Can anyone find or offer an optimistic outlook at the moment? In general, I’ve learned not to pay too much attention to ‘prophets of doom’. There have always been alarmist rants about this or that, and somehow the world muddles through and the sky doesn’t fall in. I also understand that apocalyptic headlines have more to do with selling newspapers than accurate forecasting, and my own personal outlook tends to be unflinchingly positive.
But at the moment the combination of worrying trends adds up to a picture that seems more bleak than any I can remember (and I’m in my late 40s).
Some factors in the current picture: the ever-rising price of oil, and the knock-on effects on every economy, on food production, on the cost of living / the longer-term implications of dependency on oil, and the fact that we may be at the ‘peak oil’ stage / the food shortage that is already costing lives way outside those parts of the world where famine is regrettably known to occur from time to time / global warming and lack of progress on reducing C02 emissions / the apparently ever-present threat of terrorism and seemingly intractable fundamentalist campaigns of violence / AIDS is still around, still spreading, and reaching staggering levels of infection in parts of Africa.
Given all of this, does anyone still feel the world will continue to be mostly okay, for most of us, most of the time? Is anyone actually optimistic about this picture and the future?
Calm down. The world will always and forever continue to function as one large organism. What happens to one part effects the others. Yes, we will be OK, if you live in a developed nation you will most likely be fine. If you live in Bangladesh, Darfur, Burma, and other 3rd world areas you may be in for some rough times. Concentrate on yourself, and your area of the world. Live honestly, don’t harm your fellow human beings, don’t eat too much bacon, don’t smoke or drink alcohol, pay your student loans, try not to pollute the air and water.
Nah, not really. I don’t feel too optimistic about the immediate or longer term future but I’m not sure how accurate my perception is on the matter. When I was younger, there was always the hope that technology would make the world a better place. Disease would be eliminated, peace would break out, progress would generally result in some kind of utopia. The warning signs about the environment were there in the background but nothing much bad had actually happened, opinion was still divided as to whether anything would come of it and it all seemed a long way off. Science would provide the answers before anything really bad would happen. The cold war ended, lifting the dread of nuclear holocaust, terrorism as the bogieman hadn’t caught on yet. Everything seemed pretty hopeful and carefree for a while there. That was my perception anyway.
Now things seem a lot more dire on all fronts. Climate change seems to be an actual fact and the movement to head it off seems to be pretty ineffectual and drowned out by big business concerns. We’ve had unprecedented droughts in this country for a decade or more. World population growth keeps on truckin’ and the standard of living keeps improving in places like China and India as they try to catch up to our seemingly unsustainable lifestyles. Governments seem shiftier than ever, you guys in the US took GWB over Al Gore and then gave him a second go. It’s your business but I used to feel a lot better about the remaining world superpower before you put that guy in charge.
The oil binge seems to be winding down. I think we had it too good for too long on the energy front. We seem to be too slow in mitigating the hangover that’s likely to follow our long petroleum intoxication. Societal values have shifted heavily towards individualism and consumerism. We’re geared towards constant growth but have a finite set of resources. There surely must be a rough landing there somewhere.
There’s lots of things to worry about and not much to look forward to. I’ll hang around and see how it shakes out, if I can, but I’m not optimistic.
There are always predictions of doom and disaster. In the seventies it was stagflation, a permanent breakdown in “industrial relations”, and a new ice age. When that particular apocalypse failed to arrive, we came up with new bogeymen, and have continued to do so ever since. I don’t see what is different about the current round of doom-mongering. What we are experiencing now is just a minor downturn. Outside of the feverish imagination of a Daily Express headline writer, the price of oil, for example, isn’t going to rise forever.
I agree, and very succinctly put. I guess the question is how close we are to the rough landing. Is this it? Or is just a year or two away? Or are we good for at least another generation?
I’m not well-versed in economics (a subject that seems to be 90% opinion and voodoo anyway), but if I remember what I read about capitalism, it actually hinges on the assumption that growth can always be maintained. This can’t be true forever, and whether it should be pursued is another question altogether. The ever-rising world population is another cause for concern. Finite planet, finite resources… there has to be some point where there are just too many people. Maybe we’ve passed that point a long time ago.
I think that as the idea of sustainable communities continues to grow, the world will reach a much more stable situation. It may take a long time for that to happen, but eventually I think everyone will realize that continuing to ignore these problems will not be good.
You may feel a bit better if you read some of the literature cited in the above referenced Wiki article. I also feel better taking some action to better the situation - currently in my work, I spend time and effort trying to bring elements of the sustainable community to development in the floodplain. You might find some effort to be a part of which helps you to feel pro-active.
Just one example: Appropedia is a site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development.
My husband has often offered me this bit of wisdom:
‘‘If you view human beings as fallen angels, you’re never going to be satisfied with the way the world is. But if you look at human beings in the context of the animal kingdom, you will see how far we have come. That we even debate issues like morality and care for the fate of others is quite a remarkable achievement considering the fact that we’re animals. Not perfect, but constantly improving.’’
This is going to sound weird, but I used to by more cynical about the fate of the world way before it started to end. I see changes happening all around me, for the better. They are subtle, but they are happening. We are growing. I think we’ll be okay.
What keeps my keel even - I don’t have kids, don’t plan to have kids, and I think the world will hold on for the next 50 years, which is all I need.
As for overpopulation and all the problems it brings with it, Mother Nature usually takes care of populations that breed too heavily with a nice disease that spreads well in over-crowded conditions.
