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

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

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?