Are we doomed?

[reasonist]

MY desires? Really? How silly of me that I care in which world my children and grandchildren grow up!

[Unbeliever]

Well, maybe I'd feel similarly if I had any children or grand-children, but I don't. So what's my stake in the future of the world? Am I being totally selfish by not feeling an obligation to care?

That doesn't mean that I don't care, I just don't see any good reason to have to care. If I let myself care too much, though, I'd be so torn up emotionally I couldn't function.

[Baruch]

So there is no way to avoid disaster, since we can't turn back the time clock? If we continue at this rate, this species is on it's way out sooner than we think? How can we turn this tide?
Somehow I think that we have a self destruct gene, either through violence or through degeneration. Other than big brother controlling individual calorie intake and regulating birth rates, we have no other options? To watch this all rather helpless is frustrating because it seems that politicians don't care about future generations, just the next election. As individuals we have a responsibility to care and act but our power is pretty much limited to elections. And the last one showed that many of us just don't give a damn about the world we leave for our children.

The clock will be turned back, to 75,000 BCE ... when we almost became extinct after the eruption of Mt Toba.  That and a few Ice Ages and that prehistoric squirrel may finally catch that acorn ;-)

Back in the day, when survival was at stake, parents killed and ate their children (it is in the Bible), because they could replace them later, but if the parents died, the children would die anyway.  Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  If you are at the bottom of that pyramid, then pretty much anything is expendable.

[Journey_To_Mars]

I do think we are doomed. It will most likely be too late if we try to set up a colony on another planet to save our species. Trying to expand to other planets in general will be a hard thing to get support for in the first place because there will be plenty who will see it as pointless. We are most likely screwed though, we humans like killing each other and waiting till the last minute to try and save ourselves even though it is pointless.

[Baruch]

I do think we are doomed. It will most likely be too late if we try to set up a colony on another planet to save our species. Trying to expand to other planets in general will be a hard thing to get support for in the first place because there will be plenty who will see it as pointless. We are most likely screwed though, we humans like killing each other and waiting till the last minute to try and save ourselves even though it is pointless.

See Thelma and Louise going over the cliff ... wheee

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Again with the end of the world? Really?

[Baruch]

Again with the end of the world? Really?

Not in my opinion.  See earlier post in this string.  But a deflation of inflated expectations, is more precious than a Capital One credit card ;-(  Utopia will continue to recede.  Human survival will always be in a knife edge.  The Millennials better get to work.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The worst thing about being a historian is seeing the same shit over and over again.

[Unbeliever]

Again with the end of the world? Really?

Yeah, but we won't go out with a bang, only a tiny whimper...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, but we won't go out with a bang, only a tiny whimper...

I see we're all "bypassing" the cause of the end of the world...

[Baruch]

Yeah, but we won't go out with a bang, only a tiny whimper...

Because Millennial snowflakes ... an alternative to Nuclear winter.

[drunkenshoe]

Then the question should be: is it going to be our own doing? As Mammalians we are no exception to the rule of temporary existence, but are we bringing on our own demise?
Hawkins gives Earth less than a thousand years. That's a flicker in geological terms. If we don't nuke ourselves to extinction, we will run out of finite resources. Not to mention natural disasters like a meteorite, volcanoes or earthquakes. Can we evolve in time to forego superstition, greed and tribal sentiments? In time to plunder other planets and maybe even relocate? Maybe instead of spending trillions to 'defend' ourselves from our own species, we should invest heavily in technology that allows us to continue our existence in case of a catastrophe. (The universe doesn't care one way or another and would be better off without us anyway.) But I am continuously surprised by the apathy displayed when it comes to preparation for events outside our control, like natural disasters. Our survival instinct is misdirected by concentrating on humans for the source of destruction.

I like to wish all fellow posters a happy Festivus and belated solstice! Health and happiness always!

We will breed so fast and efficiently -as we perfectly proved that we can- the planet will not be able to sustain us and we'll kill and eat each other like rats. There will be no space or resources of any kind, no clean water. It won't be a sudden event. It will take a 'looong' time, in human time. And the life we know will be very different. Probably there will be scattered violent battles and wars everywhere around the world for food, water and anything basic at some point.

I dont mean wars between cultures or soveriegn nations, countries we are already in that phase, I mean the phase after that. A demography too high, famine too harsh traditional power zones will collapse one by one, because they won't survive. The order of the world will change fundamentally.

Any group of people will get armed in some way and attack around. And the winner will control any sort of resource or land. We call this terrorism today, because we still have a society life; states and organisations that large populations living under, a some sort of an order. Now imagine what would happen if the world was divided into countless little terrorist groups killing and plundering, because the demography is too high, famine is too common and harsh.

That's the 'end' of the world you are talking about, but it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the way of living as we know it. This is why this concept of end of humanity or the world is problematic. We are not equipped to speculate about our extinction realistically, because first it is a religious concept in root and it is the life style and order which means the same to us. It's just a different life. It's actually our past in a different setting and form. So when I try to look forward and forward I see that.

I don't see a nuclear war wiping out human even it happens which is unlikely imo. I wish it would be a clean extinction level event caused by a global killer hit, random chance. Scenarios like a deadly virus spread by a mad man sounds too much of a hollywood scenario and not enough to 'end' anything to me.

So that is it imo. Hundreds of billions of people and a world map consisted of thousands of tiny little groups moving around in constant battle.

[Baruch]

Yes, a return to hunter-gatherer phase, where there are many small groups in competition with each other, but in a world of diminished biology.  Please don't beat me over the head, Club of Rome!

Shoe, you can be the overly smart cave woman, from Clan of the Cave Bear ;-)

[Mike Cl]

There are thousands of novels that deal with this subject.  I love them, and have read hundreds of them.  Currently reading The Passage series, by Cronin.  Very well done.  Anyway, the world ends in hundreds of ways in these books--take your pick and there is most likely a book that deals with it.

[Sal1981]

Cultural evolution is an evolutionary side-effect of big brains. Of course we have no chance.