Currently my view is that living is better than not living.
We’ll see how that pans out.
Yup, the Universe is a pretty fucking nasty place with no sympathy or fairness.
But the Miracle of Life is that it exists at all.
In the light of the setting sun,
Men either beat the pot and sing,
Or loudly bewail the approach of old age.
Misfortune.
I Ching, Hexagram 30, Nine in the third place.
Huh?
We aren’t running out of any of those things. (how can one run out of water??? no one is exporting it to Mars…) There are price and supply disruptions right now, and a significant increase in inflation upon us in the US, but it is not yet certain we will (again in the US) even have a recession, much less a collapse of civilization. Compared to any other difficult decade, we are in fine shape. nine months from now, a year on the outside, and all the “problems” listed here will be pushed off the headlines by a new set of problems.
Maybe not tempting but fun to fantasize about in that same sort of way you know it wouldn’t actually be that much FUN to live in Middle Earth, or have an orgy.
I know someone who packed it all in, bought acreage in Tennessee, raises chickens and goats, runs a small farm with HORSES, feeds their family off the farm as much as possible and awaits the end times.
I figure that we are in for a bad time, but it probably won’t be anything like the Black Plague, and its unlikely even to be like the depression of the 1930s. Its time for the reset button to get pushed - but it isn’t a full reboot of the system, its just things like the kick in the pants we need to develop sustainable energy, agriculture, ecological and population models.
People who think we’re running out of oil.
People who think we’re running out of food.
People who think we’re running out of water.
Again, I do this not to argue, but to answer the question “why do people think we’re running out of X?” By understanding that, I believe that it’s easier to discuss their motivations, and the consequences of their actions.
Sure we have problems and we should be working on solutions. But there’s no reason to give in to despair. It’s not like we’re all doomed tomorrow. Enjoy life while you have it.
This is pretty much how I feel about it as well. And of course, one never knows what the new day may bring.
Doom may be around the corner, or maybe it isn’t.
But as a USAian, we’re living like kings. We have freedom. I can work whereever I want. I can go whereever I want. Right I can get in my car and drive anywhere in the USA without fear. Nobody will stop or hassle me. Cars are good and reliable, the car most likely won’t break down.
Food is plentiful and cheap. Entertainment options abound. Even the poorest have tons of stuff to occupy themselves with and make menial chores easier (vacuum cleaner, microwave, etc.)
So what’s not to like? I don’t see how anyone can be bored with all there is to do and learn.
**. . . what keeps you going on? **
#1 I just really like tapioca pudding.
Nitpick: Sometimees one must go to the DMV.
I have hope that our current problems will eventually be sorted out, mainly through technological innovation but probably also through legislation and some collective belt-tightening. In the mean time, there will be sacrifices, but we’ll get through.
And I won’t be having kids anyway.
Play it down, play it down, just keep your head down and keep on running, and when it’s all fallen down around you you can sit up as innocently as everyone else and say “wha?”.
Sorry but this thread looks like it was contributed to by a bunch of deluded idealists. I can’t fathom what reality people are living in that they can convince themselves their children are going to have better lives. In net terms of available technology, maybe, but… yeah we’ll see.
The kind who know that people have predicted the collapse of civilization practically as long as there’s been civilization.
As for me, I have a husband, two dogs, great parents, siblings and friends, I just started a new job, and moved into a house, finished graduate school, and I think I can safely say that my own, personal life has never been better than it is right now.
I live in a society where the internet allows me to have pretty much anything I want (assuming I can afford it) delivered right to my door, the local grocery store has foods from all over at reasonable prices, and I can listen to music and read books from any recorded period in history just by going to the library or a bookstore. There are more options for clothing, entertainment, and enlightenment available to me than anyone has had at virtually any point in history. Also, modern medical care vastly exceeds what our ancestors had, and is getting better all the time. And I get the personal satisfaction of participating in that process of development every day.
Yes, we may have to make some changes to conserve. We should be more mindful of conserving. Our society is flawed; I won’t deny there are a lot of problems out there. But if I were depressed with my life and my society as it is, I’d be kicking my own ass for being a fool. So that keeps me going. 
I learned two things in the ancient history class I took in college.
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A place where humans have lived for thousands of years and the accumulated trash and ruins have created a hill is called a Tel.
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Every few hundred years, it seems like the world is going to end. It hasn’t yet.
