The Future

I'm sure some of us have a pessimistic outlook on the future, but I think we need to plan on how to stop 2020 and onward from being so shit. I mean, we can't just say that the future is going to be horrible and offer no solution, right?

Other urls found in this thread:

washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/bare-bottomed-americans-arrested-over-thai-temple-photo/2017/11/29/87147c68-d4df-11e7-9ad9-ca0619edfa05_story.html?utm_term=.a9d4026e546e
youtube.com/watch?v=1h5qPiDvTF4
youtube.com/watch?v=1czzPzqMIOQ
donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=f2oyU0RusiA
dieoff.org/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

It isn't going to get any better.

Its going to get a lot worse and eventually a lot better.

If the economic crash does happen, I hope there is going to be a lot of people who become class conscious

I'm honestly not a fan of these doomposters, it's likely we are going to have some crisis, but it's not going to be the end of industrial civilization. We may be able to replace rare earth materials, materials science is a thing, and we may be able to replace fossil fuels. The Malthusian Trap isn't real, societies have a tendencies to regulate themselves in the face of overpopulation.

What I'm actually scared off is what the dominant culture defines as positive. More consumerism, more narcissism, more degeneration of culture, nihilism and hyper-commodification as well as automatization. My nightmare is to be woken up by Google, having my breakfast prepared by Google and having my gym session measured by Google. I'm scared that we won't get socialism but a techno-authoritarian totalitarian technocracy that takes care of all our aspects of life while everything fucked up that happened on our planet is filtered out, that everybodies life and peer-binding is just centered arround a certain consumer milieu of either shitty Netflix shows, "fitspiration", "travel addiction" or electronic music festivals. I'm scared that our education will be dumbed-down to a utilitarian nightmare, where people can't point out the Amazonas on a world map but are perfectly educated in Adobe Photoshop as a obligatory class. All the fucked up shit like Third World exploitation we have now will still be going on, but we won't hear anything about it anymore.

Thats the only way people become class conscious.

Capitalism has won. The proletariat is just another component of the global rule of capital. This is the end of history and it only goes downhill from here.

This. This so fucking much. I was coming here just to post this.

This tbh, the coming technocracy is going to be absolutely fucking terrifying.
I just hope somebody manages to rampage through google HQ and murder a LOT of the demons making it happen.

Yeah…until US hegemony collapses or if theres an economic depression

There was actually an article I saw on my Google newsfeed recently, about exactly this phenomenon.

A gay couple from the arid polluted samey hellscape of San Diego which traveled around the world posting pictures of their bare asses on Instagram got arrested in Thailand for public indecency, because they had pulled out their butts at a place of worship. What to them was just a backdrop for their vanity and to showcase their consumerist upper-strata lifestyle was to other people a place of religious significance and worship. It's even better that it's a gay couple because it just makes it that much more of a modern anecdote.

washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/bare-bottomed-americans-arrested-over-thai-temple-photo/2017/11/29/87147c68-d4df-11e7-9ad9-ca0619edfa05_story.html?utm_term=.a9d4026e546e

I'd like to add that "fit culture" is one of the worst fucking thing that plagued this planet.
Seriously. So vain, So hollow, So narcissistic, So false and Nihilistic.
Rule of tumb is that handsome guys ain't good with fists, physique comes from hard hand labour not from gym obession.

Start a post on Holla Forums asking to form that and tell us how that goes.

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holy shit that guy looks hilarious

Yeah I think there is nothing wrong with pecs and abs but obsession with lats makes you look ugly, sure you shouldn't skip them but making yourself look broader doesn't make you look more handsome.

He is a bodybuilder and has a channel called Aesthetics Unity.
Literally everything wrong with fitculture imho
youtube.com/watch?v=1h5qPiDvTF4
youtube.com/watch?v=1czzPzqMIOQ

Zizek I think is on point here, but it might be also be because I hate Berlusconi with a passion.

Žižek was right. Trump is Berlusconi 2.0, and we were in a state of emergency in France from the Paris shootings till this november. Since then, Valls and Macron probably gave a shitload of rights to the police and the surveillance apparatus. I haven't followed all of that, but I guess that was Žižek's point.

Watch a documentary called videocracy

I wouldn't be surprised if we slip back into a type of capitalism of the early industrial era with indentured workers and being paid in company script.

