Is it silly to fear the future?

[Questionable]

Knowing all the events that are currently unfolding, I can't help but feel nothing but fear for what the next 10-20 years will bring.

We have our own police departments gearing up for large-scale domestic counter-insurgency programs, technology that can scan our irises from several feet away, climate change that will bring devastating weather and probably a host of other disasters like famine and drought, the worst economic depression we've ever seen is just around the corner, and a ton of other problems that I probably haven't even heard about yet.

I don't want to turn this place into my personal blog, but it's really been troubling me lately. I also don't want to be one of those tools who scream "ORWELLIAN WORLD!" every time something happens, but I can seriously see the 21st century looking something like this if things continue on their course, and it frightens me.

I'm mostly concerned about my loved ones. I don't want to live in a world where me and my girlfriend can be imprisoned without trial indefinitely for owning left-wing literature. I hope I'm just being paranoid when I say things like that. But even if I'm exaggerating the police state aspect, what about all the others? I keep imagining myself walking outside as an old man with my children, all of us wearing gas masks, and me telling them about when the sky used to be blue instead of a hazy orange all the time. If I even have kids. As generic as it sounds, I can't stand the thought of bringing children into a world that is getting progressively worse like this.

Again, maybe I'm blowing everything way out of proportion. I really hope so, because I just don't know how we're going to live if we don't make some kind of change right now.

[Blake's Baby]

Well, that's kinda the point isn't it? We're driven to look for solutions by the horror of the world around around us - material conditions shape consciousness, so as the situation looks bleak, people are compelled to find ways of resisting.

Obviously, your way of resisting is to look beyond the suicidal society we have now to the possibility of a more reasonable and just way of organising ourelves as human beings. I suspect that many of us are inspired (if that's the right word) by the same concerns as yours. I began to re-engage with politics after I had kids, and started wondering what kind of world they were going to live in. A pretty bleak one unless something is done to halt, then turn back, the grinding slow-motion apocalypse that is all capitalism has to offer.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed, like you're not up to the job of resisting. The truth is, unfortunately, you aren't up to the job. How can you as a lone individual take on the devastation and insanity around you? You can't, is the simple answer.

so, is the only thing to do give up and be overwhelmed? No, because as I asked "How can you as a lone individual take on the devastation and insanity around you?" The answer is to realise (as I'm sure you do, but sometimes it's easy to forget becasue we are being constantly told that we are only atomised individuals) that collectively, we do have the power to change the world for the better. We become depressed and worn out and fearful and all the rest because society is structured in such a way as to keep us isolated and frightened. Resisting capitalism isn't just a physical fight but a psychological (indeed one could almost say spiritual) fight too - against the effects of the social insanity around us. Collectively, however, we're much stronger than we are individually.

So, I'd offer you my solidarity and say that you aren't alone, we are making some kind of change right now, and you are part of that change. Recognise that you can't do it alone but we can do togeher, and try not to become too discouraged. Fact is, if we don't fight, the horror will come all the faster and all the more heavily. If we do fight, we may still lose, but we can perhaps delay the horror, and inspire others to continue the fight until someday they win. Or, we may win, and see the revolution that liberates humanity. So, it's better to keep fighting as long as we can, yeah?

[Let's Get Free]

Here's what I see happening in the next 100 years or so- an entire planet will be reeling from the effects global warming, never-ending warfare on all continents, despotic political regimes, a huge disparity between rich and poor, the mass extinctions of thousands of species, drug-resistant pathogens, enormous levels of pollution, a dramatic reduction in fresh water and viable farming soil, widespread terrorism, corruption, rampant industrial sabotage, and general social unrest.

After that it gets even better: a cataclysmic "die-off" of much of the planet's human population due to untold stresses on the environment.

We can no longer hope to save everything. But we can at least try to save something so that some kind of future, perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible. We must always hold on to the dream that a better world is possible, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the moment.

[Comrade #138672]

Time only moves forward. No matter what, the future will always come. You have no other choice than to accept this. There will always be things to fear. I fear a lot of things too.

However, you are not alone in this. People need to wake up and start fighting the system before it is too late.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Things have gotten better, though, in some ways. The percentage of the world in severe poverty is much less today than it was 100 years ago, for example. People are less likely to die from some sort of horrific violent act today than they were at any other point in human history. So those are good things. Plus there are countless medical and technological innovations taking place that are positive and liberatory.

Also, you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes there will be a tiny spark somewhere that will ignite something huge. In 2008 a police killing (something which happens all the time) set off a month long riot in Greece and riots/demos in 70 cities around the world. Or some guy setting himself on fire in an isolated suburb in north Africa in late 2010 inspired people to form oppositional movements in many of the world's most repressive countries. Whenever I lose hope I think about such things and realize that resistance to tyranny still burns and will continue to burn.

[o well this is ok I guess]

What if in the future we start winning
that would be pretty cool

[Ele'ill]

Knowing all the events that are currently unfolding, I can't help but feel nothing but fear for what the next 10-20 years will bring.

We have our own police departments gearing up for large-scale domestic counter-insurgency programs, technology that can scan our irises from several feet away, climate change that will bring devastating weather and probably a host of other disasters like famine and drought, the worst economic depression we've ever seen is just around the corner, and a ton of other problems that I probably haven't even heard about yet.

I don't want to turn this place into my personal blog, but it's really been troubling me lately. I also don't want to be one of those tools who scream "ORWELLIAN WORLD!" every time something happens, but I can seriously see the 21st century looking something like this if things continue on their course, and it frightens me.

I'm mostly concerned about my loved ones. I don't want to live in a world where me and my girlfriend can be imprisoned without trial indefinitely for owning left-wing literature. I hope I'm just being paranoid when I say things like that. But even if I'm exaggerating the police state aspect, what about all the others? I keep imagining myself walking outside as an old man with my children, all of us wearing gas masks, and me telling them about when the sky used to be blue instead of a hazy orange all the time. If I even have kids. As generic as it sounds, I can't stand the thought of bringing children into a world that is getting progressively worse like this.

Again, maybe I'm blowing everything way out of proportion. I really hope so, because I just don't know how we're going to live if we don't make some kind of change right now.




Have you taken a stand against this stuff, with other people? Solidarity is a pretty big thing and helps. Action helps too. I think there was a point when I was younger where I went through this and I did feel paranoid and crazy but I decided to kind of draw a line in the dirt and that helped me not really feel so adrift and helpless (even though realistically I still am, we all are) but it changed my relationship to it all perhaps only socially but yeah it helped me out a bit.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The past is a betrayal, set in stone. The future is a promise, as yet unwritten.

Things might look bleak now, but it was a lot worse in the past - I'm sure those lucky enough to have been alive when the Black Death was at its height in Europe felt that the future was a path to damnation. The domination of global capital sucks, but all things considered I'd rather be a wage-slave in the 21st century than a serf in the 15th century or an honest-to-goodness actual slave in the 3rd century.

[Art Vandelay]

'I meet people every day, who can't bring themselves to believe, that the world is going to change, as if its ever done anything else.'

Our time will come comrade, stay strong.