this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Yeah I don't know about "par for the course"
What other generation had the threat of scientifically proven ecological collapse looming over them?
This is a pretty specific thing, but the general "we're all doomed" vibe is definitely not unique to today. Boomers and older had the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over them, and before that... well, disease and famine and death and destruction due to war have historically been the norm.
Imagine how you'd feel living in the Americas in the 16th or 17th centuries and either watching the destruction wrought by European settlers firsthand or, maybe worse, watching your peers die en masse of the diseases introduced by those settlers. Imagine living in Eurasia in the 13th century and watching the Mongol army sweep through.
None of this is to say that today's challenges aren't real and serious. Just that we're not the first to face such challenges.
I think the doom is real, but we're all looking at it through 6" x 3" magnifying glasses that condense all the shit into one giant nugget, and then the easy thing is to comment on that nugget because, well it's right there, and last winter was unseasonably warm and there were some pretty catastrophic wildfires, and the ocean is doing weird shit, and it's easy to think that that's all there is, but you can still take a walk in the woods on a sunny day, and say hi to some people, and maybe make a friend.
For now
The greatest and silent generations saw some shit
And the stupid fucks still decided to have kids.
By your logic, the first humans should've stopped having kids and died out the first time they faced any sort of existential issue. Life's hard yo, that doesn't mean it's not worth living.
It really isn't worth living.
No matter how easy, hard, successful or failure of a life you live, the end result is identical.
That's life. What value you assign it is up to you to decide. Philosophy is how I find my value, for others it's religion. Ultimately, that's something you have to figure out for yourself.
oh fuck off with this anti natalist bullshit. do you not watch movies because they have an ending too?
I get to remember that ending.
But go ahead and have kids so you can watch em slave for wage massa, Pay 10 grand a month to rent a Pod, and deal with 150°F winters yeah boiiii life is sooo goOoOd!!!
Fuck outta here, sadist.
Considering science has only gotten robust enough to prove anything like that far more recently than any good examples of ecological collapse, I'd say this parameter is a little arbitrary.
The best example I can think of regarding ecological collapse is during and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Their climate decreased in temperature, which reduces crop yields, which weakened the empire and encouraged migration from northern Europe, which brought their collapse (plus like 12 other things lol).
In 535AD, during Justinian's reign in the east, the first black plague happened following a supermassive volcano that left the sky covered in ash blocking the sun. This was a massively ecologically damaging period of history and it caused the death of countless plant and animal life, along with the deaths of half the population of the Mediterranean.
It's not like people of this age were taking soil samples and references trends or whatever, but they certainly understood how things were going poorly.
The ozone layer depletion was a very serious threat. The solutions were a lot easier though.
At least for me, that was ongoing when I was in elementary school, so I'd still count that as part of "this generation"
Gen Z and younger at least got to not have to worry about that though, you're right
Find the good in eat. We can finally get rid of society's parasites. Landlords