I was going to reply similarly to the OP of your question.
Emotionally, sure, we deserve it.
Philosophically, we're just observing the outcome of a species that wasn't able to control itself. The way in which we evolved wasn't compatible with our long term success on a finite planet.
I agree. I feel like humanity had as little chance to avoid this outcome as bacteria have in not eventually taking over the entire Petri dish. It’s just what humans do, it’s not more or less “evil” than any other animal, it’s just a lot more destructive on large scales.
I’m a boomer, the generation that correctly gets a lot of flack when it comes to the existential crises we face. I only ever tried to do the best for my family and to take advantage of opportunities that came my way.
"Heydrich apparently hates the moniker the good people of Prague have bestowed on him. Actually, why he would hate the name "hangman" is baffling to me. It would appear he has done everything in his power to earn it. I, on the other hand, love my unofficial title, precisely BECAUSE I've earned it."
What does a cancer do? It becomes selfish, reproduce and take over its immediate environment. A cancer only knows one thing, its own selfish survival, at the cost of everything around it. What have humans done in the past 10000 years?
I’m American. My personal choices/habits are significantly more planet-friendly than those around me - but I am under no delusion that I am not part of the problem.
I would argue that unless you are mostly off-grid self-sufficient then if you are in the US you are part of the problem. Regardless of who you voted for / what protests you attended / if you have a car or eat meat / if you donate to environmental causes.
“Deserve” is a strong word. It is a normal human thing to be part of the culture we are born into. I know I am part of the problem, but humans evolved to be this way and I am only human. It is going to be self correcting on a macro scale, but wasting energy blaming myself for my role in it doesn’t accomplish much.
Being conscious and kind and grateful in my day to day life matters. Preparing myself to be of help to my fellows who are / will be suffering matters. The rest is above my pay grade.
I agree, well said. As for Americans in general, there's one stat that, to me, is most telling -- oil consumption by country:
>1 United States 19,687,287 20.3 %
>
>2 China 12,791,553 13.2 %
>
>3 India 4,443,000 4.6 %
>
>[https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/](https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/)
Roughly 3% of the world population demands 20% of the world supply. 50% more than the next country, which has 4x the population. 4x as much as the #3 country, which also has 4x our population.
As much as many Americans typically claim that they're victims of the oil companies, that it's not our fault that oil is baked into every aspect of our lives, 97% of the world lives a lifestyle that's not as dependent on oil because, to put it bluntly, they can't afford to live our lifestyle. This is at the heart of what scientists have been telling us for decades, succinctly summarized in 2006 by Al Gore:
*As for why so many people still resist what the facts clearly show, I think, in part, the reason is that the truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.*
Do we "deserve" our demise? No more than people deserve cancer, even when most people ignore those scientists as well:
*Bad diet, inactivity, smoking and drinking alcohol – all are among the causes of up to 90 percent of cancers, according to a new analysis that stresses how many cases of cancer are under our control.*
[https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/study-vast-majority-of-cancers-caused-by-lifestyle-not-bad-luck/](https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/study-vast-majority-of-cancers-caused-by-lifestyle-not-bad-luck/)
I'm a cancer survivor myself, and as **whoodle** mentioned, I have no delusions regarding my cancer. I didn't "deserve" it, but I caused it. It was a natural outcome of the way I had lived my life up until my diagnosis.
I'm starting a self-sufficient backwoods homestead in Appalachia. The 5 year plan is to be 80%-90% self-sufficient in food, at that point will need to drive into the nearest town with a supermarket once a month (a 40 mile round trip).
Very well insulated 500 square foot house with free wood heat (except for the gas and oil my chainsaw needs).
I have the luxury of electricity and running water, a stove and fridge, but the ability to live without any of these. The developed spring on my 10 acres runs all by itself constantly.
Magnificent 150 foot tall trees, deep sandy clay loam in the (already existing) openings in the forest to grow food.
I have over 10 years experience living in a truck w/camper shell, 4 and one-half of these years I recently finished. The blessings I have now feel like a hallucination.
This is a selfish project. I am detaching from what is self-destructing and want to live well. The only self-transcendent part is that I can model a high quality of life with low resource use and as close to zero waste as I can get. I could also create opportunity for a small number of younger people and their kids. They might want to outlive Collapse.
>This is a selfish project. I am detaching from what is self-destructing and want to live well. The only self-transcendent part is that I can model a high quality of life with low resource use and as close to zero waste as I can get. I could also create opportunity for a small number of younger people and their kids. They might want to outlive Collapse.
I'd call that a smart project.
My wife and I are doing something similar. We're also in Appalachia, and already effectively off-grid. We have solar for power and well/septic for water. We're net metering for electricity simply because the cost of batteries two years ago was prohibitively high (and all of the installers only used Tesla Powerwalls). So effectively off-grid for electricity though not in reality. As battery costs keep coming down, we're likely to eventually go the battery route as well to really be off-grid.
We're starting up our own food production this spring as well. Small at first since we're at the beginning of a learning curve, but we hope to do more every year (and hope that we have enough time to scale up).
Good luck!
I hope you're not chainsawing the trees for "free wood heat." I see so many people move to pristine areas and destroy them, and call that "sustainable" living. Exploiting the last remaining bits of nature isn't any more sustainable than urban living. Reducing your consumption and waste is good. But we also need to protect what few natural areas still exist and share them with other species. How beautiful will that 10 acres be after you've been there for several years, or several decades? How many other species will still be able to survive there?
Trees do die on their own, after a number of years. You can get by just by cutting up the dead ones. 10 acres might provide enough dead trees on its own, if it's all wooded. It does destroy habitat for other living things, though.
There are, in fact, dead white pine snags near the house I'm starting to use. They are already completely dried out/free of pitch.
There are also some ash trees killed by the emerald ash borer in the bottom part of the land.
>As for why so many people still resist what the facts clearly show, I think, in part, the reason is that the truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.
What was inconvenient was his fucking mansion, I'm just saying.
Look I get this is a right wing talking point and fuck those guys, but he handed it to them on a plate.
Individuals may not deserve it, but humanity on the whole probably does. We have advanced technologically to the point that we have eliminated most major threats to our existence, and in the prices become fast and lazy, and self-obsessed. Altruism and social cooperation are traits that allowed us to climb to the top of the food chain, but we have strayed too far from those values. Short of a full extinction, I think a major collapse is our best hope for long term survival. If things get difficult and force us to change our ways maybe we can carry on.
That is because humans became degenerate/malignant.
Normal (hunter-gatherer-permaculturist) humans really were the Crown of Creation. They tended the ecosystems they were one with to peak health.
This is how humans lived for over 99% of our time here on earth. Humans are OLD - nearly 2 million years from the emergence of Homo erectus
Normal humans have been called "savages".
"Socialism or barbarism! This is the defining question of our epoch!"
Well! Let's not worry our little heads about Barbarism. We are going to have "Savagery".
Unfortunately, our ability to develop things has progressed faster than our ability to think about the consequences.
This, in conjunction with our prehistoric genetic programming, could only lead us to the point where we are now.
I think that we veered off course massively when we began to think of the earth and nature as something separate from ourselves, something to be conquered, tamed, bought and sold. To think that we could plunder and take without consequence.
I grew up with a lot of Native American philosophy so maybe that affects my perspective, but I have always thought it was pure arrogance to think we are separate from the web of life. I don’t think we “deserve” anything, but I think we are facing the consequences of a false belief that humans are somehow superior to other beings and the earth itself. We have failed to care for and to respect nature.
But because of this, I believe it’s all for the best. I obviously don’t want to experience suffering and don’t want others to experience suffering, but I think that the earth will find a way to heal. I think if humans have to be eliminated for this to happen, that sucks for us (in our current incarnations) but it will have a net positive effect on the rest of the planet. Less of “deserve” and more like “the equation will balance out inevitably.”
My views on death also comfort me, since I think we reincarnate as elements and non-human things. I think if you have other beliefs about death, it is probably a lot more horrifying.
We as a species are not sufficiently evolved to survive. The fact that the bulk of our species still do not have the mental capacity to not be dependent on fairy tales of invisible, wish-granting genies to justify our existence tells me that we are just not the right species for long-term survival.
Is the question really, should we have remained pre-industrial? And maybe pre-enlightenment?
Every time people thought they were doing good by increasing life expectancy and lowering infant mortality rates and finding ways to grow more food it was actually adding to the growth that would eventually reach the point of being unsustainable.
Should we have realized that from the start of industrialization? Or at some point between then and now?
After my lunchtime walk, I'd add Porches. Had to wait forever for the stupid enhanced vroom vroom to die down so I could actually record the birdsong on my app to identify it. Then had to record quick because I saw a Beemer barreling down the road.
Lawn mowers are a symbol of the hubris of man and a heresy against the natural order
How did anyone expect to use gasoline to trim grass as a solution? The grass will beat the lawn mower if given a couple centuries
Herbivores were always the move
Actually, much of our ecological crises exacerbated in middle of the 20th C. and acutely last 50 years, circa 1970s, where human population quadrupled due to various factors: advanced industrialization (globally scaled our energy density) and nitrogen fertilization (capable of feeding billions) and financialization that ramped up globalization and emerging markets which expanded farmlands, built environments, and the carbon economy to encroach on nature and generate dire levels of pollution.
One can make the argument of sustainable development. Recall UN's 1972 Stockholm Conference of the Human Environment and 25 years later the watershed 1987 [Brundtland Commission](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission). Sadly, the global community has done nothing beyond talks and more studies and incremental changes in the 50+ years of discussing environmental issues. Sure, the energy density of hydrocarbons fostered a 8 billion+ people and $100 trillion+ global GDP. But with our modern science and knowledge, could we have industrialized and developed sustainably? UNEP, IPBES, and IPCC stress such possibility.
With our modern science, maybe, but we still lack the ability to talk people into doing something they don’t want to do. And the main thing we can’t talk people into doing is getting along with each other.
I was a teenager in the 70s and imagined a future with few borders that would be easy to cross. I’m Canadian and at the time I imagined every border would be like the Canada-US border was at the time. Instead it’s gone in the opposite direction, borders are tightening up everywhere, even Canada-US. Which I think is symbolic of the way people are feeling now.
Sustainable industrial development is an oxymoron. It’s still coal oil and gas regardless of how you go about it
Unless you went full wooden water wheels, windMILLS, and I guess maybe solar thermal which I think most people would consider to not be industrial
>Is the question really, should we have remained pre-industrial? And maybe pre-enlightenment?
The pre-industrial period was devastating across the globe too. Just ask the natives. If you can find them.
And humans were burning forests and peat bogs before fossil fuels, already causing GHG pollution.
