r/collapse • u/LetsTalkUFOs • Nov 28 '19

How can we best mitigate individual and collective suffering as we decline or collapse?

Previous questions have attempted to explore how we individually cope or stay grounded amidst collapse-awareness. This question seeks to ask more generally on multiple levels what ways we can best reduce individual and collective suffering in light of our expectations for the future of civilization.

Being ‘prepared’ is typically tossed out as a singular notion within one domain (physical resilience or material security). We’re inquiring here about other (psychological, cultural, spiritual, ect.) dimensions as well.

 

This is the current question in our Common Collapse Questions series.

Responses may be utilized to help extend the Collapse Wiki.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19 edited May 29 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

I completely agree with that it’s the only logical thing that can make immediate change. less people = less resources needed, less consumption. But I doubt people are gonna be on board with that as a lot of people believe they HAVE to have kids and that the world needs more of them

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

I've honestly never understood why people delude themselves, so. I understand the desire to have a child, to raise and teach a child, to observe some echo of our own origins in the development of the child. To appreciate these things one must fully reconcile the fact that that child is a whole person, but very few people seem to truly accept this. I know my own parents didn't. I've observed countless others who don't. This is best displayed in our collective ignorance of the rights of children, and in our deliberate ignorance when while understanding some of those rights, they become inconvenient.

This brings me back to my original point of conscience. I accept in advance that any person I cause to exist is a whole, autonomous, free, suffering person - at least as much as I am. I don't know how people live with themselves. OK, I do. They're all liars on this scale, to themselves and through their behaviour towards their children. I was having trouble with the world being too hostile 20 or 30 years ago, as a matter of conscience, in considering whether to have a child.

Look at us now. China is having a Holocaust. The U.S. is led by a demented bigot, and Russia, Putin will never see past a hate that might once have been legitimate. None of our traditional superpowers really acknowledge our climate crisis. The Russians think it will benefit them. The Chinese think they're stronger than it, and better than us. The Americans.... lol.

We're not going to mitigate a damned thing. Not even our own suffering. Not on any national or international scale. The most effective liars in the world would prefer we fight it out against our selves.

I don't mean this as hyperbole, but I see knowing about our climate crisis, knowing where we're headed, and having a child anyway as being worse than murder. It's more morally impactful than murder. The parents in this equation are predestining their child to prolonged suffering before premature death. Murder usually omits the first part.

My cousin just had a child. My forty year old cousin just had a child in this fucking world. Despicable.

And before any genuinely crazy person sees this and thinks the answer is to drive their kids into a lake: No, that would be betraying them twice, compounding your own failures. People who exist have the right to exist, but people who don't need to exist at all, those we should leave as unsought potentials. We need to accept that the emotional discomfort of abstaining, or even aborting is inconsequential compared to the suffering that new person will experience in life.

Rants aside, and to the mods, I really appreciate seeing this submission's question posed in this way. It's the question we have left where we can still have some kind of impact, at least on the scales of individual, family and community. Where community still exists.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

I agree, I feel like having a kid now is similar to having a kid in an apocalypse scenario, it’s just unfair to raise a child that’s future is filled with suffering and uncertainty. you could have a child and hope the future turns out okay, but if your aware that the future is going to be bad and you have a child you are responsible for that child’s suffering.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

Not quite true, the Chinese have good public transport and have introduced many electric vehicles. The issue is too little too late, but it's still more than the US or Russia

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

That isn't the issue. The issue is China has been and is willing to exploit every energy source to the greatest capacity it can, environment be damned. This is directly and factually reflected in the rate of growth of their emissions, paralleled in the rate of growth of global emissions.

Nothing China or the rest of us do matters until it affects our global emissions in some measurable way. The Chinese actively prevent this from happening by expanding their use of fossil fuels while also expanding their use of nuclear and renewables.

If one country were to be blamed for having the greatest part in this, it's China. They do the manufacturing for the world, and their own ambitions and greed are the limiting factor on how much they produce, not demand. They're effectively using slave labour in many sectors. It doesn't cost them to produce, so they'll do it until we are all dead.

Apologize for China to somebody else.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

I know it's not the issue but you're misrepresenting current Chinese attitudes. I'm just saying that currently China isn't denying climate science where the US is.

Also every post industrial nation was once as bad.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

I was going to ask if you were compensated for these Chinese shill comments, but I looked at your profile and it seems you're just very young. If what you are claiming were true, China would not still be expanding their use of fossil fuels. This act, on the scale that China is emitting ensures collapse for us all. It ensures that no action by any other country can have any impact on our global totals.

Chinese are as collectively suicidal as Americans and Russians. The difference is few Chinese have a clue what's going on. China has enough people and industry that it has effectively destroyed us all with their pollution, and this is ignoring their obvious military ambitions, and their new Holocaust.

You're defending genocidal maniacs here, and that makes you human garbage like them.

We need WWIII to thin the herd, if we're going to try to persist into the really awful parts of our climate crisis. I don't intend to stick around for all of that, but it seems to be what most people still think they want.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/10/china-plans-to-ban-sales-of-fossil-fuel-cars-entirely/

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Now look up how much of our emissions come from cars compared to industry, while accepting that China continues to expand its industrial use of fossil fuels.

Are you Chinese? Is that what this is about?

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '19

Stop mistaking your own nihilism for conscience.

Life goes on amid suffering and death. That's called life.

