I guess I should just start getting used to the people of Lemmy calling literally every picture file with text in it a meme, huh? It’s kind of like how in the 80s my mom would call any videogame “Nintendo”, but alas.
I think there are lots of easily measurable metrics by which things at least seem better today than in the past. If nothing else, technology has definitely gotten better and cheaper over time (particularly computers and microchips). These metrics may be naive and not capture the full picture, of course, and even if things are just objectively better now there’s lots of scary things happening right now and on the horizon that make the future a little uncertain and troubling. Overall I’m not sure I would believe that people in general are happier or better off now than they were at certain points in the past… I’m certainly struggling with that in many ways and some modern day problems are definitely impacting me and on my mind… That said, I’m not sure what time period in the past I’d rather live in instead? Maybe one where housing is cheaper, haha.
Of course not, but it’s a very easy to see indication of technology improving (and something that is used to develop more technologies and solutions to help people in the future). There are plenty of medical examples too, things like the MRNA vaccines recently have a lot of potential to make the world better, there are better pharmaceuticals today, and we have better tools, diagnostics, and knowledge than ever before. Cancer treatments are better, etc. Is it perfect? No. Is it distributed equitably? Absolutely not. But these are things that are better and hopefully we can improve access to these things in the future.
FWIW, I’m not an optimist, and I think there are many things wrong with the world right now socially and politically, but technology and knowledge (as well as access to these things) has definitely improved dramatically, and these are useful tools that can (and do) make people’s lives better (and possible) in a bunch of different ways, and they do give us more tools to tackle future problems as well (even if there may be problems with their usage). To be clear, I am also not a fan of the assumption that technology will rescue us in any scenario and am fully of the opinion that it is very much a double edged sword, and I do think there’s a particularly problematic belief that we should expect future technologies to save us from preventable disasters now (this could end up being the case, but it seems bad to depend on it happening)… But that said, at the end of the day this is something that has objectively improved over time, and I think has largely made the world a better place for it. I don’t feel like everything is hunky dory in the world right now, either, and we definitely face a number of issues… But I’m also not totally convinced I’d be better off living hundreds of years ago or whatever.
I know it’s cool to circlejerk about doom and gloom, but in general things are better than they’ve ever been. Life expectancy continues to increase, people are less oppressed, technology progresses, there’s less war, the only problem is that in an interconnected world you can hear about all the bad stuff you were previously unaware of if that’s what you choose to hear!
Literally nothing is being done about climate change. We’re no closer to being rid of fossil fuels than we were 30 years ago and we are only using more and more petroleum products and coal in daily life.
The increase in fossil fuel usage has always correlated super heavily with increases in population, which makes sense because we use these fuels to sustain human life. However, it’s important to note that the rate of increase in fossil fuel usage has actually slowed down relative to the rate of increase in population.
It’s also wrong to suggest nothing is being done about climate change, it’s not all doom and gloom. North American loggers are heavily focused on reforestation and as a result the number of trees is 130% what it was 100 years ago.
Farmers are very focused on soil health and the amount of arable land has increased which is a massive environmental win. They are also naturally inclined to make more efficient use of their fuel since they pay for it themselves: The GPS and EZ Steer technology alone reduced fuel cost for farmers and emissions immensely.
There’s also been a lot of progress in nuclear energy, and we’re far closer to implementing safe modular reactors than we’ve ever been before, which will be a massive step forward in getting out of coal energy
Diseases that may lie in permafrost give reason to worry. These articles are entirely speculative and openly alarmist in nature, I wouldn’t trust them to sway your opinion if I were you.
There’s never been a dormant disease that’s been found and revived from permafrost that we have any reason to believe could infect human, let alone any explanation of how such a disease could make it into the human population just through the thawing of permafrost alone. It’s not just that I don’t think we have reason to worry, I actually think we have plenty of reason not to worry.
Life expectancy in North America is actually dropping. People in North America are losing civil rights protections. There’s actually more war, not less occurring worldwide.
According to the first search result I found it has never dropped. Do you still have regular lynchings? Can women still vote? Is there imminent threat of nuclear annihilation? Just because sometimes there are steps backwards doesn’t mean we’re not as a whole moving forwards.
I’m using Lemmy, Godot just got a big boost in funding (thanks to the other engine debacle). Things could be looking up in little parts here and there within our impending apocalypse?
Okay but a very small Caveat about the Godot thing, the main developers of Godot also got a large boost in funding but that doesn’t actually help maintain the engine because they have released statements that the two companies finances are separate and investment in W4 Games does not maintain Godot. This pissed off a lot of major contributors at the time.
It would be kinda cool if there was a rule where you have to at least try to post a link to the original post. Especially when it’s so easy to determine where it is by the picture.
The image conveys everything I need, I don’t have any reason to load my browser up and visit a whole other website I don’t even use, when I’ve already gotten everything I could possibly need from the quote already.
To credit the creator and give people the opportunity to interact/follow them or the conversation on that platform.
The creator is fully credited in the screenshot and it tells you exactly where to find them on Mastodon if you choose to do so. I have no obligation to cater to your laziness.
Interesting accusations given you were too lazy to just copy and paste the URL you were already on, two keystrokes, and calling others lazy for not wanting to type it by hand.