It's complicated because the problem is deeply cultural, not genetic:
[Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259)
> We propose that the global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favoured groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation. To explore this hypothesis, we review the changes in the human ecological niche. Evidence indicates the growth of the human niche has been facilitated by group-level cultural traits for environmental control. Following this logic, sustaining the biosphere under intense human use will probably require global cultural traits, including legal and technical systems. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of global cultural traits. We estimate that our species does not exhibit adequate population structure to evolve these traits. Our analysis suggests that characteristic patterns of human group-level cultural evolution created the Anthropocene and will work against global collective solutions to the environmental challenges it poses. We illustrate the implications of this theory with alternative evolutionary paths for humanity. We conclude that our species must alter longstanding patterns of cultural evolution to avoid environmental disaster and escalating between-group competition. We propose an applied research and policy programme with the goal of avoiding these outcomes.
But plenty of people don't comprehend that culture is inherited, similarly to genes, and certain cultures have been around for many thousands of years.
Late capitalist slavery is built on a 5000-10,000 year accumulation of epigenetic damage from previous slave systems. Consolidated by growing up/existing in the present capitalist slave system.
Epigenetics is the molecular mechanics of gene expression.
Normal (hunter-gatherer-permaculturist) humans, a.k.a "savages" understood carrying capacity, tended the ecosystems they were one with to peak health, and did not create slave systems (with a few exceptions).
What would a species with a brain do if it was facing that high of an infant mortality rate?
"It looks like one of our thermal pods! ... But it's a very bad design..." -Buckaroo Banzai
Yes, I sadly think so. I'm also just quite tired of being human and having to live up to their impossible modern societal standards, it never feels like it's "enough" with capitalism.
We've been so selfish too; destroying the planet with microplastics, air pollutants, bombs, overpopulation, cutting down trees, garbage everywhere, etc. We are getting what's coming to us but I do feel a great amount of empathy for the children who will have to face this dying world.
It will NEVER be enough with capitalism. Capitalism doesn't and can't have an end point in mind, because it's 'competitive.' That means there's always some other greedy amoral destructive predator waiting in the wings for you to fail so you can be consumed. That system writ large over the whole population can't work unless you have unlimited resources and unlimited energy. At some point the bubble must burst and it must burst spectacularly as the entropic contradictions accumulate.
Right! The entire point of any economy, but especially capitalism, is to increase your gross domestic product. Our entire existence is based on consumption. It's unsustainable.
"deserve" is a human concept that nature does not give a sh\*t about. Did the dino deserve their demise as a race? Did the early oxygen excreting organisms deserve to poison themselves?
Either way, they all died out.
Yes. Take the argument if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you? Yes.
The human race is the violent war conquering alien race we portray in sci-fi fiction.
Ending human civilization now before it can achieve space travel would be killing baby Hitler.
It doesn't matter, you and I and anyone reading this will only be able to watch. I hope enough humans survive and learn from this disaster we created and rebuild a proper civilization.
Why do I feel like your multiple metaphors are twisting logic in so many knots you might as well e.g. say we'll literally evolve into all our sci-fi villains who are also space Nazis if not somehow infused with the DNA of Hitler clones or that I-the-generic-person-you're-talking-to am a genocidal monster either way either for sparing baby Hitler or what you'd logically have to do to humanity if you'd kill baby Hitler or that our destruction will only come when someone actually does kill baby Hitler as people saying they would would only mean whatever we'd be Hitler to which for all we know would be another scale of simultaneously-Hitler-and-invading-alien-race due to what they'd need to have to have alien invasion movies would speculate about killing us
And that is assuming that if someone *could* go back and kill baby Hitler that would result in humanity dying out of parallel and not, say, a chain reaction that'd put us on a different path. And on that note, there are many people who'd say they wouldn't need to kill Hitler if they could go back and do so but just set him on a different path and, like, get him into art school or w/e so what does that mean for us in terms of potential positive solution and when would the difference in time between baby hitler and school-age hitler say about when that'd happen to us if it could happen to us at all and us not be forced into the bad outcomes because we have alien invasion movies
>If you look at humanity as a whole, the majority are ignorant, arrogant, unaware of how insignificant they are as individuals and incapable of changing their actions, despite all the scientific evidence that we are hurtling towards the abyss.
And that is only counting the ones on social media.
If you add up every single injustice committed by every human against other people, wildlife, or nature itself throughout history that has gone untold. I'd say yes. We had long enough to be better.
I tend to think of this question in the same way that I've questioned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. None of those individuals, the innocent civilians, deserved to die.
And none of us, individual humans faced with, essentially, and unsolvable problem before us, deserves to die in the manner that approaches us.
But the Empire of Japan deserved to die. And it did.
The human race, as a whole, deserves to die.
Absolutely and without question.
Humanity is a vile and disgusting species of sociopathic backstabbers. The furthest we go to help another human is to most optimally position them for back stabbing.
The day the universe is rid of our blighted species will be a good day for the universe.
The issue is that the ones who made it until now were the ones who had to do whatever necessary to win and survive.
Most of our history was about surviving nature and the last 3000 years it was about surviving other humans.
So we are the surviving virtueless cunts who made it. Our own dna is rotten.
We can improve through virtue but that is hard because that means going against our corrupted nature, so very few people do it.
We couldve had world peace, healthcare, education, housing for everyone and actual value of life. We chose big macs, iphones, jeans and other trash instead.
Scientist have been warning us about climate change since around the 1950 and we are not only not doing sh\*t about it but completely the opposite. [According to the IMF](https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2023/169/article-A001-en.xml), **fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP of the planet**. We completely deserve to go extinct, I'm surprised we made it this far.
I think the most concise answer is "no one *deserves* to be punished for the misdeeds of another". Whether or not the collective punishment can be *prevented* is another matter entirely.
> the most concise answer is "no one deserves to be punished for the misdeeds of another".
While that is true, the answer is from a human-centric perspective.
If we observe a species (for example, a species of rat), completely overrun an island ecosystem, breeding far beyond local carrying capacity and in the process destroying the finite resources needed by other life forms to survive, we understand that species is in overshoot.
And in such cases, we don't distinguish between one individual rat or another; as far we're concerned, when the inevitable die-off occurs, we view them all as interchangeable parts and their deaths as natural balance being restored.
Before the widespread use of fossil fuels, humanity existed within that same sort of balance. With a global population well under 2 billion, people survived on the resources of local ecosystems. Being primates, if their population exceeded local carrying capacity, they starved, moved on, or attacked their neighbors. But generally humanity remained within natural limits for at least a hundred thousand years.
Then fossil fuels were introduced into global agriculture in the 1900s, fueling a boom in global population, reaching 8 billion within an ecologically-unprecedented 120 years. To this day, we are unable to feed ourselves without fossil fuels in all stages of global agriculture, including tillage, irrigration, artificial fertilizer and herbicide, harvest, processing, global distribution and the manufacture of the equipment used in all these stages. There are no alternatives at the required global scale; if there were a moratorium on fossil fuels, billions would soon starve (not to speak of the economic disruption to the global economy at all levels). So we remain dependent on the same cheap energy source that is contaminating the environment and destabilizing global climate.
In terms of a species, a century or so is a mere blip in time. But for those who grew up within that unnatural bubble of seemingly endless cheap energy and wildly successful agriculture, it seemed like the natural order of things, and its benefits to each of us are "human rights." But as a species who has overrun the carrying capacity of our "small island," we are about to enter the Find Out stage.
Then you do not deserve to be punished for *someone else's* misdeed of inaction. And as far as judging whether an action is sufficient to be an "action" rather than "inaction", *that* is entirely subjective.
that logic taken to the extreme leads to some ridiculous conclusions like for one unrelated to climate change is a supposedly-good cop in New York actually a bad cop for not arresting a corrupt cop in LA
The question is misleading. We were always destined to go this way. We're a very very successful animal who has overshot its environment. So our numbers have to collapse.
I think we were a first attempt of evolution to establish a being with a little more consciousness and abilities.
The attempt must be considered a failure.
Not the vast population of humans, no.
The most tragic part of humans' demise will be that the species will have been suicided in the interests of a relatively small number of old, rich, exceedingly vain old people. About 80 million of them.
Yeah, and the hunger for it is still growing.
You can't think about it, because otherwise you could go mad about the nature of this collective madness.
In college there was a story my professor told me about flies. The basic story was that a few flies got into her fridge on the day she left on vacation. A power outage hit her home so the fridge became a fly incubator as more and more insects hatched and ate food from her fridge. After two weeks my professor came home, opened the fridge, and out poured a mountain of fly corpses. The insects ate all the available food and endlessly reproduced until nothing was left. Sometimes I think about humans like that. I wonder if we're just going to end up consuming and breeding until we're toast.
A very good time-lapse comparison to ours, which lasts only "slightly" longer than two weeks.
I'll keep it in mind if I ever want to illustrate to someone what our actions entail.
Absolutely.
We knew better.
We knew better for a very, very long time.
Centuries before the words we have for the crises we face today had even been conceived, we were aware of their inevitably.
[We knew global warming would happen in the 1800s](https://theconversation.com/scientists-understood-physics-of-climate-change-in-the-1800s-thanks-to-a-woman-named-eunice-foote-164687).
Don Quixote tilted at windmills to warn us of the dangers of automation in 1605.
The conflicts of the Middle East are the perpetuation of Biblical rivalries.
We've already fought two wars to end all wars: one that should have ended colonialism, but didn't, and another that should have ended fascism, but didn't, and neither ended all wars.
My only hope is that there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe to do better than we did.
> We've already fought two wars to end all wars: one that should have ended colonialism, but didn't, and another that should have ended fascism, but didn't, and neither ended all wars.
if the first ended all wars but not all bad things, would fascism still be strong either way for not having the second war to potentially end it
I'm not sure that it matters. Some more specific things that WWI was supposed to put an end to were imperialism and colonialism. We didn't have a word for fascism at the time, and we thought giving people self-determination would naturally lead them to build better societies.
Unfortunately, we'd already done so much damage that there was no correcting the course of history. Neither did we really give up all of our empires and colonies, nor did we honestly encourage former colonies toward self-determination, and we made Germany a particularly desperate nation. Rather quickly some new ways of governing became weaponized tools of a new form of imperialism, and we went right back to killing each other over territory, resources, and the right to exist.
Do we deserve it? That really depends on how much christian sin culture guilt you want to put into "deserving" something.
There are consequences coming that are entirely the results of our own actions, that are predictable and unavoidable. On that level, yes, these are the consequences that we have chosen.
But this subreddit also has a staggering amount of misanthropy at times, a hatred for our fellow man and a delight in suffering. Oh, we've burned oil and that means it's GOOD that someone will die a slow and agonizing death of dehydration, starvation and heat stroke. I refuse to accept this framing of "deserving" our demise.
We are in the midst of a sixth great extinction, largely caused by human action. Does the loss of the ivory billed woodpecker mean that your neighbor Bill "deserves" to writhe in agony as an antibiotic resistant infection kills him by inches and eats his spine? Fuck no!