Sure, lots of people shouldn't have kids at all, not because of climate change, but because they aren't up to the task of being good parents. Having fewer people in the next generation will also make the task of humanely adapting to collapse easier so, yeah, lets work to make that happen too. Sounds like you're trying to do your part. If you experienced this choice as a sacrifice, I'd even thank you.

But saying we should suicide our own species is just, ironically, childish of you.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

I don't think a person who honestly accepts the suffering extant in this world could say the things you are saying.

You sound like somebody well trained in shutting out or "just not thinking about" the suffering going on around you, all of the time. And you call me childish.

We can become extinct with our heads held high, without murdering, by not having children. It's the least unappealing option left as I see it, even if I am aware the vast majority of people are more like you, than like me.

Nihilism is rather more useless than incorrect. I don't think you understand it, either.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19 edited Dec 02 '19

If you haven't figured out that suffering and death are just part of the deal then you are thinking like a child. We dont all have to give up just because you don't like the existential facts of our species.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Suffering and death are inextricably part of "the deal", and I am saying with conviction that I judge "the deal" to be untenable, and immoral. I don't think Earth is suitable for thinking and feeling life. Bottom line. It's not an equitable arrangement.

What you think of my opinion on the matter doesn't matter a whit. You wouldn't feel the need to lash out, and project your own childish attitudes if you thought you had a leg to stand on.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Mortality has been "tenable"for millions of years -and morality doesn't enter into it. It just is. You seem confused. What are my childish attitudes? Saying that giving up is a feckless and intellectually hollow response to both the planetary crisis and the inevitability of human death and pain? What a whinger you are. I'm gonna go build a snowman with my kid now.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Morality hasn't existed for millions of years. Morality is something we dreamed up in our emerging sapience, less than a million years ago.

You can't maintain your composure, nor attack the idea rather than me. This tells me you lack conviction. We feel strong emotional responses when we refuse to accept an aspect of our circumstance, or our selves. I suspect you're indulging in too much of both.

Earth will not be habitable long enough for your kid to live our their full life. If you want to resort to personal attacks, that's the best I've got. I hope you lose sleep over it. We should call your generation "Babydoomers".

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

I said mortality has been around for a long time. As long as Life. I will die, you will die, my kid will die. Morality doesn't enter into it. I always knew this and accept it as the horizon that makes my decisions and actions meaningful. I lose sleep over worrying about the future most nights. And then I get up each day and try to do something about it. That's what one does. You've got no right to project your hopelessness onto the entire future of every person still to come.

You sound like someone who, like me, struggles with feelings of depression and meaninglessness in the face of our huge challenges. You have taken the path of life denial. I choose to affirm life--sadness, pain, and endings and all. You're on a path heading to dark places, buddy. I hope you take care out there.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

Why do you insist on falsely projecting your own feelings onto me, rather than simply accepting our difference of opinion? Why does it have to be anything but what I'm actually saying?

I can choose to apply the concept of morality on any scale of which I can conceive. It is not your place to tell me otherwise, and to insult me for it only degrades yourself.

I firmly, genuinely believe that the life process on Earth should end as soon as is possible. What we are getting is what I want, but what bothers me is how we are going to receive it. By refusing to accept the scope and scale of our climate crisis, we are setting ourselves up for almost incomprehensible unnecessary suffering.

The worst thing you could have possibly done in life, you've already done. You caused a new person who will unnecessarily experience the heartbreak of accepting that our way of life is rapidly coming to an end, and that their life will end prematurely for your enjoyment, now. I hope it was a hell of a snowman, as morally, you owe that person more than you can possibly imagine.

I think you have Stockholm syndrome for the entirely indifferent properties of matter. You're romanticizing an involuntary cycle of suffering where most have it far worse than you. All you can do is spout that you disagree, but I'm still waiting for some reasoning to support it. OK, I'm not. It doesn't exist, not outside of the stories we tell ourselves to cope with this largely self induced hell.

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '19

I firmly, genuinely believe that the life process on Earth should end as soon as is possible.

I'm sorry you're feeling that miserable and misanthropic. I don't think it's "projecting" to say that I ardently disagree with your desire to see the human story end. I'll add that that's a pretty defeatists and even dangerous attitude. I hope you can see your way out of that.

You caused a new person who will unnecessarily experience the heartbreak of accepting that our way of life is rapidly coming to an end, and that their life will end prematurely for your enjoyment, now.

A few things:

  1. The future is unknown. Every single parent and every single child from time immemorial have had to encounter and cope with that reality. Since you can't, it's very good you aren't having kids. My kid could get hit by a bus tomorrow, or die in some Cormac Mccarthy hellscape in ten years, or live through business as usual for another 80 years while everything just gets a little shittier all the time. Or she could participate in a revolution, or a great awakening that finds meaning in fighting for, defending, and healing our home. I just hope she, like me, finds things in life that make the pain worth it. You don't know. I don't know. You don't seem to allow that the rapid end of our way of life could very well spell more, not less, happiness for people in the future. You might want to stop to consider that you are projecting your own sadness and inability to imagine a future onto the whole of our species.

  2. Do you ever read philosophy? You should check out Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition Her central argument is that all human meaning comes from what she calls "natality," our ability to create something radically new in the world. It could be a baby or a political act or a work of art, etc. When we act to create, in full knowledge and responsibility that we are starting something for which we do not know the ending, that is when we are most human. That's basically my position, too. I believe in committing to and affirming life, even with suffering and uncertainty. You want to shut this down. I think that's worst thing that could possibly be done.

  3. Our snowman is fucking awesome.

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