I’m kept going by knowing that the cultural pessimists are totally wrong. The world is a great place today compared to any time in history.
It’s quite nice in the garden, actually. We have more butterflies and birds every year. There are all sorts of bugs I cannot identify. The grapes have begun to fill in. The strawberries are succulent and the wrens just left the nest. The bluberries are nearly ready. The plums and peaches are making the branches weep and bend from the weight. The red clover seeds are nearly ready to spread about. The okra just pushed its way out of the soil. Tulip found a large turtle and let me have it to play with. The goldfish keep getting bigger.
umm, I’m sorry. I forgot the question, again.
Dunnow, I still have mine. If you want to borrow her for a while, she comes with the Grandfather from Hell.
Don’t worry, you already answered it.
I’m old enough to remember pessimists in the 1960s worrying about environmental collapse and worldwide famine. Today, there are still environmental problems, and millions are starving (just as their ancestors were 40 years ago) – but people are working on the problems.
Meanwhile, on the whole, a lot of people are better off than they were 40 years ago – including me. I’ve had a very interesting life, and it continues to be interesting, so I’d rather not stop right now.
Peak oil is a problem, but there are alternatives to oil that become viable when oil becomes more expensive. For a start, I’m not intending to buy another car: when I retire, public transport will satisfy most of my needs. And there’s plenty of coal and uranium, which can substitute for some of the uses of oil. So the world will muddle on, as it has, year after year.
I was born in 1954. Overall, the world looks to me like a better place than it was when I was young. A few things are worse, and most things are better. As others have mentioned, there have been dire predictions from reputable sources for as long as I can remember, and I can’t recall one which came true. I’m past the age when I have to consider whether to bring children in to the world, but I’m glad that the five I have are alive. I can’t wait to see what they do next! I’ve got work to do, books to read, songs to play, places to see, and a wife to love. I’m glad to be here, and I’m optimistic.
The world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but hopefully it’ll be an opportunity to learn how to live more frugally and stop wasting so much fuel and water and food. Thanks to the shitty economy, I’m constantly looking for ways to cut out the extra expenses. And you know what? I’ve found I actually like it. I and my family are eating far fewer preservatives because I make almost all our food from scratch. I’ve gotten out of the habit of buying things and eventually tossing them in the trash because I didn’t use them before they went bad. I’ve begun growing my own herbs again and they’re so abundant they’re spilling out of their pots. The green beans I planted just a few weeks ago are now eight inches high. And my family life? Yeah, it’s rocky sometimes, but on the whole, it’s fantastic. Everyone’s healthy and we have a great time together. My son is shooting up almost as quickly as my plants.
My house is slowly, slowly becoming more organized and I’ve committed to losing weight and have as a result lowered my cholesterol more than 70 points. I’m healthier than I have been in years, with more energy and more drive to devote to my family and getting what I want out of my career.
I haven’t been this satisfied since I ran my own business.
There’s always someone convinced the world is going to end. So far it hasn’t. Imagine if I started living every day as if it was my last, and not in a good way, 18,000 more times? I’d be fucked.
People said the same thing when my parents were teenagers. They didn’t believe it, and now they’re deriving unspeakable joy and satisfaction from their granddaughter. I’ve never seen happier people.
I fully expect to experience the same thing in 25-35 years. Why turn down a chance at that?
Says you. I find the idea of living like an 18th-century subsistence farmer extremely UN-tempting. I happen to like the way I live, and on a personal level - while the cost of food has certainly gotten high - my life is better than it was a year ago in just about every way, so I feel no need to ditch the whole thing and live with a bunch of maniacs in Bumblefuck, Idaho, thank you very much. Civilization is a mixed bag, but life is a terrific thing and it’s a waste of time to devote that much energy to panic and doomsaying. Not to mention the fact 7that the panicky doomsayers tend to be overwhelmingly wrong.
What keeps the crises off my mind is my own urgent problems every few days about how to pay some bill. Since I’m self employed and poor, that means trying to dun people who owe me or finding new work that pays the same day. Let the world take care of itself!
What keeps me going is my wonderful husband and my two precious dogs, who are worth the world, and the memory of my father, who was determined to let life grind him down to a stub. He was convinced that nothing he tried would ever succeed, no one loved him, there was no point to my wanting to get an education or go out on dates or get a good job because even if I did it would eventually end in devastation and heartbreak.
Living well may not be the best revenge, but it is triumph.
The world has always been going to hell in a handbasket. I see no reason not to enjoy the ride.
Kuboydal, we’ve been picking the cherries. There are tons of cherries this year, we don’t even know what to do with them all! I’m going to can a whole bunch so we can have cherry muffins all year, yum.
Geez, doesn’t anyone remember a little decade called the 70s? Now THERE was a pessimistic decade. The economy was falling apart. Inflation and unemployment were insoluble problems. The factories were belching pollution and the rivers were running with sewage. Population growth was exploding. We had used up almost all the gasoline on the planet. Wild animals were disappearing, in a few years the only living things on earth would be people and gigantic carnivorous rats. Violent crime was increasing every year, crime was making the cities ungovernable. People were becoming hedonistic, they only cared about getting high and having sex. Consumer goods were shoddy and fell apart in five minutes due to planned obsolesence. Kids didn’t learn anything in school. Computers were deciding everything. The government, the military, the corporations, religions…all of them were scams run by con men. Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, all were different names for the same system. In a few years we’d all be living underground and eating synthetic food provided by machines.
It was overdetermined. Even if one or two of these disasters were somehow fixed, if we somehow survived in our rat-infested squalor for a few more years, well, there was an inevitable rain of nuclear fire that would wash away every work of man. Trying to fix the impossible problems of society was a fool’s game, since everything was going to be burned to a cinder anyway.
That was the 70s.
Compared to that the problems of 2008 seem pretty managable.
I remember the 70s. On the whole, it was pretty good: I got started in my present profession, I got married, I had my first two children. On the downside, I had a fairly painful break-up with a previous girlfriend, but that’s not enough to make me pessimistic about the decade.
But let’s be honest. As a survivor, you still envied the dead, right?
mmmm… cherries are next on the list of trees to add to the orchard to distract me from the knowledge that we are living in a vast and uncaring universe preicipitously perched on the edge of oblivion.
Hey, a universe with cherry trees in it is one worth living in. Not to mention the boysenberries that are almost ripe.
Now we’re talking. I’ll swap yas some thornless blackberries and black raspberries.
Camus should have had a garden.
Some argue it is. Not arguing with you; just clarifying why I said it in the first place.