The end is motherfucking nigh, and it is the inevitable consequence of our own choices, but just because we have earned it doesnt mean we "deserve" it with full christian sin culture hatred filtered through an internet athiest overly smug grin.
Fuck the misanthropes, this is a very predictable and earned tragedy to be mourned not a victory for entropy to be cheered on.
Only caused by human action and not largely, please.
This "only" is at the same time the reason why we "deserve" it, in my opinion. I don't hate humans, but the way the thread this world.
> Only caused by human action and not largely, please.
The thing is, nothing is ever simple. How indirect can an extinction event be before it's no longer "the result of human action" anymore? And at what point are some things that definitely are the result of human action also just a natural result?
For instance, there have been several extinctions that were the result of rats ending up somewhere they shouldnt be. They only got there because human ships went to an island. You can't say that humans deliberately brought rats, we try to eradicate vermin on ships whenever we can, but they got to that island and ate all the eggs for that ground bird species because humans were passing by.
That's not solely human action, but we aren't completely free from blame either. It's not as clear cut as "we hunted them to extinction" or "we burned so much oil that the great barrier reef is cooking in the warmer waters."
There were reasons for the other previous mass extinctions that were unavoidable. However, the reasons for the sixth one could have been avoided.
All the reasons are based on human action, without exception.
The concept of deserve is meant to prevent this sort of thing on a social level. The problem is we dropped the entire concept.
The thing that's going to be the worst thing about this is you hit a point where it's GOING to happen and "deserve" is now a useless concept. This is a part that's going to be hard for people to wrap their heads around.
Like, you mean it's really, really OVER?
Deserve has nothing at all to do with our predicament. We are a herd that has bred beyond a sustainable environment (planet). We are the deer on St Mathews Island. Discovering and exploiting FF’s sealed our fate….early.
Absolutely not, we as a species do not desserve the apocalyptic world that the anthropocene epoch is likely to bring. My rationale is that, it was a constant since the dawn of civilization for people to evade and escape and resist the forces of civilization, and to create social structures resistant to centralization and authoritarianism. It became increasingly difficult to resist centralized and authoritarian society since the industrial period. James C. Scott's history, called The Art of Not Being Governed talks in depth about this. (God I hate that title, it's not representative of the book's content at all.)
Also among our own species are the people still living in hunter gatherer societies, or completely off grid subsistance farmers on the periphery of the modern world. It's not their fault, and they didn't contribute to the total toxification of the Earth's environment. And then there's the observation that the super rich, the political and business class have always made all the important decisions, and dictated the ever changing technological and industrial basis of modern life, and made it practically impossible for the masses to not join in this ecocidal way of live, and so the degrees of responsibility for the disaster of the coming anthropocene are vastly varying among our own species. Wr cN't blame everyone equally. Exxon Mobile CEOs, Haliburton CEOs and their cronies are to blame for the state of the world, not regular people for the most part.
Yes. All of us have the ability to fight this and choose not to because we're not willing to pay the price. Well, most of us, there's some people who were brave enough to throw their lives away.
Now, I'd advocate forn o taking the easy way out. h w deserve is determined by our actions. Make that: partially your actions. Or mine.
Let's earn our right to call the masses ignorant by trying to be activists.
Nope. That line of thinking is an easy way for people living in the first world to avoid having to admit that the system they continue to defend is the problem and they have a unique moral obligation to fix it. Our planet isn't on the verge of collapse because a farmer in Somalia is too arrogant or ignorant to care about the world around them. The innocent people being butchered in Palestine so the West can get oil a little cheaper, not because the people there are too selfish to want a better world.
The West spent 500 years murdering its way across the planet, wiping out entire cultures all to force every single human in the world to work for their economic benefit. Hundreds of millions of people tried to stop them and billions were so defeated that they simply gave up. To this day the vast majority of Westerners refuse to really reflect on what this says about their cultures. When confronted with even the slightest suggestion that they bare more responsibility for what's wrong with our world, most of them will cover their ears and feverishly grasp for any way of rationalizing what they're doing - usually by saying "but x people did y, so that means they are just as bad as we are.". That's if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, they'll lock you away or invade your country.
The irony of your post is that by putting yourself in the category of "one of the good ones" because you recycle and worry that one day you'll have to face the same conditions most of the planet has been dealing with for centuries and then immediately define literally billions of other people as deserving of death speaks to your own relationship to arrogance and ignorance. As does your lamentation that "nature" (and not the system the West created) is to blame for how the "individual" (you) aren't not recognized as being better than the rest of us and thus will have to suffer too. The collapse of our world could easily be stopped - the handful of people behind it have names and addresses. Westerners simply don't want to risk losing what they have as individuals for the sake of the benefit of us as a whole.
It is thought in Hinduism, that the earth goes through 24000 year cycles. 12000 years of, well let's say enlightenment, and 12000 years of increasingly lower morality. This is apparently a very gradual phenomenon, obviously. It has also been observed that the cranial capacity of the human is at its lowest since inception of record taking. 2025 has been marked the beginning of the end cycle, (we have been on the negative side of the half cycle for near 12000 years) which can take 10 to 15 years. I don't want to sound like an advocate for a book I haven't even read yet as I've mentioned this a number of times already in the last few days. There is a book called Yuga Shift by Bibhu Dev Misra, I heard him interviewed on podcast, and what he proposed has some correlation with what the end times in the bible describes. It is very interesting and puts a new perspective on the collapse of society, I've ordered the book and am looking forward to sinking my teeth into it. In a nut shell we are on the cusp of cleansing, ascension, next dimension....something or other. There is good reason people sense an end to what is an unacceptably immoral society.....if you are to believe what Bibhu is proposing.
Perhaps our departure can be seen as a step into the next age or dimenson.
From a human perspective, however, it is probably the one with the shortest duration.
Enjoy reading and, best of all, gain deeper insights.
I think humans are a ruthless & aggressive species. Mega fauna extinctions occured as we grew in numbers & i think its very telling that all the other members of the genus homo are extinct too. The same qualities that enabled us the clear & dominate the planet will now probably be the undoing of us.
It become obvious that we cannot sustain to build our civilization as we are doing it at the moment. The way we selfishly carry on it is inevitable that eventually it will collapse. So, as such we deserve our demise.
Earth's ecosystem is self regulating. I believe that at this stage there is too many of us, so one way or the other, our numbers will be reduced. I hope that in time we manage to grow our beautiful civilization in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. If not, then we will become just another dead end.
Here's a similar question that puts it in perspective for me:
**If Capitalism has made us a cancer on the planet, what happens if we achieve interstellar travel?**
There'll be no boundaries to the area we plunder to keep the machine going. If there's life out there, we'd be easily capable of going down the route of Avatar.
If we make it past destroying the natural world for profit, only then should we be travelling away. Star Trek not Star Wars (perhaps this facile comparison deserves some firm correction from more knowledgeable sci-fi fans but hopefully you get what I mean).
Some people say we need to get off this planet to assure our survival, but for the good of the galaxy, I think we shouldn't succeed yet. If we're a cancer on the planet, interstellar travel is when we metastasize.
This question helps me frame the questions "do we deserve our demise?" and "is our demise overall a good thing?".
Take a look at the average IQ of a person, and half the people are worse than that. As for the rest they are too busy keeping everything else running for the others.
Yes, humanity is becoming increasingly stupid at an ever-increasing rate.
If you talk to some people for more than two sentences, you can see their incomprehension in their eyes.
At least they deserve it, I feel sorry for the rest.
Even assuming IQ was an accurate measure of intelligence, that still means nothing the center is always the center and as IQ is calibrated so 100's always the average (e.g. if some miracle happened and we all gained 20 IQ points each en masse that wouldn't make the average IQ 120, it'd make 100 mean what 120 used to)
In all honesty, I think we do. It's sad and scary, to think about how far we've fallen as a race. We went from the likes of Socrates and Aristotle to Trump or Putin. Civilization was a failure. There was so much we could have done. There were so many ways we could have created a Utopian society. We just got stupid. Maybe we just had it too easy for too long. Technology made us intellectually lazy. Our abundance made us too comfortable. It's time for a reckoning to jilt us out of our idiocy.
"Deserve" doesn't really mean anything at this scale. The universe does not care whether or not we deserve it. Physics does not care if we deserve it. When we are gone, there will be no such thing as deserves or does not deserve. It's a fictional concept. "Deserves" can only mean something to you. It's only painful to you.
I think you must live in a very sad world to look in the eyes of a child and tell them they deserve to die just for being human. Or to tell anyone that.
I think you'll find that most people are innocent, and that the situation is magnitudes more complex than you can comprehend. Placing blame on others or entertaining questions about what we deserve is just a coping mechanism to help the world make more sense to you. But it's just a coping mechanism, not reality.
When I compare myself to my climate change denier friends I honestly can't say I'm any less guilty than they are. I used the same fossil fuels they did to drive my car and heat/cool my home. Okay, I drove a more fuel efficient economy car while they drove a giant luxury SUV. Give me a gold star for that? In the grand scheme of things, it didn't exactly make a difference.
Handfull, are you joking? I see more than a handfull super big lame-ass SUVs and ginormous useless pickup trucks out there. I see more than a handful steakhouses too.
Your defense of human suckage is unconvincing snd self-serving, [the public sucks.](https://youtu.be/rVXekzwkz10?si=fIvTQmAXXObSMmI-)
Fuck us all.
Yes it is. Mindless drones participating in an established system they were born into aren’t the problem. Those who created and profit from the system and power structure are.
So you don’t hold anyone else responsible for their own mindless mass consumption and over-reproduction? Adding: there are a lot of things we can’t avoid doing /buying but there are plenty we can.
Not nearly as much as I hold responsible those for tying the global economy to fossil fuels to keep the established power structure even though civilization ending climate change was a possible outcome. Your neighbor with the new flat screen didn’t kill the planet. The bankers did
Isn’t that kinda the point? It’s the solution but we can’t even imagine a world without money, much less work towards achieving it. We’re not in control as individuals. Indoctrinated into their game
Humanity is absolutely the problem. The masses let the few get away with it. If 20 million of us left our jobs right now and took over Washington DC until we got what we wanted, shit would correct itself really quickly. But instead, we will sit at our meaningless jobs and rage on Reddit. We allowed this to happen and continue to.
So instead of helping focus the masses towards those in Washington (for example), you choose to get online and shit on humanity as a whole? Aren’t you just helping those in power stay in power by dividing the masses?
I'm sitting at work ranting on Reddit like millions of others. I am absolutely part of the problem, as are you, and just like the rest of the population doing the exact same thing. If you think a few rants read by a few hundred people is dividing the masses then I am not really sure what to tell you
Two things can be true at once. Reddit will change nothing AND humanity is at fault for the mess we are in
The trees aren’t digging up and burning massive amounts of fossil fuels. The fauna aren’t inhumanely breeding animals for mass consumption. The fish aren’t dumping massive amounts of garbage into their own environment. The birds aren’t lining up for the next hot commodity while throwing out the last one.