If it was original art or something, I would agree. But this is just microblogging for the amusement of others. It’s not a work that takes real creative energy.
For me it’s important to be optimistic because it allows you to keep working on an issue. If you think it’s over and everything is fucked you won’t work on the issue. You need to believe the issue can be fixed to take the steps to fix it.
My chosen apocalypse of personal belief is that of climate change. Even if we create a general peace on earth, do every single thing right regarding climate change, at this point, we’re likely to only skirt absolute disaster. Some countries won’t even admit it’s a problem, much less take action to prevent it.
Climate change is not one of the things I see getting better. The only people who care about changing seem to be the people who don’t contribute much in the first place. The largest polluters are still polluting more and more.
Climate change is not one of the things I see getting better.
Then it’s hard to be optimistic about the future - if we don’t make a drastic alteration to energy then we are heading for rises in temperature that are going to make some parts of the planet inhabitable,. leading to water wars and huge displaced populations moving north. This will play into the hands of right wing populists and the political system will be under the kind of strain we haven’t seen in a century. That’s for as long as we can keep what might still pass for civilisation limping along.
We have time. I may not be optimistic about the outcome now but in 5 or 10 years I expect the political landscape to be very different. I can already see that many many many people care about the issue and are working every day to change things.
It all depends on where the tipping points are, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty. If we can stop making things worse before we hit major irreversible changes to our environment, we can eke it out
Permafrost is already melting in alarming amounts. We’d probably have to take drastic action immediately. I don’t mean in a few years or a decade. Now like, this year. But that’s not going to happen.
Thanks a lot: you made me look it up. The Wikipedia article has more potential climate tipping than I was aware of, and near the beginning they talk about fears of a tipping point cascade. I think that’s the end of my internet tonight
We don’t have time - we had time 15-20 years ago and did less than the minimum required, so we will hit +1.5 degrees C very soon, which itself is bad, but we are easily on track for +2C and probably worse. That’s disastrous. And this isn’t factoring in other feedback loops that might kick in and make this irreversible, like widespread melting of the permafrost or the methane hydrates in the deep ocean (both of which have already started and will only get worse).
In the developed world, we have made gains in medicine and technology, but that just means this could be as good as it gets.
Is there hope? Sure. If China switched off all its coal-fired power stations and used gas, nuclear and renewables we’d be back on track for only hitting +1.5C and it would possibly buy us enough time to build renewables, make viable fusion reactors, etc. However, they already know this and aren’t making any moves to change when no-one else is - for example, Germany are looking to bring their coal-fired power stations back online this Winter.
If there can be a silver lining in the heavy dark clouds of war, it’s that many countries are speeding up deployment of renewable energy to reduce their dependency on unstable or unfriendly nations
Like what? Literally everything I can think of is getting worse all the time. People on the internet moving further and further to extremes, technology getting more and more dumbed down and taking control from the user in favor of spying on the. My friends and family aging, getting sick, and dying. Everything is more expensive than ever and my wage isn’t keeping up… I could go on.
Younger people are more political active and engaged than ever. They are shifting policies towards the left. Unions are become more popular throughout the west and are achieving improvements in workers rights. People from all around the world are engaging with each other regularly on the internet which reduces us vs them mentality. Climate change is at the forefront of political discussion and is backed by the largest investment funds in the world. Technology is getting better, easier to use means it’s accessible to more people. Your family and friends aging is unfortunately part of the human condition. The fact that we are talking about wages not keeping up with cost of living is a good sign it means we have identified it as an issue and politically the issue is already bring tackled.
There’s a lot of bad things to dwell on but to say everything is getting worse is unhelpful and demoralizing. If everything was actually getting worse I can honestly say I would kill myself. I believe there is a future for us all to work towards.
With the exception of climate change, most of these issues have always existed to varying degrees, you’re just constantly bombarded by the news of it now. Block all news sites and communities for a few weeks and see how you feel. I promise you will miss nothing. Anything important enough will slip through your filters online or in the real world.
Now check this out, we’re seeing meaningful movement towards fair wages in places like California, and pretty much the entire world, across every industry is on strike this year. That’s not bad news, that’s great news! It means that people have been pushed too far and are finally pushing back.
Everyone gives the Boomers shit for problems they presumably created, but they were fucking active in politics as kids, man. They were constantly out protesting, fighting for improvements and changes. As a result their kids and grandkids had things pretty great for most of their lives and were complacent. That complacency led to companies and governments seeing how far they could push the limits and they’ve found those limits. People are fighting back now.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Block all news sites and communities for a few weeks and see how you feel.
I wouldn’t suggest this for extended periods. Imo, it’s how people don’t know and become apathetic about politics and only hear the highest airplane level that seeps through.
Modern technology recently resulted in incredibly fast development of multiple vaccines to control a worldwide pandemic. Even just a few years earlier vaccines would have taken years and resulted in many more deaths
Taking lead out of gas did wonders for that, though there’s enough lead in urban soil that it’s probably not good to eat eggs from urban yard chickens, or some root vegetables like carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets if grown in urban soil. That said, other than some root veggies, garden veggies do not take up lead in the soil.
Or tomatoes. Our pediatrician said for older houses you need to expect soil near the houses to be contaminated by lead paint so vegetable gardens (unless separated soil) are not a good idea, especially tomatoes
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