Whenever I think we’re at a low point, I think of the height of what was going on in World War II. Think about it from someone in the relatively cushy position of the USA homefront: most able bodied men were gone, off in some part of the world where their loved ones didn’t know what they were doing or what level of danger they were in. There were gigantic theatres of war, engulfing huge portions of western Europe, Russia, Africa, and the Orient. (As opposed to, embroiled battles in relatively scattered countries here and there, as we have now) There were shortages of things at home; people couldn’t just go out and buy new this or that; it just wasn’t available. Indeed we had to ration our food supplies. That is absolutely incomprehensible in this day and age. Probably most scarily, at varying times, from the point of view of the western Allies, it looked grim. Very grim. Think about that. Both Roosevelt and Churchill, in private moments, had doubts. I’m sure a historian Doper could come along and elaborate, but think about that: doubts that we had the absolute force to hold back some crazy-ass brutal fuckers, bent on world domination.
Telegrams announcing deaths here at home were coming constantly. There were something on the order of 400,000 US deaths. 400,000 US deaths, for a war that at one point our leaders felt we were losing? Wow. Not trying to compare wars at all; just trying to point out: think how grim the whole nation must have felt, in every corner, constantly, a daily, worrying grind. We have the luxury of the comforting hindsight, and knowing that the Allies won. Think hard about how everyone must have felt when that wasn’t a certainty, the daily fear and deprivation, and it must have, I think, felt hopeless.
In comparison I think tpday we are spared much of that base-level fear.
The end of the world is always coming. The doom-and-gloom scenarios have been around forever. There will come a time in your life, decades from now, when today’s crises are all but forgotten, and the new crises will engender the same warnings of Armageddon, and you’ll have become pretty jaded about it by then. Trust me.
I think that humanity is on the upswing. The way I see it, the human race reached it’s all-time low point in a period lasting roughly form 1930 to 1970. That’s when we had the Great Depression, eugenics, fascism, Naziism, World War II, the Soviet Union, Red China, the Vietnam War, and total environmental devastation in many areas. To many intelligent people it really did look like the world was coming to an end. It looked like the human race had lost its bearings and was consuming itself.
Nowadays most of those problems have been solved. Humanity rejected and defeated the isms and took charge of its future. Whenever I start feeling down I remind myself of how bad things were fifty years ago. Sure we have problems but they’re small compared to the ones we used to have. For instance we still have trouble with the environment but at least we’re not setting rivers on fire any more. We still have international issues but at least the USA and the USSR aren’t minutes away from deploying enough nuclear weapons to wipe out our species.
I also see chances for positive change where many people see only negatives. I think the rising price of fuel is a good thing because it makes it less practical to ships things halfway round the world, and that encourages the development of local economies. Also the current food crisis, though obviously painful for some, may force certain governments to rewrite their bad policies, stop depending on imported food, and start supporting their own farmers.
Indeed. I’ve never been able to understand how people could think today’s crises are worse than, say, the bubonic plague of the 14th century. How’d you like to be living in Roman times or Aztec times, to mention only a couple? Life was pretty squalid and brutal if you weren’t at the top of the heap. I think life has never been better, and I pay scant attention to the naysayers.
I think I should also point out that the fact that we can have a political contest between candidates with diverse viewpoints without having it erupt into violent conflict is a pretty good thing.
People are the best resource we have. One of the most common misunderstandings people seem to have about economics is that people are a drain on things. But people are what create wealth; they’re the single most importance resource there is.
I can’t imagine how anyone could look at the world and not see enormous possibility, but apparently some do, so fair enough. Consider this:
There has never been a time before in the history of the world when the average person was as well off as they are today.
More people, and more people as a percentage of the population, live in safety and stability than ever before. There has never been a time since the rise of agricultural civilization when more people were treated with decency and dignity as is the case this very day.
There really isn’t a lot of evidence 1. and 2. will substantially change in the near future.
Could things go wrong? Sure, we could get hit by an asteroid tomorrow, what’re ya gonna do? But for most of human history things ALWAYS went wrong; cities were raided and sacked, plagues decimated populations, children died young, there was suffering and horror everywhere.
Today, sometimes - a lot of times - things go right. If you look at the last 100 years of history we’ve gotten through a phenomenal number of crises and come out pretty good. Democracy was saved in 1939-1945; nuclear war has been averted, at least for now; many of the world’s plagues have been brought under control; we’ve found ways to vastly increase our food supply; technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Democracy and freedom are generally on the upswing. There’s never been a better time to be alive.
I think my daughter will grow up in a terrific world, and if things go to shit a little, it’ll get fixed sooner or later.
My mother has survived two world wars, the Great Depression, the Korean Conflict, fears that we would be attacked with atomic bombs, fears that our government would be overrun by Communists, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the resignation of a Vice President, the resignation of a President, gas shortages, inflation, a President with early signs of dementia, trickle down economy, an undisciplined, dishonest and indiscreet President, a rightwing conspiracy, an impeachment, the Supreme Court Selection of the President, September 11, the War of American Aggression In Iraq and the worst President ever in office…so far.
But she really isn’t concerned anymore. She is in love.
Thanks to everyone who has replied so far. Also, thanks Leaper for the link you provided to your own thread. I was aware of your thread and didn’t mean to either steal it or duplicate it! I thought mine was slightly different in scope.
Several posters have offered views along the lines of, ‘there have always been, and always will be, prophets of doom, and after a while you realise that they’re wrong and the world continues to muddle through’. True enough, and as I said in my OP I usually take a very optimistic view, paying little heed to ‘the end is nigh’ placards and the rent-a-panic brigade. It’s just that from time to time, the *specific combination *of present day concerns seems to add up to quite a grave picture, suggesting we’ve had it relatively cushy for 50 years or so, but the easy ride is over. I was just scouting for alternative ‘it’s really not so bad’ viewpoints.
And thanks to all who provided the balanced historical perspective, which I do try to keep in mind. I do take the view that there has never been a better time to live than now. I guess my question really comes down to… how far ahead will it still be possible to feel this way?