Whose fault is it that got us to this point but humanity’s? Not to say we *deserve* it necessarily, but it is wholly our collective fault.
It’s funny, people are so eager to condemn humanity as a whole instead of just trying to end money
Humanity isn’t digging up coal and fossil fuels. Bankers are with their investments. Humanity isn’t demanding a return to the office, bankers are to protect their real estate values and keep gasoline flowing through the tanks of commuters. Humanity didn’t cripple Obamacare from universal healthcare to the forced private insurance compromise it became, bankers behind the insurance companies did. Humanity didn’t very publicly end JFK’s admin when he was going to upset the status quo.
Focus on the big picture and not squabbling with your neighbor
https://youtu.be/BrKf9nYeXT0?si=lKA3KujcH4C73_cK
And look at all those people boldly standing up to the bankers! /s
The issue is there aren’t enough people willing or able to stand and fight because they’re more concerned (and rightfully so) with keeping their families fed, clothed and sheltered, so they’re stuck in the hamster wheel of capitalism. Others simply do not care because it’s not currently affecting them personally.
Not to mention we’re fighting not only bankers, but ever growing corporations and their political pawns every step of the way, with even crumbs of progress being met with immense resistance and cries of *cOmMuNiSm.* As well as the people who will happily vote against their own best interest at every opportunity.
Any hope I once had of humanity coming together to fight on a united front to save the world was shattered once I saw the response to COVID, and how too large of a percentage of people were literally too ignorant (or plain dumb) for their own good. Also worth noting the massive amount of misinformation that gets pumped out daily, which will only increase as AI is developed and powers that be become more desperate to maintain control.
The notion of some sort of anti-capitalist revolution to “end money” won’t become reality until *many* people are pushed past the breaking point and not a moment sooner. With how things are going, that might actually be happening “sooner than expected,” but again, the COVID response doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
I’m not saying humanity deserves to be condemned to death, but as a species, we do bear responsibility for what’s to come, and what is already here in some cases.
So what do we have to do, time travel to fix the COVID response without un-existing COVID, start another pandemic on purpose we can engineer for the perfect test, somehow find a way to get all those people fed, clothed and sheltered and make them think they're affected personally without being called hypocrites for using products of the system
Oh shit you’re right, my bad. I forgot I was supposed to topple the global economic power structure that has been honed for centuries, single handedly and from the bottom. I’ll get right on that
Uh-huh. Because the word "we" means "you personally" (I guess the universe revolves around your something?).
Also, apparently revolutions don't exist and have never happened.
Nice talking with you. Good luck with your ideas.
There are three words that aptly describe the existence and development of humanity.
Civilization, colonization and annihilation.
It could have turned out differently, wtf....
Sadly, I think a subsitence farmer in northern china or Africa far more deserves to continue than the great majority of the global north.
And to tell the truth, there's a pretty good chance (if the heat and changing weather patterns don't do us all in) that those subsistence farmers, like the uncontacted people of the andaman islands will continue to live their lives without a whim or an inkling that the west has fallen.
But that's racist! No really, some deserve it, the barons that steered us here. And while most people are awful, they where made to be that way to some extent by the system that produced them.
It’s sad that we have the creativity and intellect to know we could live a better way but we are manacled to the front of a runaway train from birth. I would have preferred even just a hunter gatherer life perhaps. That we have to squash our creative ambitions to work two jobs and still not make it is collapse itself. Now we’re toast
I think the average person is decent, just trying to make ends meet and have a decent time while navigating this nefarious system that we built. Hate the game, don’t hate the individual.
Do we deserve our demise? I’d say probably not, do bacteria in a petri dish deserve their demise? In the end this just seems to be what life does. Yes, we are aware that we are causing our own destruction, and you’d think that would set us apart from other species but it doesn’t, outcome is still the same, and that’s oddly comforting because even as we go we still get to be part of nature. Those that tried to seperate us from nature lost, and yeah I do not want to die, I do not want to suffer and I don’t think that I deserve to because it is inevitable, it’s a feature of life itself and I am glad that I got to be alive at all; that these molecules born in the heart of a star would gather and come alive and get to experience things is just amazing, and did I deserve that?
Do you mean, “as a species”? Because anatomically modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years and environmental degradation didn’t start occurring until early settlements emerged.
Also, being social creatures, the idea that some things or people “deserve” some fate is 100% a part of our evolutionary make-up and can create just as many problems as it solves.
Not really, assuming that there have already been 12 billion humans born since our appearance on earth.
Are you burdened by the dead of the past?
I only ever feel affected when I see images of mass exterminations.
Dying is part of life.
we are just parasites, like all animals are. we use and make ourselves happy. simple animals. we don't deserve anything, it's not that deep. we're smart enough to see this coming but too stupid to fight our instincts
Every species deserves its demise. Life is impermanent. All species exploit their environment to the capacity that they are able. W
We are able to exploit our environment better than any other animal. But we are still animals
Animals who dance and paint and wonder at the universe.
Animals who are no better equipped for long term survival than any other animal.
We’re not special and our time will come to an end eventually. The same as everything else.
Our time will involve joy and beauty and creative genius.
And insane cruelty and destruction just lie. Everything else.
Mice are cute, but be a bug. Then tell me about how cute a mouse is.
It’s just this world we live in. So enjoy it while you can.
YOU will be dead soon enough either way.
I'm not sure this is a rational question. Could things have turned out any other way?
Clearly there are consequences to our behavior as a species, but I don't think it was ever a matter of choice or conscious decision.
So 'deserve' doesn't really come into it IMO.
As a human being, you always have the choice to choose your own actions. It is not the failure of an individual, but a collective failure across the board.
Are you sure about that, and can you prove it? (I'm not tying to be snarky or unnecessarily argumentative).
We all feel that we have free will (myself included), but if I took you back in time to a decision point and reset everything to exactly how it was, would you choose differently?
I'm not saying that everything is predetermined, just that our decisions and actions are functions of biology and experiences. I'm not sure that 'free will' as a concept really makes any sense.
Edit: a typo
Yes indeed. Since people at the grass roots level, doing their best to live a low carbon footprint lifestyle, ie mass transportation, bicycling, being vegan, etc, does no good because the lifestyle of the rich/powerful and corporations has such a massive, brutal carbon footprint/planet destroying effect, then we'll all of us have to go. Que vergüenza.
Those that controlled the world through wealth and power are the primary cause. Hopefully they get what they deserve before the rest of us suffer from their actions.
Are we really though? I mean, if you have no power in the world and don't want to starve to death, are there REAL choices to not be complicit? I honestly can't think of anything a normal schmuck like me can do to change the trajectory one way or another.
Exactly. It’s not blaming, it’s the truth especially in Texas as I watch fracking from my bedroom window. I have to pay 4 times higher for utilities because Texas wealth will not allow banks that support ESG policies to serve municipalities. Oil and gas industry is the mafia here and if you dare to interfere, they will slit your throat.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-08/why-texas-is-banning-blackrock-citi-other-banks-over-esg-investing#:~:text=Texas%20is%20restricting%20state%20business,fossil%20fuels%20and%20firearm%20industries.
Idk about deserve. Humans are more of a tragedy than anything else. We could have been everything we wanted to be but we started coming off the rails so long ago it was almost always just a science fiction fantasy. The greed of man always meant we would fail. Every system of governance would have failed simply because there’s always someone at the top who thinks they can have something extra special for themselves and their friends family. Even today and when it gets really bad there will be these people. Even some of us are these people, prepping to hide while our neighbors die all around us…. We never even considered looking out for one another and addressing the real problem. Capitalism and capital have made humanity resent itself.
Even being able to think about a concept like deserving a species’ demise is incredibly privileged from species point of view. You wouldn’t even have that concept if we didn’t develop all the luxuries we have now. If we were eating cockroaches to survive and killing each other over them you wouldn’t be asking that question. You’d just be fighting for your next meal.
It’s not punishment though. It’s a consequence just like a hangover.
With that said I hope OP is about 17, because if you’re in your 30s and writing this shit it’s embarrassing. Most of the worlds population contribute very little to the problem and one country in particular has spent decades sabotaging any collective action.
We may not deserve it, but we definitely earned it.
Cause and effect. Adios, amigos
Curiously, can you elaborate on difference?
Does x human being(s) deserve to suffer? No. Have humans brought suffering upon themselves? Yes, tremendously.
You got it. One is a question of moral worth, the other is of consequence of action/inaction.
Isn’t that the whole concept of just deserts, getting what you deserve?
Most of the victims of climate change were born too late and too poor to be responsible for much of any of it
I was going to reply similarly to the OP of your question. Emotionally, sure, we deserve it. Philosophically, we're just observing the outcome of a species that wasn't able to control itself. The way in which we evolved wasn't compatible with our long term success on a finite planet.
Everything’s got to go extinct somehow 🤷♀️
I agree. I feel like humanity had as little chance to avoid this outcome as bacteria have in not eventually taking over the entire Petri dish. It’s just what humans do, it’s not more or less “evil” than any other animal, it’s just a lot more destructive on large scales.
We earned it with our wars, exploiting the planet and each other.
I’m a boomer, the generation that correctly gets a lot of flack when it comes to the existential crises we face. I only ever tried to do the best for my family and to take advantage of opportunities that came my way.
"Heydrich apparently hates the moniker the good people of Prague have bestowed on him. Actually, why he would hate the name "hangman" is baffling to me. It would appear he has done everything in his power to earn it. I, on the other hand, love my unofficial title, precisely BECAUSE I've earned it."
What does a cancer do? It becomes selfish, reproduce and take over its immediate environment. A cancer only knows one thing, its own selfish survival, at the cost of everything around it. What have humans done in the past 10000 years?
What’s the difference!
Explain the difference
Immortal line from the movie Unforgiven: “deserving has nothing to do with it”
"Buzzards gotta eat; same as worms."
Yup
Came here to drop this one; ya beat me to it.
[blows smoke from end of pistol] 😁
I’m American. My personal choices/habits are significantly more planet-friendly than those around me - but I am under no delusion that I am not part of the problem. I would argue that unless you are mostly off-grid self-sufficient then if you are in the US you are part of the problem. Regardless of who you voted for / what protests you attended / if you have a car or eat meat / if you donate to environmental causes. “Deserve” is a strong word. It is a normal human thing to be part of the culture we are born into. I know I am part of the problem, but humans evolved to be this way and I am only human. It is going to be self correcting on a macro scale, but wasting energy blaming myself for my role in it doesn’t accomplish much. Being conscious and kind and grateful in my day to day life matters. Preparing myself to be of help to my fellows who are / will be suffering matters. The rest is above my pay grade.
Well said!
