You’re not wrong but as one of those post-nihilistic absurdist youths (relatively speaking) it can be difficult to envision life past your 30s when it’s not unlikely that by that time the world will be in am unfathomably different and more dystopic state. As someone who does genuinely believe in a brighter future and acknowledges I need to do more to see it happen, I see myself enjoying that tomorrow in my 60s or 70s not anytime soon. I believe that we can get there but things are going to continue to get a lot lot worse for a good while before they have a chance to get better. Ignoring the geopolitical and socioeconomic states of the world and focusing on the issue the meme presents, even if we cut off all greenhouse gas emissions now we have a couple more decades of warming as emissions from the past 40 years haven’t fully taken effect. We have already surpassed multiple key tipping points for systemic collapse of global systems and it is likely that the damage caused in the Anthropocene is irreversible. Even being optimistic, we are well past prevention and are blowing by mitigation. I am hopeful for a brighter future, but that brighter future will be based on how we recover from these slow, impending calamities and how much of the planet we’ll be able to save from ourselves.
But the only way to do that is organization and communiry building so we can stop living in dire excess and out of sync with our ecosystem. Finding a sustainable equilibrium with our planet and natural resources is key, which will require an overhaul of existinf systems of governance
In your lifetime you’re going to see the biggest changes to social systems that we’ve ever seen in our world, however, it bears remembering that we’ve been doing this for over 40,000 years (that we know of) and we continue to survive, we continue to find things worth living and fighting for. It’s part of the deal.
And you are right, that community is our way forward. It’s what’s helped us survive through climate changes before, it helped us survive plagues and wars and days of darkness and violence unlike anything we can imagine today. Our world is built on a mountain of skulls, but the long arc of history has only moved up and out of the tribulations and even if we see a lot of really bad shit in the next century, it’s still going to be an improvement from barbarism and suffering that our ancestors endured, and the chances of you being born now, in this time of miracles and wonders, is like winning the goddamn lottery. Do the absolute best you can with it, remember us, tell our stories to our granddroids.
You’re not wrong but as one of those post-nihilistic absurdist youths (relatively speaking) it can be difficult to envision life past your 30s when it’s not unlikely that by that time the world will be in am unfathomably different and more dystopic state. As someone who does genuinely believe in a brighter future and acknowledges I need to do more to see it happen, I see myself enjoying that tomorrow in my 60s or 70s not anytime soon. I believe that we can get there but things are going to continue to get a lot lot worse for a good while before they have a chance to get better. Ignoring the geopolitical and socioeconomic states of the world and focusing on the issue the meme presents, even if we cut off all greenhouse gas emissions now we have a couple more decades of warming as emissions from the past 40 years haven’t fully taken effect. We have already surpassed multiple key tipping points for systemic collapse of global systems and it is likely that the damage caused in the Anthropocene is irreversible. Even being optimistic, we are well past prevention and are blowing by mitigation. I am hopeful for a brighter future, but that brighter future will be based on how we recover from these slow, impending calamities and how much of the planet we’ll be able to save from ourselves.
But the only way to do that is organization and communiry building so we can stop living in dire excess and out of sync with our ecosystem. Finding a sustainable equilibrium with our planet and natural resources is key, which will require an overhaul of existinf systems of governance
In your lifetime you’re going to see the biggest changes to social systems that we’ve ever seen in our world, however, it bears remembering that we’ve been doing this for over 40,000 years (that we know of) and we continue to survive, we continue to find things worth living and fighting for. It’s part of the deal.
And you are right, that community is our way forward. It’s what’s helped us survive through climate changes before, it helped us survive plagues and wars and days of darkness and violence unlike anything we can imagine today. Our world is built on a mountain of skulls, but the long arc of history has only moved up and out of the tribulations and even if we see a lot of really bad shit in the next century, it’s still going to be an improvement from barbarism and suffering that our ancestors endured, and the chances of you being born now, in this time of miracles and wonders, is like winning the goddamn lottery. Do the absolute best you can with it, remember us, tell our stories to our granddroids.