment.
Everyday, whenever I hear the hum of a combustion engine. It’s the sound a group of people make when they’re indirectly killing someone; however, as of yet that person likely isn’t known to them and the death happens maybe in a few years so they can easily ignore these facts and continue to pretend that they are a good person.
The most prudent passage for me is the lyrics of the poem spoken in God Speed You! Black Emperor’s song Dead Flag Blues:
We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.
What scares me is a humans ability to ignore things. To continue to behave in such a way, to maintain a lifestyle, that is excessively detrimental to themselves and everyone and everything they have ever known and loved and will come to know and love.
They can easily come up with excuses for their actions, exactly like an addict, and just like an addict you can’t use logic with them. I am sure there are people reading this, if they got this far, that are thinking up thousands of excuses and reasons for why they continue to burn fossil fuel for their own convenience. How to dismiss this somehow, with an angry reply or whatever else. As if the chemical waste they themselves released into the atmosphere doesn’t count, as if it somehow did not contribute to the catastrophic biosphere collapse that has already killed millions of people. Hundreds of millions. As if they can be forgiven for that small transgression. As if by being part of the group they can avoid blame for the groups actions and it’s consequences.
They simply can’t give a shit, because they’re good people.
You kidding? Is anyone not?
Depends how fucked up you can get.
Every period of history has felt like the world was heading for certain disaster. The human race is shockingly resilient and has survived much more than we deserve to
The human race has literally never faced this degree of worldwide climate catastrophe, and rather than do anything about it our owning class has decided to swallow a poison pill
It’s faced total Atomic obliteration and worldwide war and suffering a couple times now.
It’s faced total Atomic obliteration
Lol, no it didn’t. There was a threat of nuclear war, sure, but there was never anything close to atomic obliteration. Comparing cold war era nuclear worries to concrete damages by climate change is asinine.
The world war comparison is marginally better, but in both cases, those were human driven AND controlled events. Climate change is human driven, but we have absolutely 0 control over it and it will absolutely impact every corner of the globe much worse than any war we’ve fought.
The suffering that climate change has brought and will bring is like nothing we’ve seen before, and it can be hard to keep telling yourself every year that this will likely be the coolest summer of the rest of our lives.
I started drinking more! You should try it.
I found something similar, it calms me down like a drug, but it seriously affects my mind. At least my empathy fades temporarily and I feel like some kind of psychopath.
What I am talking about, I will keep in secret.
Hmm seems like you’re reading my other comments… Finally something secret on the internet again
Climate change and the breakup of the US are my two large-scale fears.
Hell, I’m more worried about the US /not/ breaking up. The whole country just lies down and accepts the decline into authoritarianism.
Equally valid point. Ideally when Bonespurs has his final Big Mac Attack MAGA will more ore less self-destruct as all his wannabees backstab each other while clawing for their little piece of his reeking power vacuum.
The whole country just lies down and accepts the decline into authoritarianism.
Objectively untrue and demonstrated in LA, Portland, Minnesota, and Chicago. Even better, it was demonstrated in bipartisan fashion. People who voted red were part of the silent sabotage that took place in Chicago and Minnesota.
And then there’s all the attempts by people to delete Donald too.
The country is doing what it can and also trying not to descend into chaos and survive at the same time.
I fucking hope you’re right.
Well, if watching the various resistance movements do silent sabotage this year wasn’t heartening, the following facts might make you feel better.
Dems are polling 14% over Republicans right now, and if that holds until November, it’s likely that the November elections will be overwhelming and rig-proof. Further, nearly every Donald-backed candidate has lost their election against a Dem in 2025 and 2026, and most of those elections occurred in states and districts Donald won by double digits in 2024. The only good election news Donald has had has occurred in Republican primaries, but that doesn’t matter due to his having a lower approval rating than Jimmy Carter.
The upside is Donald thought he had a mandate to revive Nazi Germany and learned that people literally just wanted illegal immigrants deported and not to see 5th graders chased down and cuffed by masked thugs, and yes, those are two different things. People voted for immigration reform and affordability, and Donald has not only failed on both, he’s failed spectacularly on both issues while getting us into a war no one wanted that has made the cost of living worse.
The downside is we can look at the last 40 years of Democratic politics and conclude that nothing will fundamentally change and, more likely, the majority of Democrats will coopt the power Donald has seized and embrace the new fascism.
It is nice to see that centrists are finally coming around on socialism, though. All it took was them having to live in their cars.
Dems are polling 14% over Republicans right now, and if that holds until November, it’s likely that the November elections will be overwhelming and rig-proof.
Even better, there’s a downside to gerrymandering. It helps you in close elections, but if the election is really against you, you end up losing even more seats than you would have without the gerrymandering. You have to design all your districts assuming a certain vote percentage. So maybe you design it so your side has a bunch of districts that have a reliable 5 point advantage to your side. Well, if your side is running 10 points behind? Now that gerrymander is hurting you.
Oh yes.
The gerrymandering has 100% worked against them, which is why in the northern states the legislatures resisted it. It’s very, very clear that Donald fucked up big time by pissing off the Latino vote with his push for reviving the Gestapo.