We're already about halfway there. Unpaid internships are getting pretty common today. Wanting to be paid for your work is considered to be entitlement by many now.

The western neoliberal regime is already experiencing a crisis of legitimacy as fewer people vote and the professional political class clings to power. Their continued paralysis in the face of late capitalism could cause it to collapse completely. Socialists might have their chance if they can establish legitimacy by having ready plans.

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I'd say they're the norm, I don't know a single soul who had a paid internship when I was in undergrad

I don't know how this bullshit ever caught on like it did. Imagine if you tried this with anything else.

because the restaurant owner isn't desperate. people who look for jobs are.

also that's a big-ass pizza

Instagram is home to some of the most bizarre first-world insanity.

I think snapchat is even worse. Thank god I've stayed coherent and said no to everything since myspace

We're supposed to offer the truth. If there are no solutions then so be it.

I hope to god you turned that shit down.
One thing my mom and dad drilled into me was that only suckers work for free.
I'll lie for the experience before I put out money to go slave away porky for free.

I wonder, will France ever restore its Schengen Borders or is the common travel area dead at this point? I check the EU's website and the temporary reintroduction keeps getting extended

At my uni we had paid positions but the pay was pathetically token. You were typically given enough for a week's work on minimum wage and then expected by your professor to work four or five times that.

Same. A load of employers in my area have folded and if I move I've considered just saying that I worked there before it closed.

I sometimes do that but I also get family and friends to *act* as previous employers to give me good recommendations and I do the same.

Does it work?

Yeah as long as your not being a retard and trying to be a doctor or something really high up that people check. How I got all my jobs by lying about my experience and in the interview those were the key ones.

my current job I lied about having 8 years IT professional experience.

Capitalism brings out the best(worst) in everybody where we have to be pathological liars and crooks just to get a job and survive.

Most people just use snapchat as a messaging app

There was a bitch near me the other day that was pushing touching the screen on the phone like an autist, when I asked what's up with that she told me that it was so that she can get flames or someshit.
Communicating through images is top spectacle.

Yeah some people (teenagers) like to message each other every day because it gives you a "streak" when you message someone and they message back every day. It's a little flame with a number next to it which ticks up each day, and some people maintain dozens of 300+ day streaks.

Personally I don't give a shit about streaks. Longest I had was 80 days with my gf, because we were apart all summer and wanted to keep in contact.

How's that? It's like a more informal text message. It's nice.

You are aware that civilizations in the past have collapsed, right?

That in fact most of them have collapsed? Why do you think that was?

You've never read Malthus, and I wouldn't recommend it, because all he talks about is food. What most people in the scientific community now are concerned about is energy, resources, and climate.

I highly suggest that you watch (or read) something from Dennis Meadows - he's one of the bigger names attached to the MIT group that did the research for the Limits to Growth (a book that is older than I, and likely yourself as well). Divorcing ourselves from the socio-political sphere and inspecting global needs from a purely materialistic perspective is, I think, quite enlightening.

Yeah, if things were THIS fucked we'd know, right? Not really solid logic tho. If this is true I'm joining the army and hoping to die young. Hopefully my suicidal escapades will either A.)Kill me or B.) harden me to the point where being 1/7 is more like 90%.

Good on you man. Ill deeply consider lying next time I'm in a situation like this.
Streaks are an unholy abomination. I hate social media. Everyone is on it and they are all connected and it is the worst. Can't do anything anymore.

Pleae man, sum up the proofs. I don't think it matters that he hasn't read Malthus, he was just a guy that said everything was fucked, which is exactly what the Anons above were doing.

I admit, I have only read the Wikipedia article on it. However, I think Malthus' analysis doesn't hold up with modern empirical evidence, when we look at the population growth in countries on the brink of overpopulation and then differentiate them according to levels of development. Highly developed, overpopulated societies do have lower birthrates which is a simple result of supply and demand of living space (something that wouldn't necessarily change under socialism), so the problem I see is underdevelopment first and foremost. It's not gonna be like Children of Men, but people may or may not go through some bureaucratic processes if they want to have a child - there is nothing wrong with this in principle, and you are spooked if you associate this with some sort of dystopia.