Looking back at things like the intermediate periods in Egypt and the great plagues of Europe (not to mention the general tone of sub-saharan African history), I recognize that things might get ugly, but they aren’t going to end. I guess I can deal with “ugly”.
A very very brief hijack (but it’s my thread, so I claim privilege):
So Tel Aviv rests on thousands of years of ruins and trash? Interesting!
I’ve passed by this thread several times and I always keep coming up with the same answer. Love. Family,God, friends and even strangers. And it will be the same tomorrow as well.
Leaper, please hear me out.
Last week I needed to do some yard work and that meant that I needed to borrow a wheelbarrow from Gladys who lives a mile and a half from me. I didn’t have any way of transporting it, so I had to walk to get it.
I had gotten a good piece down the road when it occured to me that I should have called her before I left home. I didn’t take my cell phone with me. She might not be home and I would have walked all that way for nothing.
After a few minutes, I thought about this: What if she’s is home, but the wheelbarrow is broken or has a flat tire and can’t be used. That really bothered me because that was a possibility. She never took care of things.
I was almost to Gladys’s front porch when it hit me. What if Gladys is home and the wheelbarrow is broken and it doesn’t have a flat tire, but she just doesn’t want to lend it to me? That idea just flew all over me! The very idea! I had walked all this way to be treated like that!
When Gladys came to the door I stuck my fist in her face and said through clenched teeth, “Keep your goddamned wheelbarrow!”
The nerve.
(Original source unknown)
Heh, you can borrow my wheelbarrow anytime.
Nope, wasn’t born until the end of 'em. Things do seem kind of scary and bleak this decade, but all people in their 20s and early 30s have to compare these days to is the 80s and 90s. The cold war was all but over by the time we were in school, and it was smooth sailing for quite a while after that, wasn’t it? This is the first real down turn a lot of us have faced - and I do mean a lot, as of the 2000 census more than 1/3rd of the population was born after the gas crisis in the early 1970s, 132 million of us currently over the age of 7 plus all those under not accounted for in that census - so we need you all to remind us that things come in cycles and it’ll be an upswing again before too terribly long.
As for positives… we got about 12’ of snow this winter. Well, if you can call having significant snowcover on the ground from November to April winter. It was cold, wet and miserable for months on end, and at some points lots of us spent hours shoveling off our roofs. The roofs! It was unheard of but the rash of roof colapses prompted it. They’re predicting 85F for Saturday. How could you think things haven’t already improved?
You make an interesting point there. Yeah, I remember the gas crunch - it eased eventually. Maybe it will again, maybe we’ll find a different path this time. Silent Spring told us we were running out of clean air and water: trust me, the air and water are amazingly cleaner than they used to be. I mean, when’s the last time you heard of a US river bursting into flame? Don’t forget the constant fear of global nuclear destruction that we grew up with. There were economic crises, too. There was a time Japan was going to crush the US economically. Now, China or India is going to crush us. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.
When I was younger than that, I saw people getting shot at in Vietnam every day on the evening news. I knew in a few years, I’d get drafted and be sent there (luckily, I was wrong). Riots in the streets of major US cities were not unusual: police officers in massed formations using dogs, firehoses, clubs and occasionally firearms against crowds of civilians. I remember at least 2 incidents where authorites opened fire on crowds, killing multiple students (Kent State and Jackson State incidents). American citizens were getting murdered in their struggle for voting and civil rights. I remember national leaders being gunned down by malcontents like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and James Earl Ray. Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley, Jr. tried and failed.
When Ray murdered Martin Luther King, Jr., I remember the expectation of race violence being so palpable that Dad gave a key to our house to the only black teacher at the school across the street, so she could use it as refuge for herself and the few black students at that school if she felt they were in danger. He told her how to ring his work phone, the pattern to use to make sure he’d drop anything he was doing and answer now. And yet, just a couple days ago, a black man earned the nomination of the Democratic Party as their candidate for the US presidency. I figure he has a 50/50 chance of winning. I honestly never thought I’d see something like this. At the beginning of the year, I told my best friend I’d vote for Obama if he was still in the running in the Missouri primary, but I didn’t think he would be. Well he was, and I voted for him, though he had no chance of winning in Missouri. Well, he did win in Missouri.
Sure, it’s two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes, it’s one step forward, two steps back. There are no guarantees; there never were. Are you going to give up or are you going to hang on and work to improve things and enjoy what you can?