Has the system finally cracked? Have the wealthy and powerful simply taken so much leaving the rest of us grasping at our very survival, easily manipulated into turning against other groups and even each other in an attempt to make sense of it all? Is society destined to destroy itself or descend into eternal servitude to our masters? How do we get out of this spiral of madness?

  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    5 days ago

    The rich and powerful have been in control for a long time. Before capitalism, it was monarchies under feudalism, 10x worse than today. Back then, there weren’t much of medical knowledge and medicine that prolong lifespans; people had much shorter lives and died young. Think Human Rights are being infringed by your leaders? Human rights weren’t even a widespread concept back then. Police brutality and suppressing protests? Back then they’d just start killing on sight. You don’t get jail time, they cut your heads off. We have made so much progress overall in Human Rights (although some countries are still lacking behind, its overall much better these days)

    To put things in perspective, Homo Sapiens were near extinctions for most of its history. We managed to survived this long. Maybe everyone worldwide will wake up tomorrow with an emergency alert on our phones (aka: Global Nuclear War), or maybe not. Only time will tell.

    The great filter isn’t a one time thing, the universe will always be throwing challenges at living beings, but some will evolve and thrive. I mean, 50-70 years ago, people were like: “well this is it, everyone is gonna die in a nuclear blast”, well… here we are.

    But don’t lose hope. Whatever happens, enjoy the time you have left. Don’t stress about it too much. Don’t let defeatism ruin your mood.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      Been rereading Vonnegut, a hero of mine, the last two weeks. Stunning to see him outline the exact same societal and environmental ills back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.

      OTOH, we hadn’t drove our ecosystems off a cliff until recently.

      According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the average size of monitored wildlife populations has declined by 73% since 1970.

    • Tiptopit@feddit.org
      3·
      5 days ago

      Back then, there weren’t much of medical knowledge and medicine that prolong lifespans; people had much shorter lives and died young.

      That seems a bit incorrect. Of course medicine made a big leap over the last two centuries, but it was not worthless before.

      Also people had good chances to reach their 60ies or even 70ies once they survived their first 15 years.