The fun thing with Malthus is that he was actually right, empirically speaking. If you look backwards from his time, it's basically true that you have a Malthusian situation regarding population growth and food supplies. The problem for Malthus was that he realized this during the industrial revolution, as the technology arose for food supply growth to keep pace with (or indeed outpace) population growth.

If you want to die could you go on a rampage at facebook headquarters? We will venerate you

Prove to me that the world did is fucked to the degree the Anons at the top of this post said and I will engage in no crime, but would be in a state of mind where I would deeply empathize with the kind of mad man who would do this.

Just watch out of your window. Smell the disgusting shit coming out of cars, watch the advertising around you. You are bombed with this shit 24/7. they are forcing you to watch, forcing you to give money to them. Sit down and sing in your head, you are probably singing a jingle you heard on tv before.
You can't affort going out, you can't afford a social life. So you watch porn. Teens in porn are young cluless little girls who thought that it was easy money and fun. People are willing to humiliate them self in front of a camera for popularity. We growed up with reality tv and all jacked up dagos and whores caked with make up, that's our example. That's what look normal to us. That's what leads people to think that it's ok to be someone slut on camera, you think it's not like real sex, but it is because everyone in the world is growing up with that shit, what will become of sex and making love will be a simple imitation of what they see in clips on the internet. You try to escape, you go away. Somehow you manage to break you economic chains, you escape in the other part of the world. But it's the same. The world became an homogeous mass thanks to neo liberalism.
No suprises, no adventure, no pain, no fear. Everything becomes fake, becomes painless. From talking to a girl, to having sex, to traveling, you are following a script. You feel obligated to take a photo when you land in a new place, people have to show off because it's the only thing they will have from that experience. Same with sex, food and everything. It will be something to add to your virtual catalogue of experiences. The people who own these stuff will rule the world. They will push for you to be as nihilist, hedonistic and "free" as possible. We will be so numb, We are already so numb that our freedom is going to expensive nightclubs wasting our money on bullshit and looking good so that we can score a girl and we can post an after sex picture after. This will be human interaction, instead of talking, having sex and living the moment we prefer showing off and earning those "strikes", "verified profile" ecc.
That's what we will do with freedom because we don't know anything else.
We are not people but images, a hollow and artifical recreation of what means to be alive

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You're going to have to do some of your own research here, anons - complex systems don't generally have simple simple explanations, especially coming from a layperson such as myself.

However, here's something to get you started.

Scanned copy of Limits to Growth: donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf

Dennis Meadows - Perspectives on the Limits of Growth: It is too late for sustainable development: youtube.com/watch?v=f2oyU0RusiA
-This is a sort of 40 years after the publishing of Limits to Growth - where are we now type of video. It may be beneficial to watch this before reading the book - get a more holistic view of the subject matter before digging into some of the minutia.

Jay Hanson's page at DieOff.org also has an interesting analysis of the nature of human societies with regard to resource usage. It's worth a read as its really only about three pages of overall content but makes some pretty cogent points about the human condition.
dieoff.org/

He basically spells out the history of civilization's behavioral loops as such-

Step 1. Individuals and groups evolved a bias to maximize fitness by maximizing power, which requires over-reproduction and/or over-consumption of natural resources (overshoot), whenever systemic constraints allow it. Differential power generation and accumulation result in a hierarchical group structure.

Step 2. Energy is always limited, and overshoot eventually leads to decreasing power available to some members of the group, with lower-ranking members suffering first.

Step 3. Diminishing power availability creates divisive subgroups within the original group. Low-rank members will form subgroups and coalitions to demand a greater share of power from higher-ranking individuals, who will resist by forming their own coalitions to maintain power.

Step 4. Violent social strife eventually occurs among subgroups who demand a greater share of the remaining power.

Step 5. The weakest subgroups (high or low rank) are either forced to disperse to a new territory, are killed, enslaved, or imprisoned.

Step 6. Go back to step 1.

Definitely worth a read.

Its nice to see someone using a screencap/compilation thing I made

That just makes it worse.

Why is Karen so shit? She ruined the whole episode.

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Why are the Anglos even in it? It would be a perfectly good show without Alice and Karen.

A US that goes through a socialist revolution has already been broken by generations of decaying infrastructure that has just been dealt a final nail by the bouj military by firing shells and missiles and bombs into its own backyard.

