Based on what? You really haven’t made your case that quality of life is likely to decline. Most of the evidence you posted in your OP is wrong or at best wildly misleading.
Yeah, but all that chicken little horseshit is basically YOUR prediction of the future, not reality. And, as has been pointed out to you, similar chicken little predictions could have been made by people throughout history, and in fact were made by various people doing exactly what you are doing, cherry picking data to meet your own worldview and expectations then attempting to make extrapolations of that cherry picked data for the future.
It means someone is always convinced the world is going hell in a handbasket. The early Jews and Christians talked about getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The Ancient Greeks lamented about a past Golden Age and bitched about the youth of their generation.
Now you’re crying doom and gloom - what makes you prediction any better than any other in history?
With respect, you have not pointed those things out. To “point something out” is to bring to someone’s attention something that is objectively true. What you have actually done is *claimed *a number of things to be true, which is not the same thing.
Others have provided you with pretty strong counterarguments and evidence that suggest many of the things you are claiming are in fact not true. You have elected, for the most part, to ignore those things. You’re welcome to do that but you will find it is not a method of debate that will convince many thinking people.
Here are a couple of references to the realities I have mentioned:
“Climate change as a security threat is not just a narrative, or a political ploy. It’s a reality.” source: The Center for Climate and Security.
The CIA also mentions “the rapid depletion of nonrenewable mineral resources, the depletion of forest areas and wetlands, the extinction of animal and plant species, and the deterioration in air and water quality (especially in some countries of Eastern Europe, the former USSR, and China) pose serious long-term problems that governments and peoples are only beginning to address” (here) and the “increased solar ultraviolet radiation resulting from the Antarctic ozone hole in recent years, reducing marine primary productivity (phytoplankton) by as much as 15% and damaging the DNA of some fish; illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in recent years, especially the landing of an estimated five to six times more Patagonian toothfish than the regulated fishery, which is likely to affect the sustainability of the stock; large amount of incidental mortality of seabirds resulting from long-line fishing for toothfish […] large areas subject to overpopulation, industrial disasters, pollution (air, water, acid rain, toxic substances), loss of vegetation (overgrazing, deforestation, desertification), loss of wildlife, soil degradation, soil depletion, erosion; global warming becoming a greater concern.” (here)
Confronted with this reality, opinion leaders try to convince people that a brighter future is in reach if they only embrace the principles of their ideology, be that capitalism, communism, nationalism, imperialism. Or some religion. People, on the other hand, find it increasingly harder to make ends meet and seek refuge in consumerism, escapism, vicarious-ism, numbness or hedonism of varied kinds. Others become fanatics in an attempt to give their existence a “real” meaning. It is a crisis of meta-narratives on the one hand and a rise of fundamentalism on the other. Rational loss of hope vs. blind faith – the perfect desolation cocktail.
I don’t want to pose as a prophet of the apocalypse; I’m describing the world my offspring must live in. This thread is partly the expression of my feelings of guilt. I am a humanist and I’d like to pass on my values to the next generation but I myself don’t think there is a light at the end of the tunnel anymore.
And I don’t suggest that people refrain from having descendants. I’m just saying that if couples are truly concerned about their children’s future happiness and fulfillment, they should think twice before having a baby.
This is pretty ridiculous – couples with resources and decency will, in general, continue to raise decent, prosperous, and well-adjusted children as they have through most of history. There’s nothing about “now” that makes the next generation any more likely to be unhappy then past generations.
Your post seems to ignore my previous post.
I know its the plot to idiocracy but I’ve noticed the same thing with people I grew up with. The smart ones had 0-2 kids, the dumb ones had 4 or more. However how much would that lower IQ generation after generation? And (ideally) shouldn’t humanity be able to augment low IQ by 2100 the same way we augment/work around/heal physical disabilities with medicine?
Plus major reasons for not having kids aren’t being addressed. The economic issues, the lack of freedom, the lack of safety in the world, etc. Unless those are addressed people aren’t going to want to have them.
It isn’t just within developed nations, developed nations themselves have bad TFRs. Japan’s population will be cut in half by 2100 at current trends, their population will drop to 60M, about what they had in 1940. Look at the TFR of western europe or east asia, its not good.
My in-laws survived their whole culture being sentenced to death by the Communists, during which they barely survived being hunted by freaking cannibals as children while starving nearly to death; later, their country was a battleground between Nazi and Soviet armies - which rolled over their village several times, destroying everything; groups of killers from both sides would take adults for collaborating with the other, or for no reason, never to be seen again.
On my mother’s side, her relatives that lived in Europe all vanished - they were fed into industrial death camps, their hair probably used as stuffing.
That was within living memory … Compared with this sort of past, a decline in the viability of the Patagonian toothfish stock and the like looks like small potatoes. Yes, climate change is a big, big concern, but there have always been big, big concerns, and this century at least so far looks way better than the last one.
bolding added
Take it from someone who was raised by someone who was constantly talking about the inevitable collapse of civilization and the blindness of ordinary people. This is no way to raise a child. It just isn’t.
Take them camping, maybe. Join a historical recreation group to hone those low tech skills. Talk about emergency preparedness as a responsibility thing. Pretend that the goods you’re stockpiling are for the zombie apocalypse. It’s less hurtful.
well, if they don’t - then the extinction will happen sooner.
Hey man put down the Malthus. Just put it down, I know its hard, but you can do it. Just take a deep breath, we’ve all been there. Just take baby steps; you don’t have to go all the way to reading something modern, you could start at say late 1800’s, a little Henry George.
That’s because your previous post doesn’t make a strong case for you. You’re basically ignoring all the other times things looked bad to people (and most of those times it really was much worse than it is today) and saying that this time it really is bad. Global warming is a serious concern, but the Black Death killed somewhere around 20% of the world’s population! We survived that, we’ll survive this.
I know this is no way to raise a child. I’m a rational person.
It seems the latter part is the logical option then.
How many times should I repeat this thread is not about death vs survival?
OTOH, for most of history we fought with weapons that only hurt the combatants, saying that fighting over resources is same old, same old, is a bit optimistic.
When I was born smart money was on we and the Russkies nuking each other. Kids who grew up after the end of the Cold War think that a one in million chance of getting killed by terrorists is the worst that can happen, while we spent time cowering under our desks waiting for the bombs to fall.
Nobody is saying this is the best of all possible worlds. What I’m saying is that when I had my kids people were saying the same crap as you, and we have cleaner air and water now than we had then, and both of them are pretty happy that we didn’t listen to the doom and gloom. I’m happy too - while if they were not born they clearly wouldn’t care, but my wife and I would, and would be unhappy without kids. Not everyone is like us, not having kids is fine, but not having kids because some people say boo is stupid.
For most of recorded history, massacring or enslaving the enemy’s civilian population, and ravaging the enemy’s territory (by stealing everything one could take and burning the rest) to cut off the enemy’s supply of production and recruits was a perfectly rational - and accepted - way of waging war.
I think some of you have a highly romanticised view of the human condition throughout history, particularly when it comes to war. Even the ‘knights in shining armour’ hardly fought with what we today would consider ‘chivalry’ towards civilians or their environment- see: Chevauchée - Wikipedia
You may have misunderstood me, I wasn’t talking about chivalry, perhaps I should have said belligerents instead of combatants. My point was that ‘we’ve always fought over resources’, while true, doesn’t take into account the environmental damage of modern weapons.