Begin homeless will be an actually standard in Europe and USA.
Civilization will be crawling on its hands and knees, dying.
The rich will all be trying to pile into New Zealand.
America will be a warzone.
I’ll have been killed by a flash mob stealing food from vulnerable houses.
Canada will be overrun by refugees, with rampant disease and cannibalism in the camps.
The republicans in the USA will still deny climate change, saying it’s all a hoax.
The middle east and india will be uninhabitable.
Nuclear weapons use will be widespread.
The Internet won’t exist anymore.
Everyone reading this comment will be dead.
In the west and culturally, a post-boomer period will have begun. And I think there’ll be continued evaluation of what mistakes that era made especially as climate change looms as an increasingly damaging debt. In a similar vein, the relationship with capitalism and big corps is, I think, going to get messy and more polarised, in part because the mistakes we’ve made will be hard to disentangle for many.
Overall, I suspect that for many paying attention, the downfall of the west will seem more and more plausible and closer and that will create a contentious atmosphere.
Downfall of the West relative to who? The whole world is impacted by climate change and the West is best positioned to manage its effects.
Well at first glance the West seems very well suited to buffer the effects, The last decade shows that it is hyper sclerotic and unwilling to give even the most minor concessions to adapt to change. This will be US centric, but the US was kind of behind on this trend (e.g. Orban, Erdogan, the AfD, etc. came before Trump). The only way the political system can function is by expanding authoritarian repression. No matter which party is in charge we have to keep expanding the military and police to fight the boogeyman (China, Russia, Republican Fascism, Democratic Deep State, etc.) and only appeals to voters/platforms are by how we need to fight back the horrors of the other party (fascism and the end of Democracy, Woke-ism and Democrat conspiracies). This fundamentally comes from an unwillingness to improve or maintain the standard of living of most, but would rather use violence to keep the lower orders and economically superfluous in line. Ironically, the more problems that we face, the more that the political system is converging and unwilling to adapt. This means that in actual policy both parties have been converging closer to each other (Biden has not deviated from Trump’s immigration policy, and is in fact, working towards Obama’s record as Deporter in Chief, has clawed back pandemic protections and relief even from the low bar Trump set, has been funding police using federal programs and therefore more anti-BLM than Trump). But for electoral and political identity reasons, the more that both parties are far-right fascist parties aligned on policy, their rhetoric and political maneuvers have to be more polarized.
So, even though in external challenges and capacity on paper are in the West’s favor, I really think we cannot count out the institutional decay and how every political institution is hell-bent against ever adapting to changing conditions other than strengthening the police-state.
It’s the Onion, but I think this demonstrates a metaphorical truth about how Neoliberalism of the last 40 years removed any state capacity to deal with crises and changing conditions: https://www.theonion.com/something-about-the-way-society-was-exposed-as-complete-1846251067
If we wanted to, sure. I mean, we like you and me want to, but we have no say. We were also supposedly “best positioned to manage a pandemic” and just look how that turned out. I know I’m not saying anything particularly novel here, but the capitalist response to covid has been a trial balloon for the capitalist response to climate change, and the results are pretty grim. As long as there’s more profit to be made at the top by monetizing the rot, the problems will never be addressed.
I did say “overall”, it wasn’t premised entirely on climate change. My concern is that the systems of government, influence and leadership have been pretty badly corrupted. No other region or culture needs to be better for this to be true … all cultures/civilisations have periods of decay without “dying” or being conquered.
Basically the same except we’re gonna generally agree that aliens are real and not just somewhere in the abyss of space. Feel free to disagree, but that’s where I’m at after the last few months - most specifically with Schumer’s UAP Disclosure Act. Won’t be mad if I’m wrong, but it sure as hell feels like it’s coming and quick.
I think if aliens are real and on earth, our perception of reality had been fed to us and nothing is real or to be believed. Particularly science and physics. Every position of power must be held by an Android ior simulated human and we are part of some experiment. Possibly or most likely fake stimuli being fed direct into our brains.
Regardless of what has or hasn’t happened… I really want to know what the hell congress were on about when talking of “crashed UAP’s with “biologics”” - what fucking biologics? Human test pilots? Funky new biological components? Aliens?!
I hate that it’s all cloak and dagger… Just fucking spill the beans about what the hell you’re on about damn it!
So interesting to me when I see this opinion. May I ask, are you American?
