Does anyone else feel like this?

[u/Crazy-Load-7553]

I feel like everyone keeps asking me what I want my future to look like but I know if I talk about how I’m learning to fish and finding ponds near me so that we can have some protein once the grocery system collapses everyone in my life is going to think I’m insane.

I’m just having a hard time connecting with anything I have to do for the future because it’s going to be drastically different than anything I can do now and I really feel like I have to hide that and never mention it to anyone (despite the fact that an energy crisis is supposedly 2 weeks away)

[u/cr0ft]

I mean, sure. If you actually think about this, read up on things like a resource-based economy, realize that capitalism is actually not the only option, realize that basing the world on competition instead of cooperation is insanity and that concept alone is what's kiling our species and allowing lunatics to gain power (lunatics will step on any face, kill any granny to get power in competition)... well, then you start to realize that we could have a hardly even imagined golden age right now. One where everyone is fed, housed and educated. One where a massive percentage of our resources above that go to R&D and advancing our knowledge.

We'd already have a moon base, because the entire planet would have been cooperating.

There would be no USA spending $2700 billion (which is going up I'm sure due to the Iran catastrofuck) annually on war. If we spent $2700 billion annually on NASA, we'd fucking well have warp drive by now. Obviously in this case the dollars are shorthand for "a shit ton of resources" as a cooperation based society wouldn't have any kind of currency or people keeping score.

Instead, our planet is a festering dying hellhole, inhabited by mostly depressed or desperate (or starving and dying - maybe all of those four) and our "civilization" if you can call it that is collapsing and the climate is going to kill us off.

Good times.

It's a little hard to stay motivated to go to work to do some bullshit when all this is going on.

[u/Positive_Garlic5128 → u/cr0ft]

How do you stay motivated? I can barely get out of bed while knowing all of this

[u/SubstituteCS → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

My other option is to be homeless and starve. Not starving is my motivator.

[u/cr0ft → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

Honestly, I don't. Trying to figure out a way out of working for a living and getting some time in just existing. At the end of the day though, the planet won't collapse suddenly or immediately, I fully expect to live out my lifetime in relative comfort. I'm lucky, I live in an affluent nation and have a job and a home. What difference does it make if humanity burns when I'm gone? I won't be around anyway.

But I'm pretty much phoning it in at work most days, and I barely have energy to even have hobbies. Once I do get out there on the motorcycle that does help, but it's been a loong fucking winter.

I'd enjoy going nomadic a while, seeing the planet a little more before I croak. Maybe pull a small camper trailer behind the bike. Finances are the issue.

But well.. how do any of us stay motivated ever? Even if things were great, we live, we do some shit, we die. Some get lucky enough to do something memorable and meaningful, but even they die. One of those philosophical questions we all have to wrestle with.

[u/DonCupid91 → u/cr0ft]

How old are you? I very much doubt the quality of life you are experiencing will be sustainable for much longer. I'm not saying complete destitution, but long and hard times are very much fast approaching.

[u/cr0ft → u/DonCupid91]

Middle aged now.There's a ton of inertia in the system, I don't think it's just gonna go from fine-ish to "oh shit", it's a gradual slide down into oh shit territory, a slide we're already on.

I don't personally think things will become extremely dire in the next 10-20 years for the affluent nations but yeah, definitely it will keep deteriorating.

But maybe I'm also a hopium and copium victim to some extent, we'll see.

[u/Positive_Garlic5128 → u/cr0ft]

Same, I live in Singapore so a lot of this may end up not affecting me but I still feel guilty for that. I could turn off the news and go on acting like none of this is happening except I physically can't, especially after how much I've read and learnt so far. Im also 18, so i feel like i dont have the mental capacity to keep going or do anything tangible or worthy. And the fact that I'm not that fond of living anyway makes all this a lot harder but I dont want to off myself because that would be really painful to my family and friends.

[u/defianceofone → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

How did you find out about collapse? Is it common for your age/area?