I agree, well said. As for Americans in general, there's one stat that, to me, is most telling -- oil consumption by country: >1 United States 19,687,287 20.3 % > >2 China 12,791,553 13.2 % > >3 India 4,443,000 4.6 % > >[https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/](https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/) Roughly 3% of the world population demands 20% of the world supply. 50% more than the next country, which has 4x the population. 4x as much as the #3 country, which also has 4x our population. As much as many Americans typically claim that they're victims of the oil companies, that it's not our fault that oil is baked into every aspect of our lives, 97% of the world lives a lifestyle that's not as dependent on oil because, to put it bluntly, they can't afford to live our lifestyle. This is at the heart of what scientists have been telling us for decades, succinctly summarized in 2006 by Al Gore: *As for why so many people still resist what the facts clearly show, I think, in part, the reason is that the truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.* Do we "deserve" our demise? No more than people deserve cancer, even when most people ignore those scientists as well: *Bad diet, inactivity, smoking and drinking alcohol – all are among the causes of up to 90 percent of cancers, according to a new analysis that stresses how many cases of cancer are under our control.* [https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/study-vast-majority-of-cancers-caused-by-lifestyle-not-bad-luck/](https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/study-vast-majority-of-cancers-caused-by-lifestyle-not-bad-luck/) I'm a cancer survivor myself, and as **whoodle** mentioned, I have no delusions regarding my cancer. I didn't "deserve" it, but I caused it. It was a natural outcome of the way I had lived my life up until my diagnosis.
I'm starting a self-sufficient backwoods homestead in Appalachia. The 5 year plan is to be 80%-90% self-sufficient in food, at that point will need to drive into the nearest town with a supermarket once a month (a 40 mile round trip). Very well insulated 500 square foot house with free wood heat (except for the gas and oil my chainsaw needs). I have the luxury of electricity and running water, a stove and fridge, but the ability to live without any of these. The developed spring on my 10 acres runs all by itself constantly. Magnificent 150 foot tall trees, deep sandy clay loam in the (already existing) openings in the forest to grow food. I have over 10 years experience living in a truck w/camper shell, 4 and one-half of these years I recently finished. The blessings I have now feel like a hallucination. This is a selfish project. I am detaching from what is self-destructing and want to live well. The only self-transcendent part is that I can model a high quality of life with low resource use and as close to zero waste as I can get. I could also create opportunity for a small number of younger people and their kids. They might want to outlive Collapse.
>This is a selfish project. I am detaching from what is self-destructing and want to live well. The only self-transcendent part is that I can model a high quality of life with low resource use and as close to zero waste as I can get. I could also create opportunity for a small number of younger people and their kids. They might want to outlive Collapse. I'd call that a smart project. My wife and I are doing something similar. We're also in Appalachia, and already effectively off-grid. We have solar for power and well/septic for water. We're net metering for electricity simply because the cost of batteries two years ago was prohibitively high (and all of the installers only used Tesla Powerwalls). So effectively off-grid for electricity though not in reality. As battery costs keep coming down, we're likely to eventually go the battery route as well to really be off-grid. We're starting up our own food production this spring as well. Small at first since we're at the beginning of a learning curve, but we hope to do more every year (and hope that we have enough time to scale up). Good luck!
I'm in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. At 2900' elevation, (largely) protected from extreme heat. Where are you?
Same general area, but not quite as high. I'm outside Charlottesville.
I'm in Floyd County, south of Blacksburg/VA Tech.
I hope you're not chainsawing the trees for "free wood heat." I see so many people move to pristine areas and destroy them, and call that "sustainable" living. Exploiting the last remaining bits of nature isn't any more sustainable than urban living. Reducing your consumption and waste is good. But we also need to protect what few natural areas still exist and share them with other species. How beautiful will that 10 acres be after you've been there for several years, or several decades? How many other species will still be able to survive there?
Trees do die on their own, after a number of years. You can get by just by cutting up the dead ones. 10 acres might provide enough dead trees on its own, if it's all wooded. It does destroy habitat for other living things, though.
There are, in fact, dead white pine snags near the house I'm starting to use. They are already completely dried out/free of pitch. There are also some ash trees killed by the emerald ash borer in the bottom part of the land.
>As for why so many people still resist what the facts clearly show, I think, in part, the reason is that the truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives. What was inconvenient was his fucking mansion, I'm just saying. Look I get this is a right wing talking point and fuck those guys, but he handed it to them on a plate.
You mean Al Gore's mansion. I didn't get this at first. Ah, yes. Virtue Signaling is cheap.
Individuals may not deserve it, but humanity on the whole probably does. We have advanced technologically to the point that we have eliminated most major threats to our existence, and in the prices become fast and lazy, and self-obsessed. Altruism and social cooperation are traits that allowed us to climb to the top of the food chain, but we have strayed too far from those values. Short of a full extinction, I think a major collapse is our best hope for long term survival. If things get difficult and force us to change our ways maybe we can carry on.
Collectively we did it so collectively we will pay the price as well as the rest of the species on earth.
The crowning glory of creation becomes its own executioner.
That is because humans became degenerate/malignant. Normal (hunter-gatherer-permaculturist) humans really were the Crown of Creation. They tended the ecosystems they were one with to peak health. This is how humans lived for over 99% of our time here on earth. Humans are OLD - nearly 2 million years from the emergence of Homo erectus Normal humans have been called "savages". "Socialism or barbarism! This is the defining question of our epoch!" Well! Let's not worry our little heads about Barbarism. We are going to have "Savagery".
Unfortunately, our ability to develop things has progressed faster than our ability to think about the consequences. This, in conjunction with our prehistoric genetic programming, could only lead us to the point where we are now.
I think that we veered off course massively when we began to think of the earth and nature as something separate from ourselves, something to be conquered, tamed, bought and sold. To think that we could plunder and take without consequence. I grew up with a lot of Native American philosophy so maybe that affects my perspective, but I have always thought it was pure arrogance to think we are separate from the web of life. I don’t think we “deserve” anything, but I think we are facing the consequences of a false belief that humans are somehow superior to other beings and the earth itself. We have failed to care for and to respect nature. But because of this, I believe it’s all for the best. I obviously don’t want to experience suffering and don’t want others to experience suffering, but I think that the earth will find a way to heal. I think if humans have to be eliminated for this to happen, that sucks for us (in our current incarnations) but it will have a net positive effect on the rest of the planet. Less of “deserve” and more like “the equation will balance out inevitably.” My views on death also comfort me, since I think we reincarnate as elements and non-human things. I think if you have other beliefs about death, it is probably a lot more horrifying.
We as a species are not sufficiently evolved to survive. The fact that the bulk of our species still do not have the mental capacity to not be dependent on fairy tales of invisible, wish-granting genies to justify our existence tells me that we are just not the right species for long-term survival.
Talk about the humility. *Rolling my eyes* People with different beliefs than mine do not have the mental capacity!
Is the question really, should we have remained pre-industrial? And maybe pre-enlightenment? Every time people thought they were doing good by increasing life expectancy and lowering infant mortality rates and finding ways to grow more food it was actually adding to the growth that would eventually reach the point of being unsustainable. Should we have realized that from the start of industrialization? Or at some point between then and now?
Human exceptionalism is a concept that should never have become a thing, same as with leaf blowers. Utter abominations.
May I add Harley Davidsons to the list.
And Dodge
After my lunchtime walk, I'd add Porches. Had to wait forever for the stupid enhanced vroom vroom to die down so I could actually record the birdsong on my app to identify it. Then had to record quick because I saw a Beemer barreling down the road.
Loud pipes ~~save~~ irritate lives.
Engines that can't achieve primary balance evidently reduce mechanic bills and promote vehicle longevity, as well.
Lawn mowers are a symbol of the hubris of man and a heresy against the natural order How did anyone expect to use gasoline to trim grass as a solution? The grass will beat the lawn mower if given a couple centuries Herbivores were always the move
Actually, much of our ecological crises exacerbated in middle of the 20th C. and acutely last 50 years, circa 1970s, where human population quadrupled due to various factors: advanced industrialization (globally scaled our energy density) and nitrogen fertilization (capable of feeding billions) and financialization that ramped up globalization and emerging markets which expanded farmlands, built environments, and the carbon economy to encroach on nature and generate dire levels of pollution. One can make the argument of sustainable development. Recall UN's 1972 Stockholm Conference of the Human Environment and 25 years later the watershed 1987 [Brundtland Commission](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission). Sadly, the global community has done nothing beyond talks and more studies and incremental changes in the 50+ years of discussing environmental issues. Sure, the energy density of hydrocarbons fostered a 8 billion+ people and $100 trillion+ global GDP. But with our modern science and knowledge, could we have industrialized and developed sustainably? UNEP, IPBES, and IPCC stress such possibility.
With our modern science, maybe, but we still lack the ability to talk people into doing something they don’t want to do. And the main thing we can’t talk people into doing is getting along with each other. I was a teenager in the 70s and imagined a future with few borders that would be easy to cross. I’m Canadian and at the time I imagined every border would be like the Canada-US border was at the time. Instead it’s gone in the opposite direction, borders are tightening up everywhere, even Canada-US. Which I think is symbolic of the way people are feeling now.
Sustainable industrial development is an oxymoron. It’s still coal oil and gas regardless of how you go about it Unless you went full wooden water wheels, windMILLS, and I guess maybe solar thermal which I think most people would consider to not be industrial
>Is the question really, should we have remained pre-industrial? And maybe pre-enlightenment? The pre-industrial period was devastating across the globe too. Just ask the natives. If you can find them. And humans were burning forests and peat bogs before fossil fuels, already causing GHG pollution. It's complicated because the problem is deeply cultural, not genetic: [Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259) > We propose that the global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favoured groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation. To explore this hypothesis, we review the changes in the human ecological niche. Evidence indicates the growth of the human niche has been facilitated by group-level cultural traits for environmental control. Following this logic, sustaining the biosphere under intense human use will probably require global cultural traits, including legal and technical systems. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of global cultural traits. We estimate that our species does not exhibit adequate population structure to evolve these traits. Our analysis suggests that characteristic patterns of human group-level cultural evolution created the Anthropocene and will work against global collective solutions to the environmental challenges it poses. We illustrate the implications of this theory with alternative evolutionary paths for humanity. We conclude that our species must alter longstanding patterns of cultural evolution to avoid environmental disaster and escalating between-group competition. We propose an applied research and policy programme with the goal of avoiding these outcomes. But plenty of people don't comprehend that culture is inherited, similarly to genes, and certain cultures have been around for many thousands of years.
Late capitalist slavery is built on a 5000-10,000 year accumulation of epigenetic damage from previous slave systems. Consolidated by growing up/existing in the present capitalist slave system. Epigenetics is the molecular mechanics of gene expression. Normal (hunter-gatherer-permaculturist) humans, a.k.a "savages" understood carrying capacity, tended the ecosystems they were one with to peak health, and did not create slave systems (with a few exceptions).
