I don’t mean better for you or me but better in general. Do you believe our species will ever reach some form of enlightenment or will we destroy ourselves?

  • trustnoone@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 days ago

    No. I used to believe we were, I thought every generation the world was becoming more open and fighting for a better tomorrow.

    But not anymore, I think the rich has put short term profits over the needs of the world sooo much that it’s placed the majority in a bad situation. And because of that, people can and will only be able to look out for themself first. Because they are in a situation where they have to.

    And I think we’ve gone past the point of return, where the future will continue to go negative, whether it be businesses destroying the society for profit, or the destruction of the planet or financial crises and hyper inflation from printing money, or just some outright war.

    The majority are so busy trying to put food on the table or get a roof over our head that we can no longer care for the rest of the world.

    • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I’m torn because I think it’s going to be very different in a lot of different places, and I’m trying to account for my own US-centric biases.

      Ukraine and Palestine are pretty much completely hosed. Heck, you could probably add other countries like Georgia to that list. NATO may dissolve.

      Climate change is going to get worse. We went from “we have to stop now before we reach the point of no return” to “we really need to do what we can to mitigate how hard it it’s”. The US is now re-opening the floodgates for fossil fuels and rolling back environmental regulations.

      People will be persecuted. Police departments in the US will continue to militarize. I expect more riots similar to the BLM ones. Race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliations, the works. Best-caae scenario is probably class-based riots at this point.

      Billionaires will become trillionaires. Wages stay the same. I expect prices to go down at first with the influx of fossil fuels. The GOP will probably pass some tax cuts similar to 2017- temporarily give each individual a reduction of ~$200 per year for a few years while giving corporations billions in permanent cuts. But the prices will rise eventually.

      There will be bright spots. Weird pockets of normalcy. The Nordic countries might be alright if Russia and Climate Change aren’t too aggressive. China will be its own separate case- you’ll still have the ongoing authoritarianjsm and genocide, but it’ll be a bright and sunny solar punk version. I’m betting huge chunks of rural America will go unchanged- poor, straight, white Christians will remain poror, straight, white Christians. Those well-off enough to have their McMansions in the woods a couple hours drive away from the cities will probably stay the same.

      Maybe California or other blue states are able to hold off the feds and other external forces enough to keep a semblance of the Old World?

      Personally, I expect everything around me to just go downhill. Public infrastructure goes unmaintained. The occasional water boil advisory becomes more and more common over a couple years until it becomes a habit to boil water without checking. Certain websites become inaccessible, then ISP’s roll out bandwidth caps and up prices. Electrical outages become more common- maybe even scheduled rolling blackouts. You’ll need to factor poorly maintained roads when deciding what car to purchase.

      Weird stuff is going to be cheap and available. There’s still going to be new smartphones every year or two for a while. The PS6, the Switch 2, maybe a new Xbox all drop. Professional sports keep going just like theh mostly did during the pandemic. You can already buy a huge 4k smart TV for less than a month of groceries for 2 people, or less than a month’s rent for a 1-bedroom apartment most places. The TV’s will get cheaper while the rent and food gets more expensive. The streaming services will re-consilidate into one or two companies, force ads for everyone, raise their prices, reduce their libraries, and basically become exactly what cable used to be.

      Gonna be weird.

      • trustnoone@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 days ago

        Mateee this is exactly what I can see happening. This is exactly it! Let’s see 3 years from now I’m going to look back on this comment