To expand, an America that comes out of revolution will be as traumatized and in need of rapid redevelopment of its infrastructure not unlike the state of China after the fall of the Manchu dynasty. I think American socialists will have to go through something possibly worse than the Arduous March if there is to be a worker's republic on the North American continent.

The USA is sitting on massive mechanization, the USA doesn't need more equipment to repair infrastructure due to over production. China didn't have trillions of horse power just sitting idle during its revolution.

The problem with machines that go idle is that they decay and rot and fixing them up after being neglected for so long is a task much easier said than done.

There is old Stalin era tractors that were left to rust in fields back in the 1960's that Russians fix up now and they run fine.

In this moment I appreciate my simple rural existence even more. The fresh air, the forests and wheat fields. The fact I don't own a TV, barely buy anything outside of basic necessities, and use ad-blockers when browsing. No social media either.

Industrial civilization as we know it may drag itself into disaster and stagnation, but people will survive. You will just see more and more people exit as the social and economic fabric unravels. It may not be pretty, but it will probably just return to pre-modern structures.
Reactionaries will have the last laugh when the dust settles on the catastrophe of liberal industrial civilization.
Read Land, Kaczynski, Nicolás Gómez Dávila, even Bookchin, etc.
It's not all gloom and doom.

Your image is scaremongering bullshit. Temps could rise 10 degrees yet it wouldn't have much of an affect on the civilized world (America) because the US government would bail out porky and ensure Americans' access to cheap corn syrup isn't disrupted. This entails all sorts of projects (greenhouses, dams, nuclear desalination, low flow toilets) but is fully feasible with existing resources (specifically, nuclear power). At the very most, Americans might be forced to buy electric cars. And most Americans (even Holla Forums) are willing to accept this if it means protectionism and more domestic jobs.

The only people who get fucked are those in the third world who don't have enough money or competent engineers to build around a changing climate. That is where the uncontrollable famines and wars will occur.

Also, on the "electronic transportation system in California" by Alice Friedman, she is talking about CAHSR which is a passenger system. The two adjacent freight railroads carry huge amounts of cargo, and can carry even more if highways are tolled and industries rebuild their disused freight rail spurs (which dot both the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles, Genetech's headquarters is built around one and another is the subject of reconstruction to alleviate freight trains congesting the Capitol Corridor). In the event ALL trucking stopped dead, a swtichover to rail would occur under five years and most people would be happy because it'd mean more space on roads for cars. Porky himself would champion this switch, because the railroads all use private cops (Pinkerton) while the highways rely on public police (the highway patrol).

Again, that would happen because California (and companies that service California like Union Pacific, Caterpillar, Bechtel and PG&E) would all happily build the state a new transportation system if automobiles proved unsatisfactory. This happens because California, like the US and the entire west, has money and competence to do such a thing. The rest of the world doesn't, and that's where an apocalypse happens. See Yemen as a current example.

Tell that to someone who studies habitats, or does any sort of environmental science. They will laugh in your face through tears of despair for humanity's future.

Why not just go full retard and deny that the climate is even changing. Ten degrees of global temperature change 'wouldn't have much of an affect'?

That's seriously one of the dumbest things that's been posted on this board today. Yet what baffles me is that you DO understand that this will destroy the global south, yet you believe burgerland will be more or less okay with just some porky bailout or some shit.

I honestly implore you to reach out to a biologist, or the environmental science department at your nearest university. Ask someone who might have a better understanding of these things than you or I, and be willing to accept the truth.

As it pertains to the US, if the inland west starts to dry out all it would do is push the government to build huge pipelines across the midwest like they did across the southwest. Water will be pumped into desalination plants. I'd obviously have a huge ecological impact, but that's of little concern to Walmart shoppers who just want soda. Hotter weather means more AC sales and more power usage, things Porky will happily provide to a demanding public.

This is not a problem for the US, but it is a problem for the rest of the world. A lot of people stand to get screwed, but if those people are outside the US nobody important will care.

Your problem is that reactionaries are like warhammer orcs, they need something to fight and if there aren't liberals to fight then they'll go after each other

I'll take the succession squabbles over industrial scale mass murder. Thank you very much.