I am American and feel as though I’ve seen an uptick of people feeling this way.
Yep. Grusch coming out was the moment I started thinking “hmmm” then Schumer’s amendment to the NDAA was a “Wait, you’re being serious…” moment. So, I’m pretty convinced now. Totally cool with being wrong, but I’m getting real close to falling off the fence until proven otherwise.
If it turns out that the American government managed to hide the existence for aliens and then randomly just told everyone because somebody forced them to that will be amazing.
If they’re prepared to talk about it that almost certainly means that they’re not aliens.
The US military can more or less just do whatever they want they could totally ignore demands to release information, they could just say oh that was just a classified aircraft test our pilots weren’t told about because it’s above their pay grade, and we cannot release this information for national security reasons.
I think you’re pretty close. I think it is aliens (of some kind) but if not, it also means that either my government is lying to me (par for the course) or there’s some real crazy people high up that need to go.
So, even if it’s not something beyond our current belief about life or there’s some real fuckery that needs to be dealt with swiftly.
Based on the UAP Disclosure Act, I’m feeling pretty confident it is aliens of some kind. But at the very least, it sure looks like we’re gonna get a lot more than “yes, there are things in the sky our government cannot identify”.
Either way, the last few months have been a wild ride and ive enjoyed every moment of it. But, if it’s fuckery, my congresspeople and senator are gonna be hearing a lot more from me than they already have. Personally, I’m done with being lied to about shit like Iraq and funding the war machine and it’s time to focus on the real issues at hand. I just think one of those is gonna be ayylmaos.
Ten years is really a pretty small jump. It’s not like things are wildly different today than in 2013.
In 10 years we went through a huge jump. Mass use of smart phones, new PoS systems, the internet has become overly censored, forest fires like we have never seen before, covid, powerful handhelds, AI… Things are exponential right now
Smart phones were already huge. The first Pixel came out in 2013, replacing the Nexus, the iPhone was on the 5 and 5s, and the Galaxy S4 was released.
Covid, AI, larger fires are the main things out of your examples that have changed dramatically, but I don’t think any of them have been exponential changes. For most people, covid is probably the largest, and if they did not lose anybody and are healthy themselves, the main thing that changed is potential wfh options and everything being more expensive.
Thank you. I feel like I’m talking crazy pills reading this thread.
The world wasn’t a terribly different place ten years ago. Sure, some things are more messed up now, and we have some neat new widgets. But i seriously doubt Apple Pay, the steam deck, and fancy autocorrect I mean chatGPT, have really shifted the world that much.
More people having smart phones has lead to a societal change where they’re becoming more and more necessary for everyday life, but I could still love my life without one just fine, and many of my older family members are doing just that. I think I’ve used Apple Pay like once in my life when I forgot my wallet at home, and chatGPT reminds me of talking to a dementia patient more than Skynet.
Now if the question was what the year 2053 would be like, that would be way more interesting. Back in 1993, I don’t think anyone would have accurately guessed what was going on now. Being able to browse the internet on your phone would have seemed nearly pointless and infinitely painful. The internet and internet advertising being a deciding factor in national elections would sound crazy. Electric cars being somewhat affordable and practical would sound like we live in the jetsons.
I think 2053 is gonna be wild. Hopefully I don’t die of dehydration or catastrophic weather before we get there.
Still a matter of degrees. Smart phones were 57% of the market in 2013. Not sure what point of sale system advancements in the last decade you’re talking about that are very revolutionary - we’ve certainly had online connected credit cards systems for decades. Really, all those things are pretty evolutionary in the span we’re taking about, with AI poised to be the most impactful for hasn’t been in the period.
Social media was already massive, it was just primarily Facebook and Twitter (Arab Spring heavily involved social media). The US tea party movement had been around for a few years, some people were still very jazzed up about Affordable Care Act, only part of the defense of marriage act had been overturned and lawsuits would continue for a few more years. Conservatives hated Obama and were already talking about taking their country back.
Most everything in the US is just extrapolation plus some pandemic fuel.
Climate change is worse, US politics more polarized, phones are bigger, computers are faster, etc. But if someone went to sleep in 2013 and woke up in 2023, it might take them a little bit to notice the changes.
Heat dome wasn’t a word in 2013. Fire weather meant a dry day, not a tornado forming inside of a wild fire.
