Does the future look bright to you?

[Reason]

Do you think the future for humanity looks positive (however you would personally define that)?

 

[philostam]

Great thread. I voted "bad in the near term but good after a while" as it always is at the end of the long term debt cycle.

Baby Boomers created the world we're living in, and are gonna leave it in the next few decades. The changes are gonna be big and so will be the wealth transfer.

You know how it goes. Strong men create good times -> Good times create weak men -> Weak men create bad times -> Bad times create strong men.

 

[ErikAlberto]

Do you think the future for humanity looks positive (however you would personally define that)?

I think the future of humanity will have aspects of it that will be far better in many ways, but also far worse. Essentially, from a meta perspective, I don’t think the future or humanity will be better or worse. I actually have a hard time thinking of different eras of humankind as more positive or negative than each other.

I realize this will be very unpopular way of viewing things and it’s actually a bit vulnerable for me to even voice this opinion, because of how charged I know this question could easily be. Mainly because it has implications for how I interpret the past.

When I look back into history I am not able to honestly say that I see a clear better or worse, overall. I think t’s too difficult to come to a qualitative conclusion, for me. There’s too many heavy and subtle realities that potentially stack-up and weigh-in on both sides of the scale. Too many variables to take into account on both sides.

It’s obvious to me that strong arguments for either position on the fate of humanity can be made. I expect most will argue that the future of humanity will be some form of grim. (What about you, @Reason? I’m so curious.)

I think humanity’s future will be radically different. I believe it will be fraught with new and remarkable advantages and developments, alongside horrifying disadvantages and unprecedented challenges.

 

[aeon]

I said “not sure / neutral” for the simple reason that the future will subjectively be whatever one chooses, and that will vary.

As evaluated through a purposely-narrowed aperture, it will be this or that, depending. The future will not be a homogeny in any case.

As always, humans will do human things, so the abject suffering and moments of ebullience will continue.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[mintoots]

I feel like there is no future anymore.

 

[Wyote]

The future is the same as it ever was.
Which is to say, somewhat bleak with a silver lining.

Now, I post corny song.

 

[Asa]

Yes! Absolutely!



^^^ Very, very bright^^^

PS: I begrudgingly put this in orange.

 

[Reason]

(What about you, @Reason? I’m so curious.)

I tend to oscillate between bad in the short term followed by good vs a golden age. I'm leaning towards the former lately. I think we're rapidly approaching a breakdown in globalism and it's going to be particularly nasty trying to reorder everything quickly.

 

[aeon]

The combination of medium-term demographic collapse (in the producer-consumer-babies sense), severe short-term fertilizer supply shortages (with a decade-long impact) resulting from the war in Ukraine as well as tight export controls of nitrogen precursors (like potash), all-chips agricultural commoditization with attendant concerns about zoonotic outbreaks and herd decimation, as well as supplier withdrawal resulting from the retreat from globalization threaten to leave current industrializations moribund.

To say nothing of the economic policies which will grind the everyperson in an attempt to stem the coming tide.

The ways of the past will not be preserved. Today’s tide will become a deluge which will wash them away.

The people pyramid has become inverted. Inverted pyramids are not sustainable, on any level.

Buckle up, Buttercup. We’ve set ourselves up to go on the ride of rides.

The dominoes will fall, but in what order? What will be first?

I’m guessing as belts tighten, the end of supplier lines will result in widespread famine, and then war, across Africa. Swine flu and demographic collapse will rock China. Novel viral diseases will present. We are entering the end of the antibiotic age. Child labor will return, but it won’t be on the farm. Life expectancy will not change much, but median age will plummet from lack of access to medical care. Child-free will become normalized.

The future is insular, and one of profound inequality and inequity. Those cultures who mortgaged their future on the rape of the Global South will wither at the margins. The ones who burned so bright will be spent in a generation. No one to produce, no one to consume, and no future to give reason to hope.

So I’m still neutral, but given the vectors and momentums of things, as well as my penchant for imagined dystopian futures as fed by Ne, a real horrorshow of epic proportion seems not just possible, but likely.

An end of times? No. Only the end of what we knew and took for granted.

Don’t bother bringing your A-game. Because...

Love One Another,
Ian

 

[Sloe Djinn]

If we avoid self-inflicted extinction long enough to settle other planets? A little brighter in the sense that we’ll keep spreading like a tech-enslaved virus until the universe fights us off. But hey, that’s just in terms of humanity existing.

Aside from that, it will be bright, dark, beautiful, ugly, painful, and probably weird af.

 

[mintoots]

According to this post I saw the other day, this was a navigation system prototype conceived in the 1950s.


And this:


The smarty pants back then weren't so wrong. It's interesting how our predictions will work out.

Spoiler: Ngl. This one made me chuckle

 

[John K]

Do you think the future for humanity looks positive (however you would personally define that)?

Try reversing the question - do you think the past of humanity looks positive? Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't. It varied across the world in different places at any one time too.

I see the future being the same. There will be good times and there will be bad. The immediate future, over the next 100 years, will a time of great transition, as was the last 100 years, and it could end either way, with a new dark age or a springboard into greater things. The great challenge for us is whether we can live in balance or whether we can only survive by consuming what cannot be renewed. This is a great time to be alive because we stand at the end of our childhood and have to face life as an adult species for the first time. It's frightening but what a ride we are having!

Go out further, a million and ten million and a hundred million years into the future, and I see our descendants spreading across the galaxy, though they might not look much like us by then. Those too will have good times and bad because that's what life is like.

 

[Matty]

I'm looking forward to the future.

The next decade or two may involve a lot of change, perhaps even upheaval, but I see this as an opportunity for things to get better.

 

[Asa]

Realistically, the history of humankind has been up and down, so the future will likely be the same.

That said, humans are self-destructive –– prone to conflict, war, and destroying the environment we need to survive in (while having pipe dreams about leaving to find another environment.. which is a fantasy because we do not have the technology for this.)

Some changes are ultimately out of our control. For example, if the gulf stream slows too much or stops, that will trigger an ice age.

 

[Cornerstone]

I voted for bad in the near future but good after a while.

There is, I think, a desperate need to remove the profit motive from certain areas of life and I'm not sure that can happen without a period of real dystopian shit and how that will end I have no idea.

But I believe that people, as in the general mass of people, will get through it. It might not be particularly overtly violent for many people but the way out won't be found in rationalism - it will be in rediscovering what it means to be human, whatever that means...

 

[Rift Zone]

But I believe that people, as in the general mass of people, will get through it. It might not be particularly overtly violent for many people but the way out won't be found in rationalism - it will be in rediscovering what it means to be human, whatever that means...

This is what I believe. I think we're on the verge of a fundamental shift in our understanding and approach to existence. We're not meant to live in a world ran like this, and we know it.

 

[just me]

We see brightness beyond the future. No vote.

 

[just me]

Yes! Absolutely!

View attachment 90895

^^^ Very, very bright^^^

PS: I begrudgingly put this in orange.

Csar Bomba?

 

[dragulagu]

Csar Bomba?

Tzar Bomba

For the coming 10-20 years a major factor on human future would be within the biomedical field.

 

[Wyote]

Tzar Bomba

tsar, also spelled tzar or czar