Inspired by the people described in the AP article linked to in this GD thread of mine, who decided to completely forsake their lives, and modern civilization, to live as survivalists in fear of Peak Oil-related global collapse.
Looking at the news and some pundits, it’s pretty easy to become terrified, like the first woman described in the AP article. The world is running out of oil. The world is running out of food. The world is running out of water. The world is getting warmer. No one with any power is going to do anything about any of it. Why work? Why save money, have children, create anything? It’s all going to die when the world collapses. It’s very tempting, like the people in the AP article, to give up, either on modern civilization, or on life entirely.
So what keeps you going, especially those of you who believe in Peak Oil or any of the other issues that could lead to this kind of panic?
People have been predicting the end of the world for a long time.
Even if it’s getting close, living your life as best you can seems like the best option.
I’ve never had any intention of having kids, but I do wonder about why people want to bring kids into the world as it is today. Hopefully some people will come along to say why, I’ll be interested to read it.
What keeps me going is that every day, something fun happens. I enjoy my life.
If all that bad shit comes to pass, I’ll deal with it when the time comes. I’ve always somehow managed to get through a crisis and come out in good shape. I expect the same with any future crisis.
In the beginning there were pessimists,
They were fruitful and multiplied,
God saw this and said Gouda,
and the cheesheads were born.
I miss the good old days of duck and cover. I had planned on carrying around precooked bacon so I could go out on a tasty note but now I don’t know what to do.
Wow, what a fucking pessimistic way to live. I’ll pass and enjoy the enjoy the world for what it is. A world that is working on creating alternatives to oil. A world where food is plentiful (since when is it “running out”). A world were water conservation is being researched around the world. A world where greener living has begun to attempt to stop global warming. A world where the brightest minds in the world are not working on a bigger bomb, but on a way to make the world a better place.
Why not have children? To see them grow and learn in an era with unprecedented technological feats. To teach them that the world is not big and scary. And why would we? It’s not.
Step one to having a happy life: Don’t pay attention to the sensationalism in the media.
This era in history has a lot going for it. I’d much rather be alive today than, say, back in the days of the Bubonic Plague. That probably seemed like the end of world to those people too.
Everything is relative. I feel exceptionally fortunate to be born in this era and in America.
Right now, there are people who really are already starving to death in many other countries, so I’d feel pretty lame if I, as an American (with the fatness and abundance of food/wealth that implies), was fretting about the possibility of food shortages someday.
No oil or water? Well, when it finally does become prohibitive to live off fossil fuels and squander water, I guess THEN I’ll give up my fish tanks and join the rest of you as we all move into our Earthship homes made of mud and old tires. No reason to think it won’t be possible to switch to sustainable energy once we become sufficiently inconvenienced. We’re just too lazy to bother right now.
The global warming thing does worry me a bit, since it will probably get worse as China and India contiue to modernize. But humans are a clever and adaptive species, so hopefully we’ll figure something out in time. Cleaner technology, some sort of moon colony, who knows.
For now, it seems kind of neurotic to let possible future doomsday scenarios ruin your life. Seems like the kind fo thing someone who doesn’t have enough actual worries in their life would do. For now, life is fun and not really bad at all for those of us who are lucky enough to be in wealthy modern societies.
Well, people had kids even when life sucked–in fact, poor people still have kids, even when conditions don’t get better. I think people just like having kids around, even if the situation isn’t going to be great for them. After all, the child is going to be accustomed to these “interesting” times so it’ll be normal for him/her.
I’m in my mid 40s. If the world truly is heading towards a “Soylent Green”-level of poverty and collapse, I won’t live to see the worst of it.
But there’s hope. As pointed out upthread, pessismism is nothing new. Even before nuclear weapons, lots of people thought another Great War would be the end of civilization. Or that communism/ fascism would win and create a dysutopian one-world state. For a long while people were certain a nuclear war could break out any week. If it didn’t, people thought the radical social upheaval of the 60s would be a permanent fixture. Or if you’re worried about ecological/ economic collapse, a lot of people thought we’d already be there by 2008.
The world today isn’t as good as the techno-utopias people dreamed of in the 60s, but it isn’t as bad as the nightmare scenerios from the same era. There’s guarded optimism that we’ll muddle through one way or another. If nothing else, the end of the petrol fueled car will eliminate that much carbon emission. Wind and solar are on the cusp of being truly viable alternate energy sources. There will be global warming no matter what, it’s already too late to stop it. But chances are it won’t be the utter eco-catastrophe that some claim. Expensive, inconvenient, and hard on some species, but probably adaptable to.
Yup. From my perspective, the world is better now in a zillion ways than it was in, say, 1400 or 1800. And if everything is about to collapse–well, people have survived a lot of collapses before. We’ll just try to muddle through somehow.
However, I really quite like my life and am hopeful that we’ll come up with some energy alternatives and work on solving our other issues. We have it ridiculously easy compared to the majority of people who have ever lived–I have confidence that we can figure this stuff out too, if we just get off our butts and do it.
I have two kids, and they’re the joy of my life. They have better chances of survival than most of the children ever born onto this planet. I can’t say what things will be like when they’re adults, but it probably won’t be much worse than a good half of human history was. Meanwhile, I give them the best childhood, education, and preparation that I can for their future, and I enjoy it a lot.
Because life is too short to worry about that bullshit. I’m going to worry about what a bunch of crazy old people are doing out in rural America? You could get hit by a bus tomorrow for all you know.
And why would someone tear up their credit cards if they thought civilization was going to end?
A small point: I create things because I like to, not because I think posterity needs them. Why should I stop doing something I enjoy a lot just because the results might not last? They might also get lost in the mail, burned in a house fire, or torn up by everyday living–that doesn’t mean there was no point to creating them.
Just remember–
[ol]
[li]Anyplace with the SDMB is OK.[/li][li]The Media are uttering prophecies of a Great Plague.[/li][li]As did Beavis.[/li][li]Thereby, try not to take #2 too seriously.[/li][/ol]
I’m a committed Christian, & also a history buff. Things are rotten now. Were they better in 1908? 1708? 1508? etc.
Folks, we were never promised Heaven on Earth; never the less, I believe in Heaven. As I said in a previous post, at the end of the day, when I sit my tired butt down, I’m glad to say, “God’s in charge, not me. Good thing, too!”
That & the saying (proven true on a daily basis) that “everyone has something to say you need to know. Listen to them.” (or something like that – it proves true on a regular basis)
Not having read the linked articles (and truthfully not having paid that much attention to the posts in the thread) at the root of it what keeps me going is that if I didn’t keep going it would kill my mother. She lost her husband this year after a number of years of illness and, were she to lose me or my brother, she would I firmly believe die. Not that I contemplate suicide on a regular basis or anything but if I ever again came to that point my mother would keep me alive. I have the right to take my life but I don’t have the right to take hers.