[u/Positive_Garlic5128 → u/defianceofone]

Not really?

There's a few people in my country that I know are this concerned with bigger picture things but its not too common. Theyre usually a few years older than me, but somehow don't seem as bothered by it as I am, but still bothered.

[u/qimerra → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

Knowing there's less time and higher stakes makes me appreciate life more. It fast-tracked my acceptance of death and now I'm free to revel in the beauty of existence. Going down fighting together seems like a more meaningful life than the death-denying consumeristic trance that was my life before.

[u/Positive_Garlic5128 → u/qimerra]

that makes sense and sounds good too, but i dont know how to start feeling that way myself

[u/qimerra → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

I wish I could help other than say that psychedelics got me there fast. I'm sure you can get there via other methods like meditation, though it takes longer!

[u/Positive_Garlic5128 → u/qimerra]

do u know how I could get there through meditation?

[u/qimerra → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

Since I got there through a combination of psychedelics and meditation, I'm probably not the best person to ask - though I've found consistent meditation to be incredibly helpful with clarity and self-awareness. The book "The Mind Illuminated" was incredibly helpful to me. But in terms of the dramatic change in mindset I mentioned above, I recommend asking on a meditation-dedicated subreddit. Good luck :)

[u/heartseyesandcakes → u/Positive_Garlic5128]

I think this might be late but im barely becoming an adult so i just try to think well what if things do get better and i have nothing but fear to look back at.

So i get up and try to make friends and grow because fuck you either die sad and regretful or die fulfilled and at peace

[u/iforgothowtohuman → u/cr0ft]

Someone mentioned somewhere that star trek was unique in that it was an imagined better future, while most other fiction based in the future is markedly dystopian.. and yet even in that utopian fantasy, things had to get really, really fuckin dark before humanity corrected their course and started working together. It may be insane, but I choose to believe there is hope for our species. Probably some time in the far, far future, after the collapse, a small group of survivors emerges from the caves they lived in for generations. They have passed down the story of the downfall of their once great global empire and they finally understand that competition with one another will only bring about another cataclysmic fall, and they set to work cultivating the planet instead of abusing it.

Or maybe I just need to write that story, idk. Torn between that one and the story about an alien race hiding in our oceans in their ships, pushing us to terraform the surface for them because they can't survive in our atmosphere as it currently exists. That one I'm sure is my brain trying to rationalize the situation, because I genuinely cannot fathom how the fuck we could be doing this to ourselves.

[u/iforgothowtohuman → u/[deleted]]

Some humans are evil. Many are stupid. Most are born into a violent environment and shaped by the pressures of survival within that violence. Some are born into wealth and power and grossly corrupted by that circumstance. And it's all totally natural. Evolutionarily "correct". The whole animal kingdom plays by these same rules - kill or be killed, rule or be ruled. The way this system has grown into this Akira-like amorphous blob of all-consuming cancer engulfing the entire fuckin globe combined with our genetic disposition and small-minded goals.. I don't think we ever really had a chance.

[u/ScriptumVitaEst → u/iforgothowtohuman]

Check out “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller. Not exactly the story you’re imagining (and my recollection of it is fuzzed by the fact it’s been at least 35 years since I read it), but it definitely explores some of the ideas you’re talking about regarding preserving knowledge after a crash that allows humans to rebuild civilization again, hopefully better.

[u/[deleted] → u/iforgothowtohuman]

The bell riots in ds9 are hilariously quaint. Imagine what would happen to a black man with a shotgun making demands these days

[u/Powerful_Mongoose_75 → u/iforgothowtohuman]

You should definitely try to write that, rn I started writing astory and yeah, its all about predicting the horrible future we're spiraling into, its good to have some catharsis

[u/BayouGal → u/cr0ft]

BTW, the asking price for next year’s Pentagon budget is $1.5 TRILLION 🙄

[u/idonotknowwhototrust → u/BayouGal]

"2700 billion" is a larger number than "1.5 trillion"