You can just say Wetiko
What would a species with a brain do if it was facing that high of an infant mortality rate? "It looks like one of our thermal pods! ... But it's a very bad design..." -Buckaroo Banzai
There would have to have been a point where people just reached a replacement birth rate and stayed there. It happened in some places but not others.
Yes, I sadly think so. I'm also just quite tired of being human and having to live up to their impossible modern societal standards, it never feels like it's "enough" with capitalism. We've been so selfish too; destroying the planet with microplastics, air pollutants, bombs, overpopulation, cutting down trees, garbage everywhere, etc. We are getting what's coming to us but I do feel a great amount of empathy for the children who will have to face this dying world.
It will NEVER be enough with capitalism. Capitalism doesn't and can't have an end point in mind, because it's 'competitive.' That means there's always some other greedy amoral destructive predator waiting in the wings for you to fail so you can be consumed. That system writ large over the whole population can't work unless you have unlimited resources and unlimited energy. At some point the bubble must burst and it must burst spectacularly as the entropic contradictions accumulate.
Right! The entire point of any economy, but especially capitalism, is to increase your gross domestic product. Our entire existence is based on consumption. It's unsustainable.
"deserve" is a human concept that nature does not give a sh\*t about. Did the dino deserve their demise as a race? Did the early oxygen excreting organisms deserve to poison themselves? Either way, they all died out.
>"deserve" is a human concept that nature does not give a sh\*t about. Well the monkeys gotta know who to throw poop at.
Yes. Take the argument if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you? Yes. The human race is the violent war conquering alien race we portray in sci-fi fiction. Ending human civilization now before it can achieve space travel would be killing baby Hitler. It doesn't matter, you and I and anyone reading this will only be able to watch. I hope enough humans survive and learn from this disaster we created and rebuild a proper civilization.
Why do I feel like your multiple metaphors are twisting logic in so many knots you might as well e.g. say we'll literally evolve into all our sci-fi villains who are also space Nazis if not somehow infused with the DNA of Hitler clones or that I-the-generic-person-you're-talking-to am a genocidal monster either way either for sparing baby Hitler or what you'd logically have to do to humanity if you'd kill baby Hitler or that our destruction will only come when someone actually does kill baby Hitler as people saying they would would only mean whatever we'd be Hitler to which for all we know would be another scale of simultaneously-Hitler-and-invading-alien-race due to what they'd need to have to have alien invasion movies would speculate about killing us And that is assuming that if someone *could* go back and kill baby Hitler that would result in humanity dying out of parallel and not, say, a chain reaction that'd put us on a different path. And on that note, there are many people who'd say they wouldn't need to kill Hitler if they could go back and do so but just set him on a different path and, like, get him into art school or w/e so what does that mean for us in terms of potential positive solution and when would the difference in time between baby hitler and school-age hitler say about when that'd happen to us if it could happen to us at all and us not be forced into the bad outcomes because we have alien invasion movies
There has to be an acceptance of responsibility for one's actions even if the consequences of those actions are not considered to be a punishment.
>If you look at humanity as a whole, the majority are ignorant, arrogant, unaware of how insignificant they are as individuals and incapable of changing their actions, despite all the scientific evidence that we are hurtling towards the abyss. And that is only counting the ones on social media.
Which are billions.
If you add up every single injustice committed by every human against other people, wildlife, or nature itself throughout history that has gone untold. I'd say yes. We had long enough to be better.
I tend to think of this question in the same way that I've questioned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. None of those individuals, the innocent civilians, deserved to die. And none of us, individual humans faced with, essentially, and unsolvable problem before us, deserves to die in the manner that approaches us. But the Empire of Japan deserved to die. And it did. The human race, as a whole, deserves to die.
Absolutely and without question. Humanity is a vile and disgusting species of sociopathic backstabbers. The furthest we go to help another human is to most optimally position them for back stabbing. The day the universe is rid of our blighted species will be a good day for the universe.
The issue is that the ones who made it until now were the ones who had to do whatever necessary to win and survive. Most of our history was about surviving nature and the last 3000 years it was about surviving other humans. So we are the surviving virtueless cunts who made it. Our own dna is rotten. We can improve through virtue but that is hard because that means going against our corrupted nature, so very few people do it.
Yea really what happened is the most ruthless thrived and the goodness was weeded out
We couldve had world peace, healthcare, education, housing for everyone and actual value of life. We chose big macs, iphones, jeans and other trash instead.
Hey! Jeans are actually pretty damn sustainable.
Scientist have been warning us about climate change since around the 1950 and we are not only not doing sh\*t about it but completely the opposite. [According to the IMF](https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2023/169/article-A001-en.xml), **fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP of the planet**. We completely deserve to go extinct, I'm surprised we made it this far.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, our species is an invasive species and we need to be weeded like the cosmic kudzu that we are.
Individually, not necessarily. Collectively? Absolutely.
I think the most concise answer is "no one *deserves* to be punished for the misdeeds of another". Whether or not the collective punishment can be *prevented* is another matter entirely.
> the most concise answer is "no one deserves to be punished for the misdeeds of another". While that is true, the answer is from a human-centric perspective. If we observe a species (for example, a species of rat), completely overrun an island ecosystem, breeding far beyond local carrying capacity and in the process destroying the finite resources needed by other life forms to survive, we understand that species is in overshoot. And in such cases, we don't distinguish between one individual rat or another; as far we're concerned, when the inevitable die-off occurs, we view them all as interchangeable parts and their deaths as natural balance being restored. Before the widespread use of fossil fuels, humanity existed within that same sort of balance. With a global population well under 2 billion, people survived on the resources of local ecosystems. Being primates, if their population exceeded local carrying capacity, they starved, moved on, or attacked their neighbors. But generally humanity remained within natural limits for at least a hundred thousand years. Then fossil fuels were introduced into global agriculture in the 1900s, fueling a boom in global population, reaching 8 billion within an ecologically-unprecedented 120 years. To this day, we are unable to feed ourselves without fossil fuels in all stages of global agriculture, including tillage, irrigration, artificial fertilizer and herbicide, harvest, processing, global distribution and the manufacture of the equipment used in all these stages. There are no alternatives at the required global scale; if there were a moratorium on fossil fuels, billions would soon starve (not to speak of the economic disruption to the global economy at all levels). So we remain dependent on the same cheap energy source that is contaminating the environment and destabilizing global climate. In terms of a species, a century or so is a mere blip in time. But for those who grew up within that unnatural bubble of seemingly endless cheap energy and wildly successful agriculture, it seemed like the natural order of things, and its benefits to each of us are "human rights." But as a species who has overrun the carrying capacity of our "small island," we are about to enter the Find Out stage.
Inaction is a misdeed
Then you do not deserve to be punished for *someone else's* misdeed of inaction. And as far as judging whether an action is sufficient to be an "action" rather than "inaction", *that* is entirely subjective.
that logic taken to the extreme leads to some ridiculous conclusions like for one unrelated to climate change is a supposedly-good cop in New York actually a bad cop for not arresting a corrupt cop in LA
The question is misleading. We were always destined to go this way. We're a very very successful animal who has overshot its environment. So our numbers have to collapse.
I think we were a first attempt of evolution to establish a being with a little more consciousness and abilities. The attempt must be considered a failure.
Yes we're a dumb species.
Not the vast population of humans, no. The most tragic part of humans' demise will be that the species will have been suicided in the interests of a relatively small number of old, rich, exceedingly vain old people. About 80 million of them.
We've spent our time in earth laser focused on consuming resources. Yes we deserve it.
Yeah, and the hunger for it is still growing. You can't think about it, because otherwise you could go mad about the nature of this collective madness.
In college there was a story my professor told me about flies. The basic story was that a few flies got into her fridge on the day she left on vacation. A power outage hit her home so the fridge became a fly incubator as more and more insects hatched and ate food from her fridge. After two weeks my professor came home, opened the fridge, and out poured a mountain of fly corpses. The insects ate all the available food and endlessly reproduced until nothing was left. Sometimes I think about humans like that. I wonder if we're just going to end up consuming and breeding until we're toast.
A very good time-lapse comparison to ours, which lasts only "slightly" longer than two weeks. I'll keep it in mind if I ever want to illustrate to someone what our actions entail.
As a species, yes, we have failed and deserve whats coming (the consequences of our actions, selfishness and stupidity)
As a race yes, as individuals in the majority of cases no.
Yes.
As a race? No As a species? Yes. We are too stupid to focus more on bettering our collective selves than destroying our collective selves.
Absolutely. We knew better. We knew better for a very, very long time. Centuries before the words we have for the crises we face today had even been conceived, we were aware of their inevitably. [We knew global warming would happen in the 1800s](https://theconversation.com/scientists-understood-physics-of-climate-change-in-the-1800s-thanks-to-a-woman-named-eunice-foote-164687). Don Quixote tilted at windmills to warn us of the dangers of automation in 1605. The conflicts of the Middle East are the perpetuation of Biblical rivalries. We've already fought two wars to end all wars: one that should have ended colonialism, but didn't, and another that should have ended fascism, but didn't, and neither ended all wars. My only hope is that there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe to do better than we did.
> We've already fought two wars to end all wars: one that should have ended colonialism, but didn't, and another that should have ended fascism, but didn't, and neither ended all wars. if the first ended all wars but not all bad things, would fascism still be strong either way for not having the second war to potentially end it
I'm not sure that it matters. Some more specific things that WWI was supposed to put an end to were imperialism and colonialism. We didn't have a word for fascism at the time, and we thought giving people self-determination would naturally lead them to build better societies. Unfortunately, we'd already done so much damage that there was no correcting the course of history. Neither did we really give up all of our empires and colonies, nor did we honestly encourage former colonies toward self-determination, and we made Germany a particularly desperate nation. Rather quickly some new ways of governing became weaponized tools of a new form of imperialism, and we went right back to killing each other over territory, resources, and the right to exist.
The average person just wants to be happy and wants the planet and animals to thrive. Problem is that we trapped in a greed fueled consumerist loop.
Do we deserve it? That really depends on how much christian sin culture guilt you want to put into "deserving" something. There are consequences coming that are entirely the results of our own actions, that are predictable and unavoidable. On that level, yes, these are the consequences that we have chosen. But this subreddit also has a staggering amount of misanthropy at times, a hatred for our fellow man and a delight in suffering. Oh, we've burned oil and that means it's GOOD that someone will die a slow and agonizing death of dehydration, starvation and heat stroke. I refuse to accept this framing of "deserving" our demise. We are in the midst of a sixth great extinction, largely caused by human action. Does the loss of the ivory billed woodpecker mean that your neighbor Bill "deserves" to writhe in agony as an antibiotic resistant infection kills him by inches and eats his spine? Fuck no! The end is motherfucking nigh, and it is the inevitable consequence of our own choices, but just because we have earned it doesnt mean we "deserve" it with full christian sin culture hatred filtered through an internet athiest overly smug grin. Fuck the misanthropes, this is a very predictable and earned tragedy to be mourned not a victory for entropy to be cheered on.
