An opinion I understand and respect, but that I don’t share. Anyone with sufficient education can be absolutely terrified of the soul-crushing future we need to deal with, but what makes life enjoyable is overcoming any challenge put in our way.
> but what makes life enjoyable is overcoming any challenge put in our way.
Life is pretty fucking miserable for a large part (perhaps even most) of the world on a daily basis. I doubt they'd share your can-do attitude on this subject.
Climate change is probably inevitable, but we humans will adapt to it; we will solve the problems that come from it; I actually see a high chance we will get basically unlimited free energy from renewables before we destroy the world.
Capitalism will get changed/fixed. At a local level, move to a sane country ;) At a global one, first realize we are much much much better globally than at any other time in history; we will keep improving.
Even in the USA, we're arguably better overall that at any other time in history; yes, Trump is a step back, but it's just so we can get impulse
> we're arguably better overall that at any other time in history.
Even a basic look at where we are shows this as untrue. Our health care is more expensive, life spans are declining, wages dropping when compared with inflation, housing costs rising. We don't have to dig very deep to see that we are going downhill.
We have problems. I believe they are solvable. But we've got to stop denying that we have them.
I see you got downvoted for it, but I respect your faith that the problems will be solved. Just don't let it lul you into inaction, because believing they will be solved and believing they will solve themselves are two different things.
The unlimited free energy part could have happened today but we as humans have collectively decided that letting the planet cook a bit until the fry pan is starting to vaporize is a reasonable trade off in exchange for a little profit. The solutions are obvious and right in front of us: a carbon tax to compensate for the externalities. It might be radical in some people's eyes (it really isn't) but it is guaranteed to work.
Capitalism is just a system to allocate resources fairly. Under some very optimistic circumstances it works amazingly well. But if you forcibly distort the system and don't account for processes that are a net benefit for individuals but produce negative value for society at large then it's nothing but self destructive.
Capitalism isn’t a “challenge”. Capitalism is the reason our world is much more comfortable today than ever, as the cost of luxuries goes down through competition between multiple companies.
So really, just climate change is our problem. We need a sustainable way to obtain resources to further fuel capitalism and approach post-scarcity society.
> Capitalism is the reason our world is much more comfortable today than ever
At any given point I'm one week away from homelessness or starvation. Having skin cancer is better than having pancreatic cancer - but neither of them are good.
Having been in the position of wanting, in a very real and immediate sense, to end my life, and having sought help for it, let me relate my experience a little:
You get what you pay for. Yeah, all this "seek help" stuff is actually kinda just marketing. No one really wants to help you, at least not enough to commit serious effort to do it. This is the unfortunate reality.
However, I obviously did not end up killing myself either. For me, escaping the crushing hopelessness involved a deep examination of why I felt the way I did, which ultimately resulted in two significant realizations: 1) The universe is under no obligation to make sense to me, and 2) most of my criteria for judging myself came from people trying to sell me something. These seem obvious on the face of it, but knowing and understanding, it turns out, are different things.
I'm not going to suggest that what helped me will help you, because I remember hearing all sorts of bullshit advice from others when I was in your position and it only made it worse. I'm not even going to suggest that life is worth living, because that's very subjective, or that there's hope for you, because all situations have their own nuances that I would be exceedingly arrogant to assume I could understand.
So what am I trying to say? I don't know, man. I guess that despite your pleas for help being met with this low-effort "help" from the great internet wanking session known as Hacker News, and how that must make you feel right now, there are sometimes ways out, if you can manage to find them.
So you don’t kill yourself over what looks to be an overly skewed perspective of the world? There might be bad things going on, but that doesn’t mean everything is horrible or unfixable.
Yes, living does irreparable damage to everyone. The best you can hope for is to not put your family and friends through the unnecessary hell of coping with your death, dwelling on what they could have done/didn't do to prevent it. You can come back from how you feel now - that's the nature of being alive
Because you’re betting your life on something which may or may not occur. Why take the risk that you’re wrong? Why not try instead to see if you can help fix the problems you’re seeing, or getting help to do so?
One day you may find something that is worth living for and you'll leave the darkness behind. After that day when looking at your current thinking process, it will not make much sense. Of course when your mind is cloudy no outside words or solutions register, they seem like empty words. They will only make sense once you're past that point. That's why is good to have hope.
I am not the person you replied to but I want to ask you when this happens? I am 45...have been dealing with this for 15 years in a bad way on top of a miserable childhood. I had some good years in my 20s when I was able to make my own path but that was derailed by the negligence of others and after that it has been downhill. Since then all the "help" you speak of has ever done is make it worse and push me down further. All they have is weak science and pills that often make things worse. They also never address the root causes and are mostly just expensive, egotistical, bandaid dispensers at best. It's irrelevant now anyway as I have no insurance and cannot afford the "privilege" of American healthcare.
I have lost everything and nearly everyone. Only three people in all that time have ever TRULY helped. One of them died this Winter. One of them is a member of this forum who had no obligation but has tried to anyway. The other is the only old friend I have left who stood by me as all the systems and family who one would think should be there, who had the aforementioned obligation, turned their back.
So tell me when? And what then as I have nothing...no foundation...no security...more needs. So when does it "get better"? And don't say "well if you don't wait and see then you will miss the chance to find out" because why does that matter? Do YOU think suffering a lifetime is worth it for a moment or two toward the end of things being better when you die anyway? How much do people have to suffer before they are allowed to say "enough"?
I don’t know, I really don’t have an answer for you. But I listened to what you have to say and feel empathy for you. I hope one day you will find the answer and will find peace. I hope you will always have hope. My words seem empty of meaning to the situation you are in, but try to be kind to yourself. Hug from a HN user.
