With worrying global trends like climate change, pollution, increasingly divided or radical governments, economic woes, misinformation and disinformation everywhere, dangerous health crises and so on, what do you think - how much time do we have before “it all comes crashing down”? What will end life or our way of life as we know it first?
Or do you think we’ll make it? If so, how?
Some time this century most likely. Climate change along with China/Russia’s pursuit of empire along with their global campaign to seed and normalize autocracy will result in collapse eventually.
Damn bro take it easy with the crack
The “collapse” is a cope. A non denominational version of the rapture. It being “all over” is something people dream of because oblivion also means an end to pain.
Society won’t “collapse”.
Life will just get shittier and shittier in such a slow, gradual manner that most people won’t even realise it is happening. More work for less pay, less rights and freedoms, more repression, more wars, etc.
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I think people tend to underestimate human resilience. To use the bronze age collapses as an example, sure, it brought down existing polities, the names drawn on maps changed.
But most of the cities were still there. People still lived in them. Does changing the rulers while keeping a similar paradigm ultimately matter that much? I’m reminded of accounts of the experiences of some Afghanis during the American intervention there. First they paid their taxes to the Taliban, then the govt we set up, then the Taliban again. shrug.
While supply chains could be disrupted, any time that happens it opens the door for another profitable enterprise to rise in its place. People suffer, some die, but life goes on. If the knowledge of how to build those supply chains is still around, it will be done, and swiftly.
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While most here are probably not wrong about changes that could well happen and our societies adapting to them, I can’t help but worry about food shortages.
We aren’t very far away from the point where insect populations start to collapse. If we can’t reverse that or even slow it down, food will follow quite quickly.
The implications are horrifying and even if humanity survives, it won’t be pretty.
If by about 2035 the causes aren’t controlled and the problems slowed down enough to prevent insect extinction, the following 10 - 20 years will see food decrease to levels that won’t sustain us.
After that, the decline will be so rapid and so brutal that no one will be making notes.
I hope that doesn’t happen.
Fun thing about large scale food scarcity. If you have a calorie deficit for a few months, you don’t anymore.
On a serious note. Habit destruction, warming, pollution poses a very serious risk to food stability and could very well lead to famine.
Yes, and global famine is a terrible prospect.
Personally, I’ll miss the birds.