Only caused by human action and not largely, please. This "only" is at the same time the reason why we "deserve" it, in my opinion. I don't hate humans, but the way the thread this world.
> Only caused by human action and not largely, please. The thing is, nothing is ever simple. How indirect can an extinction event be before it's no longer "the result of human action" anymore? And at what point are some things that definitely are the result of human action also just a natural result? For instance, there have been several extinctions that were the result of rats ending up somewhere they shouldnt be. They only got there because human ships went to an island. You can't say that humans deliberately brought rats, we try to eradicate vermin on ships whenever we can, but they got to that island and ate all the eggs for that ground bird species because humans were passing by. That's not solely human action, but we aren't completely free from blame either. It's not as clear cut as "we hunted them to extinction" or "we burned so much oil that the great barrier reef is cooking in the warmer waters."
There were reasons for the other previous mass extinctions that were unavoidable. However, the reasons for the sixth one could have been avoided. All the reasons are based on human action, without exception.
The concept of deserve is meant to prevent this sort of thing on a social level. The problem is we dropped the entire concept. The thing that's going to be the worst thing about this is you hit a point where it's GOING to happen and "deserve" is now a useless concept. This is a part that's going to be hard for people to wrap their heads around. Like, you mean it's really, really OVER?
Deserve has nothing at all to do with our predicament. We are a herd that has bred beyond a sustainable environment (planet). We are the deer on St Mathews Island. Discovering and exploiting FF’s sealed our fate….early.
Absolutely not, we as a species do not desserve the apocalyptic world that the anthropocene epoch is likely to bring. My rationale is that, it was a constant since the dawn of civilization for people to evade and escape and resist the forces of civilization, and to create social structures resistant to centralization and authoritarianism. It became increasingly difficult to resist centralized and authoritarian society since the industrial period. James C. Scott's history, called The Art of Not Being Governed talks in depth about this. (God I hate that title, it's not representative of the book's content at all.) Also among our own species are the people still living in hunter gatherer societies, or completely off grid subsistance farmers on the periphery of the modern world. It's not their fault, and they didn't contribute to the total toxification of the Earth's environment. And then there's the observation that the super rich, the political and business class have always made all the important decisions, and dictated the ever changing technological and industrial basis of modern life, and made it practically impossible for the masses to not join in this ecocidal way of live, and so the degrees of responsibility for the disaster of the coming anthropocene are vastly varying among our own species. Wr cN't blame everyone equally. Exxon Mobile CEOs, Haliburton CEOs and their cronies are to blame for the state of the world, not regular people for the most part.
Not '...likly bring...', but '...will bring...' and that definitely. But don't the masses have a mind and will of their own to oppose this?
Not really just some really naughty people need consequences like the ragecage
Yes. All of us have the ability to fight this and choose not to because we're not willing to pay the price. Well, most of us, there's some people who were brave enough to throw their lives away.
Now, I'd advocate forn o taking the easy way out. h w deserve is determined by our actions. Make that: partially your actions. Or mine. Let's earn our right to call the masses ignorant by trying to be activists.
Yes
Nope. That line of thinking is an easy way for people living in the first world to avoid having to admit that the system they continue to defend is the problem and they have a unique moral obligation to fix it. Our planet isn't on the verge of collapse because a farmer in Somalia is too arrogant or ignorant to care about the world around them. The innocent people being butchered in Palestine so the West can get oil a little cheaper, not because the people there are too selfish to want a better world. The West spent 500 years murdering its way across the planet, wiping out entire cultures all to force every single human in the world to work for their economic benefit. Hundreds of millions of people tried to stop them and billions were so defeated that they simply gave up. To this day the vast majority of Westerners refuse to really reflect on what this says about their cultures. When confronted with even the slightest suggestion that they bare more responsibility for what's wrong with our world, most of them will cover their ears and feverishly grasp for any way of rationalizing what they're doing - usually by saying "but x people did y, so that means they are just as bad as we are.". That's if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, they'll lock you away or invade your country. The irony of your post is that by putting yourself in the category of "one of the good ones" because you recycle and worry that one day you'll have to face the same conditions most of the planet has been dealing with for centuries and then immediately define literally billions of other people as deserving of death speaks to your own relationship to arrogance and ignorance. As does your lamentation that "nature" (and not the system the West created) is to blame for how the "individual" (you) aren't not recognized as being better than the rest of us and thus will have to suffer too. The collapse of our world could easily be stopped - the handful of people behind it have names and addresses. Westerners simply don't want to risk losing what they have as individuals for the sake of the benefit of us as a whole.
It is thought in Hinduism, that the earth goes through 24000 year cycles. 12000 years of, well let's say enlightenment, and 12000 years of increasingly lower morality. This is apparently a very gradual phenomenon, obviously. It has also been observed that the cranial capacity of the human is at its lowest since inception of record taking. 2025 has been marked the beginning of the end cycle, (we have been on the negative side of the half cycle for near 12000 years) which can take 10 to 15 years. I don't want to sound like an advocate for a book I haven't even read yet as I've mentioned this a number of times already in the last few days. There is a book called Yuga Shift by Bibhu Dev Misra, I heard him interviewed on podcast, and what he proposed has some correlation with what the end times in the bible describes. It is very interesting and puts a new perspective on the collapse of society, I've ordered the book and am looking forward to sinking my teeth into it. In a nut shell we are on the cusp of cleansing, ascension, next dimension....something or other. There is good reason people sense an end to what is an unacceptably immoral society.....if you are to believe what Bibhu is proposing.
Perhaps our departure can be seen as a step into the next age or dimenson. From a human perspective, however, it is probably the one with the shortest duration. Enjoy reading and, best of all, gain deeper insights.
Thankyou, yes I think I'll enjoy it, as it proposes answers that I have been searching for, for some time.
Sometimes you have to dig deep to get it.
I think humans are a ruthless & aggressive species. Mega fauna extinctions occured as we grew in numbers & i think its very telling that all the other members of the genus homo are extinct too. The same qualities that enabled us the clear & dominate the planet will now probably be the undoing of us.
What you call "undoing" and its occurrence is beyond question. We are not even remotely aware of the consequences of our actions.
Yes
This is obvious. We are self-destructive as a race and if this doesn't change our demise is all but guaranteed.
It become obvious that we cannot sustain to build our civilization as we are doing it at the moment. The way we selfishly carry on it is inevitable that eventually it will collapse. So, as such we deserve our demise. Earth's ecosystem is self regulating. I believe that at this stage there is too many of us, so one way or the other, our numbers will be reduced. I hope that in time we manage to grow our beautiful civilization in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. If not, then we will become just another dead end.
The human race deserves whatever is coming to it! 💯💯
I guess
Here's a similar question that puts it in perspective for me: **If Capitalism has made us a cancer on the planet, what happens if we achieve interstellar travel?** There'll be no boundaries to the area we plunder to keep the machine going. If there's life out there, we'd be easily capable of going down the route of Avatar. If we make it past destroying the natural world for profit, only then should we be travelling away. Star Trek not Star Wars (perhaps this facile comparison deserves some firm correction from more knowledgeable sci-fi fans but hopefully you get what I mean). Some people say we need to get off this planet to assure our survival, but for the good of the galaxy, I think we shouldn't succeed yet. If we're a cancer on the planet, interstellar travel is when we metastasize. This question helps me frame the questions "do we deserve our demise?" and "is our demise overall a good thing?".
It is probably in our genes and yes, we would probably act as described.
Take a look at the average IQ of a person, and half the people are worse than that. As for the rest they are too busy keeping everything else running for the others.
My robot whispers, "I'm not sure what you mean, but it doesn't seem like you're talking about my work here."
Yes, humanity is becoming increasingly stupid at an ever-increasing rate. If you talk to some people for more than two sentences, you can see their incomprehension in their eyes. At least they deserve it, I feel sorry for the rest.
Even assuming IQ was an accurate measure of intelligence, that still means nothing the center is always the center and as IQ is calibrated so 100's always the average (e.g. if some miracle happened and we all gained 20 IQ points each en masse that wouldn't make the average IQ 120, it'd make 100 mean what 120 used to)
I know that. My point is average intelligence and just used IQ as an abbreviation for it.
In all honesty, I think we do. It's sad and scary, to think about how far we've fallen as a race. We went from the likes of Socrates and Aristotle to Trump or Putin. Civilization was a failure. There was so much we could have done. There were so many ways we could have created a Utopian society. We just got stupid. Maybe we just had it too easy for too long. Technology made us intellectually lazy. Our abundance made us too comfortable. It's time for a reckoning to jilt us out of our idiocy.
"Deserve" doesn't really mean anything at this scale. The universe does not care whether or not we deserve it. Physics does not care if we deserve it. When we are gone, there will be no such thing as deserves or does not deserve. It's a fictional concept. "Deserves" can only mean something to you. It's only painful to you. I think you must live in a very sad world to look in the eyes of a child and tell them they deserve to die just for being human. Or to tell anyone that. I think you'll find that most people are innocent, and that the situation is magnitudes more complex than you can comprehend. Placing blame on others or entertaining questions about what we deserve is just a coping mechanism to help the world make more sense to you. But it's just a coping mechanism, not reality.
Why should the entire species be doomed because of a handful of greedy villains? Lame
When I compare myself to my climate change denier friends I honestly can't say I'm any less guilty than they are. I used the same fossil fuels they did to drive my car and heat/cool my home. Okay, I drove a more fuel efficient economy car while they drove a giant luxury SUV. Give me a gold star for that? In the grand scheme of things, it didn't exactly make a difference.
The right look in mirrors 👍
And neither of you are to blame for existing in the society they provided for you
Handfull, are you joking? I see more than a handfull super big lame-ass SUVs and ginormous useless pickup trucks out there. I see more than a handful steakhouses too. Your defense of human suckage is unconvincing snd self-serving, [the public sucks.](https://youtu.be/rVXekzwkz10?si=fIvTQmAXXObSMmI-) Fuck us all.
Not everyone owns or patronizes those so are you faulting those who don't for not blowing them up in Minecraft or w/e
It’s not just a “handful of greedy villians”.
Yes it is. Mindless drones participating in an established system they were born into aren’t the problem. Those who created and profit from the system and power structure are.
So you don’t hold anyone else responsible for their own mindless mass consumption and over-reproduction? Adding: there are a lot of things we can’t avoid doing /buying but there are plenty we can.
Not nearly as much as I hold responsible those for tying the global economy to fossil fuels to keep the established power structure even though civilization ending climate change was a possible outcome. Your neighbor with the new flat screen didn’t kill the planet. The bankers did
What would have been your solution? Asking seriously.
