Covid, WFH, Musk, The fall of Twitter, Netflix plateau, Reddit Blackout, Crippling interest rates, Trump, Decentralisation, Tech Antitrust, Ukraine
Adding in Edit: AI, Climate Crisis, Nazis, Fascism, Democratic backsliding, automation, mass unemployment, rising homelessness, wild fires
How are you feeling these days?
We sure do live in interesting times
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Not feeling optimistic, but trying to stay positive and do good in the world regardless.
Remember to use these hard times to focus on the things that really matter. Enjoy nature, have empathy for others, be kind and supportive, stand up for what’s right.
We’ll all endure, some how some way. Peace and love to y’all.
This is true. If our days are really numbered, why spend them indoors doomscrolling and musing over what-could-be scenarios when we could just be living our lives the best we can while we have the chance?
This! ❤️ Sending good vibes and love
Notice how 90% of that are rich people causing or amplifying those situations to happen?
COVID - Trump sabotage any effort made to prevent the spread and we lost 1 million people due to that.
Climate Crisis - Oil Giants/Automobile industry sabotage the public transportation which would have a long term ramification to reduce oil consumption overall.
Nazis/Fascism - Rich People fund/outright purchase mass media to create chaos in public perspectives and polarize the political parties. Koch Brothers are funding far right politic and pushing hard for nazism. And of course, don’t forget about Sinclair broadcast.
Ukraine - Putin and the Oligarch
I could go on. Almost all of the problems begin and end with the rich people. #EatTheRich
I have been trying to mention this trend to people as much as possible when they bring up issue X. A divided populace is easier to control, and here we are with various “culture war” topics constantly on the news, more and more fear mongering etc etc. But for every divisive cultural issue, there’s a group of rich people who stand to gain, in one way or another, from the division itself and the fact that it keeps us (the poor-er majority) from solving real problems.
The fact is, if we fix the wealth inequality problem we fix a lot of others, and we would also be able to focus our collective energy appropriately at the others which may not naturally fall away.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t focus on everything – but our best bet for a livable future is to start eating the rich now.
I think the Beehaw mods are on the brink of a nervous breakdown. With the influx of reddit users (like me), running the site must be like working retail on Black Friday - but it’s happening EVERY DAY.
The least we can do is donate
I’m glad to see that people have been!
welcome to the decline. join us on c/collapse
the revolution will be microblogged
I have lived through so many “once in a lifetime” category events that I’m just TIRED now. I want to have a nap.
The inherent tragedy of normalcy
What is this, We Didn’t Start The Fire?
I saw the title and thought it was going to be exciting/positive haha
Whoops! Sorry!
Maybe it will be something positive, who knows!
At least the dread of the end has encouraged me to change my tune mentally. I want to work on myself.
We could indeed be on the brink of something. The conditions are there but for what? Will we end capitalism, make a new system and try for a better world? Or will we fall into fascism once more?
Even if it’s finally the day we move on from this system that keeps threatening to collapse on itself every 6 months… it’s gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better…
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AI is going to usher in an age of workerless utopia for corporations, or at least significantly less workers. AI is computationally expensive and capital intensive, so only those with capital are going to be able to deploy it and benefit from it on a large scale. Hiring people is the bane of capitalists. Once business figures out how to use AI beyond customer support chatbots and data analysis, we’re going to see a lot of unemployed and/or unemployable people.
This argument applied to computers back when they took up entire rooms. Now we have much better ones in our pockets.
AI will get cheaper and more accessible. In other words, it will be democratized.
Now, if we are able to mix AI with robots to automate more manual tasks previously done by humans? Yeah that will cause some unemployment.
Yeah, it is kind of scary. We’re at that cusp of development which could be as big as that shift in globalization and technology was in the late 1970s…we have made so much technological progress, but little social progress, and that means we are very ill equipped to deal with the awesome power of the technology in front of us…
This sounds like a new version of We Didn’t Start the Fire
We didn’t change the weather. It was always warming since the wealth’s been hoarding.
My personal, uneducated opinion is that we are going to have a period of ever-worsening crises, mainly because climate change is nowhere near to being at max ferocity yet. But I mean, humans are great at adapting to change. Maybe once things get bad enough, once people realise just how badly we fucked up and there’s absolutely no reason to believe in the lie of capitalism anymore, humanity will rise from the ashes and things will get better. But I’m not looking forward to seeing what’s next.
edit: I don’t like exactly how this is worded. But I hope the gist of it comes across.
Yeah, it seems likely to me that humans as a species will survive through the various climate crises, but I think the question is - at what cost? A lot of the scientific research and tech developments that might help us cope with or reduce the impact of climate change seem pretty reliant on our global system of trade / supply chain, and COVID showed how fragile that system is. I worry that by the time it gets bad enough that everyone is on board with doing what we can to reduce our impact, it’ll be too late because the systems that could create those new options will not be capable of operating at the level we assume is normal today.
Grim, but not out of the question.
Like there’s an impending economic shift coming due and the powers that be are doing everything they can to try and prevent it. Unfortunately for them this is inevitable.
It think we have cycles because people remember things that happen in their lifetime but fail to adequately instil that knowledge in the next and subsequent generations. The wealth inequality of the 1920s was the catylist for much of the economic turmoil of the great depression and laid some of the context for the New Deal era. The strong rules for antitrust and managing monopolies were put in place to prevent a repeat and while the generations who lived through the great depression were dominant they survived. As those older generations died out and as the following generations grew in influence those protections were weakened and eventually mostly dismantled, resulting in massive changes from the 70s onwards. Those protections were eroded and wealth and income inequality grew until we reached and surpassed the levels of the 1920s.
I think the same happens for other things like the idea that Nazis are bad or must be resisted, or that religious ideologies should ve kept seperate from the government, or healthcare is something we can help each other to gain, or that workers can have power by working together. What I find hopeful is hearing discussion of all of these ideas in fairly accessible places and people do seem to be studying history in order to avoid repeating it.
Democratic backsliding?
Prime examples being the stuff around Brexit or Roe v Wade
Or Poland’s PiS party and their anti-democratic partisan judge nominations and the currently ongoing attempted elimination of the largest opposition party through McCarthyism.
(Verse 1)
Covid pandemic, life’s tragic,
Work From Home, no more traffic,
Elon Musk in the space race,
Twitter falling from its grace.Netflix plateau, lost its glow,
Reddit blackout, a serious blow,
Interest rates, an upward hike,
Donald Trump, another strike.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Verse 2)
Decentralisation, global reformation,
Tech Antitrust, digital conflagration,
Ukraine crisis, world’s at bay,
In this whirlwind, we lose our way.Artificial Intelligence, the next experience,
Climate crisis, deadly seriousness,
Nazis, Fascism, old fears return,
Democratic backsliding, when will we learn?(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Verse 3)
Automation, job annihilation,
Mass unemployment, rising desperation,
Homelessness in the city streets,
Wildfires burning, the heat repeats.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.(Bridge)
From the pandemic to the space frontier,
Through the crises that we all fear,
From the ashes, we’ll still rise,
In our hearts, the human spirit never dies.(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
But when we are gone, will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on…(Outro)
We didn’t start the fire,
But we hold the power, in this defining hour,
We can tame this fire,
Though we didn’t light it, we have the strength to fight it.