1 million years gulag

100 MILLION YEARS GULAG

The body and tires can last a while (and soviet vehicles were built to last in the russian environment anyway) it's things like coolant systems and the engine that will probably be fucked up through decades of corrosion

you're assuming that all of those protestants, catholics, evangelicals and mormons are just going to get along and play nice over resources and territory

Wouldn't it be tropical instead of desert?

The body mostly protects the engine, though after decades of sitting in a field they need to be cleaned and refurbished. Yet it is not like a massive undertaking, for example the Dunbas rebels quickly refurbished monument tanks and pressed them into service within weeks.

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This, but with comments

Yes, humanity will push through.
The environment won't.

It's a different kind of poison.
This won't happen, you'll always the final word on your life. You will have the choice from a great variety of Google products. That's more like it's going to look like.

This is already deeply going on and it bothers me greatly.
When my friends get together sometimes they watch youtube videos, series, discuss products, etc. And amorous relationships of course.

This. People seem to revel on going to the other side of the world to see some overrated monument and then share that moment of "yeah, I was there too!" with other people. Tell a new fucking story.

It's a cute way of saying "I'm complete person and travel a lot, look at me" while trying to sound less pretencious about it by calling it an addiction instead of plain hedonism and vanity.

Capitalism will tend to monetize on every aspect of life, and social interaction of every form will be ultimately codified within the market. "Kumbaya commodified" like user said.>"travel addict"

That's some weak ass cyclical history there man

Yeah lad, about that…

Good luck with that gay farm when the capital singularity happens, buddy.

When was the last time you talked with your friends about something politicial, cultural, philosophical spiritual or existential? How much percentage of the time you spend with your friends you talk about consumer products? Asking myself these question is really scary. I have one friend who I think wants to talk about political stuff more openly, he constantly tells me how he is so annoyed about PC culture and how dumb people are politically, but the peer-bonding mechanisms in out group almost exclusively evolve arround consumerism. We extensively talk about restaurant food, TV shows and sport events. Literally everything we do is consumption, we never just "hang out". We either go the movies, go drinking, go eating, etc.

It's quite insane when you actually think about it.

I may have to move when things get bad. It's literally in the middle of nowhere though But even if I don't make it all the way through, reactionaries will still have the last laugh. People have been warned for over 200 years where this would end up.
Placing economic activity outside human control, together with the cultivation of a class of people with no economic self-sufficiency, was a disaster from the beginning.
Humanity will survive though - in one form or another.

Jesus Christ. What kind of friends do you have? You know there's a way to break this cycle right? Find a shared hobby.
Do you live in a city?

I agree with this poster, the past has shown us that it has to get a lot worse before the collapse.
Our lives are currently still somewhat compfy, at least in the west.

Would you please quote the part of the post where you believe it is suggesting that one should read Malthus… Because it seems pretty clear that the poster suggested that people should not read Malthus…

It's less about history and more about biology, really. The rest of the life on this planet appears to follow a similar pattern.

Is this not something you observe in our current world?

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I sometimes hope a group of individuals infiltrate the gov., and dissolve the infrastructure systematically. However, I feel as if the time for this has passed.

this has already occured

I have basically two groups. The fun one I'm most in touch with is the "materialistic" one, but more cynical, are open about politically incorrect topics, but it comes from a "I honestly can't give a fuck" attitude.
eg. are less PC about race, always as a joke, but also can't take it seriously and want to avoid serious discussion. No metaphysics at all. The joking cynism make them have shitty political views, bubbled.
With other group yes, buy I'm more disconected now. I still disagree so much and a lot of it feels entry level, a bit poorly thought, and weed lmao. Quite political but too idealistic. They live in a different kind of bubble and don't get what's wrong with theirs. This and the extended circle (the run a thing that keeps them in contact with a large community).
I like that they are interested in politics and social stuff, but after having this guy a bit drunk talking to me about privilege for almost an hour… They are people who I wouldn't trust in high spheres of power either.

In short: apathy or wishful ignorance
*tips fedora* I guess. I mean to meet new people, but at uni I've seen the same.

You are sorrounded by it, it's like trying not to breath smog.
Same here. I'm tired that I see no other entertainment, really. At least with the second group it's a sports group, but I'm so out of the loop now.

So both comped and comfy? Quite applies, desu

Agh, you need to get over that stuff my man.

I've come to appreciate the beauty in violence and accept it. Whatever happens to our species is its own fault.

t. american