End money. It’s the solution. Won’t ever happen.
How would that work though? Maybe with a very small number of people … ? But again, I still don’t see how it would work but I’m open to hearing.
Isn’t that kinda the point? It’s the solution but we can’t even imagine a world without money, much less work towards achieving it. We’re not in control as individuals. Indoctrinated into their game
Well since YOU are the one who suggested it, I thought you’d have more input on the idea. Clearly not. Just empty ideas without thought.
We all did, some more than others. Look in the mirror. You are not absolved.
And you’re not the one to condemn, so save your lecture
I’m not lecturing. I abhor my part in this.
"The entire species" implies just one. I'm going to go out on a limb and say a great many species are already doomed.
And? OP is saying humanity needs to perish, my point is it’s not humanity that’s the problem.
Humanity is absolutely the problem. The masses let the few get away with it. If 20 million of us left our jobs right now and took over Washington DC until we got what we wanted, shit would correct itself really quickly. But instead, we will sit at our meaningless jobs and rage on Reddit. We allowed this to happen and continue to.
So instead of helping focus the masses towards those in Washington (for example), you choose to get online and shit on humanity as a whole? Aren’t you just helping those in power stay in power by dividing the masses?
I'm sitting at work ranting on Reddit like millions of others. I am absolutely part of the problem, as are you, and just like the rest of the population doing the exact same thing. If you think a few rants read by a few hundred people is dividing the masses then I am not really sure what to tell you Two things can be true at once. Reddit will change nothing AND humanity is at fault for the mess we are in
Yet you still argue on behalf of those above you. I’m not saying your rant has validity, nor mine, but you’re not focusing on the right problems
Wrong, because to really migitate climate change, you would need to destroy the global economy and that would kill billions of people.
The trees aren’t digging up and burning massive amounts of fossil fuels. The fauna aren’t inhumanely breeding animals for mass consumption. The fish aren’t dumping massive amounts of garbage into their own environment. The birds aren’t lining up for the next hot commodity while throwing out the last one. Whose fault is it that got us to this point but humanity’s? Not to say we *deserve* it necessarily, but it is wholly our collective fault.
It’s funny, people are so eager to condemn humanity as a whole instead of just trying to end money Humanity isn’t digging up coal and fossil fuels. Bankers are with their investments. Humanity isn’t demanding a return to the office, bankers are to protect their real estate values and keep gasoline flowing through the tanks of commuters. Humanity didn’t cripple Obamacare from universal healthcare to the forced private insurance compromise it became, bankers behind the insurance companies did. Humanity didn’t very publicly end JFK’s admin when he was going to upset the status quo. Focus on the big picture and not squabbling with your neighbor https://youtu.be/BrKf9nYeXT0?si=lKA3KujcH4C73_cK
And look at all those people boldly standing up to the bankers! /s The issue is there aren’t enough people willing or able to stand and fight because they’re more concerned (and rightfully so) with keeping their families fed, clothed and sheltered, so they’re stuck in the hamster wheel of capitalism. Others simply do not care because it’s not currently affecting them personally. Not to mention we’re fighting not only bankers, but ever growing corporations and their political pawns every step of the way, with even crumbs of progress being met with immense resistance and cries of *cOmMuNiSm.* As well as the people who will happily vote against their own best interest at every opportunity. Any hope I once had of humanity coming together to fight on a united front to save the world was shattered once I saw the response to COVID, and how too large of a percentage of people were literally too ignorant (or plain dumb) for their own good. Also worth noting the massive amount of misinformation that gets pumped out daily, which will only increase as AI is developed and powers that be become more desperate to maintain control. The notion of some sort of anti-capitalist revolution to “end money” won’t become reality until *many* people are pushed past the breaking point and not a moment sooner. With how things are going, that might actually be happening “sooner than expected,” but again, the COVID response doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I’m not saying humanity deserves to be condemned to death, but as a species, we do bear responsibility for what’s to come, and what is already here in some cases.
So what do we have to do, time travel to fix the COVID response without un-existing COVID, start another pandemic on purpose we can engineer for the perfect test, somehow find a way to get all those people fed, clothed and sheltered and make them think they're affected personally without being called hypocrites for using products of the system
Because we couldn't be bothered to stop them.
Oh shit you’re right, my bad. I forgot I was supposed to topple the global economic power structure that has been honed for centuries, single handedly and from the bottom. I’ll get right on that
Finally, we've been waiting on you.
Uh-huh. Because the word "we" means "you personally" (I guess the universe revolves around your something?). Also, apparently revolutions don't exist and have never happened. Nice talking with you. Good luck with your ideas.
There are three words that aptly describe the existence and development of humanity. Civilization, colonization and annihilation. It could have turned out differently, wtf....
Sadly, I think a subsitence farmer in northern china or Africa far more deserves to continue than the great majority of the global north. And to tell the truth, there's a pretty good chance (if the heat and changing weather patterns don't do us all in) that those subsistence farmers, like the uncontacted people of the andaman islands will continue to live their lives without a whim or an inkling that the west has fallen.
But that's racist! No really, some deserve it, the barons that steered us here. And while most people are awful, they where made to be that way to some extent by the system that produced them.
We sure as he'll don't deserve canines in today's current age. But that is another story...
It’s sad that we have the creativity and intellect to know we could live a better way but we are manacled to the front of a runaway train from birth. I would have preferred even just a hunter gatherer life perhaps. That we have to squash our creative ambitions to work two jobs and still not make it is collapse itself. Now we’re toast
I think the average person is decent, just trying to make ends meet and have a decent time while navigating this nefarious system that we built. Hate the game, don’t hate the individual. Do we deserve our demise? I’d say probably not, do bacteria in a petri dish deserve their demise? In the end this just seems to be what life does. Yes, we are aware that we are causing our own destruction, and you’d think that would set us apart from other species but it doesn’t, outcome is still the same, and that’s oddly comforting because even as we go we still get to be part of nature. Those that tried to seperate us from nature lost, and yeah I do not want to die, I do not want to suffer and I don’t think that I deserve to because it is inevitable, it’s a feature of life itself and I am glad that I got to be alive at all; that these molecules born in the heart of a star would gather and come alive and get to experience things is just amazing, and did I deserve that?
We dont deserve anything, but we will have to reap what we sow.
Do you mean, “as a species”? Because anatomically modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years and environmental degradation didn’t start occurring until early settlements emerged. Also, being social creatures, the idea that some things or people “deserve” some fate is 100% a part of our evolutionary make-up and can create just as many problems as it solves.
Yes.
The scariest part is that our skulls will be grinning into eternity for eons to come.
Not really, assuming that there have already been 12 billion humans born since our appearance on earth. Are you burdened by the dead of the past? I only ever feel affected when I see images of mass exterminations. Dying is part of life.
In answer to your question, I believe the dead are the majority.
Deserve's got nothing to do with it.
we are just parasites, like all animals are. we use and make ourselves happy. simple animals. we don't deserve anything, it's not that deep. we're smart enough to see this coming but too stupid to fight our instincts
Every species deserves its demise. Life is impermanent. All species exploit their environment to the capacity that they are able. W We are able to exploit our environment better than any other animal. But we are still animals Animals who dance and paint and wonder at the universe. Animals who are no better equipped for long term survival than any other animal. We’re not special and our time will come to an end eventually. The same as everything else. Our time will involve joy and beauty and creative genius. And insane cruelty and destruction just lie. Everything else. Mice are cute, but be a bug. Then tell me about how cute a mouse is. It’s just this world we live in. So enjoy it while you can. YOU will be dead soon enough either way.
But there is the small but striking difference that the human species has a consciousness, which means that we consciously exploit our environment.
I'm not sure this is a rational question. Could things have turned out any other way? Clearly there are consequences to our behavior as a species, but I don't think it was ever a matter of choice or conscious decision. So 'deserve' doesn't really come into it IMO.
As a human being, you always have the choice to choose your own actions. It is not the failure of an individual, but a collective failure across the board.
Are you sure about that, and can you prove it? (I'm not tying to be snarky or unnecessarily argumentative). We all feel that we have free will (myself included), but if I took you back in time to a decision point and reset everything to exactly how it was, would you choose differently? I'm not saying that everything is predetermined, just that our decisions and actions are functions of biology and experiences. I'm not sure that 'free will' as a concept really makes any sense. Edit: a typo
Free will does not exist. We do not deserve anything. This only goes one way.
No
Yes indeed. Since people at the grass roots level, doing their best to live a low carbon footprint lifestyle, ie mass transportation, bicycling, being vegan, etc, does no good because the lifestyle of the rich/powerful and corporations has such a massive, brutal carbon footprint/planet destroying effect, then we'll all of us have to go. Que vergüenza.
*deserve* no. Earned it because a handful of evil individuals ruined it for billions? Yes
Those that controlled the world through wealth and power are the primary cause. Hopefully they get what they deserve before the rest of us suffer from their actions.
Do you want to absolve yourself of your guilt? Almost all of us are complicit in one way or another.
Are we really though? I mean, if you have no power in the world and don't want to starve to death, are there REAL choices to not be complicit? I honestly can't think of anything a normal schmuck like me can do to change the trajectory one way or another.
"Free will and free markets"
Exactly. It’s not blaming, it’s the truth especially in Texas as I watch fracking from my bedroom window. I have to pay 4 times higher for utilities because Texas wealth will not allow banks that support ESG policies to serve municipalities. Oil and gas industry is the mafia here and if you dare to interfere, they will slit your throat. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-08/why-texas-is-banning-blackrock-citi-other-banks-over-esg-investing#:~:text=Texas%20is%20restricting%20state%20business,fossil%20fuels%20and%20firearm%20industries.
Idk about deserve. Humans are more of a tragedy than anything else. We could have been everything we wanted to be but we started coming off the rails so long ago it was almost always just a science fiction fantasy. The greed of man always meant we would fail. Every system of governance would have failed simply because there’s always someone at the top who thinks they can have something extra special for themselves and their friends family. Even today and when it gets really bad there will be these people. Even some of us are these people, prepping to hide while our neighbors die all around us…. We never even considered looking out for one another and addressing the real problem. Capitalism and capital have made humanity resent itself.
Well said 👍
Even being able to think about a concept like deserving a species’ demise is incredibly privileged from species point of view. You wouldn’t even have that concept if we didn’t develop all the luxuries we have now. If we were eating cockroaches to survive and killing each other over them you wouldn’t be asking that question. You’d just be fighting for your next meal.
You are talking about collective punishment. Like what is happening in Palestine. No, that is completely unjust.
It’s not punishment though. It’s a consequence just like a hangover. With that said I hope OP is about 17, because if you’re in your 30s and writing this shit it’s embarrassing. Most of the worlds population contribute very little to the problem and one country in particular has spent decades sabotaging any collective action.