Are you optimistic or pessimistic about humanity's future prospects?
I thought it would be fun to take Tildes's temperature on humanity's future prospects. If you respond, can you include your approximate age, your opinion, and maybe a brief explanation of why you think/feel the way you do.
I'm in my early 30s. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think it's an interesting time to be alive, as its the first time humanity is facing a problem of this scale. I think it'll pull through in one way or another. It may get bad for a bit, but nobody will let it stay bad for very long. I also think humanity has more control over the current situation than it realizes, it seems like the last two generations and maybe the current gen were content to let tunnel-visioned, big business interests do the metaphorical driving. Hopefully that'll stop soon, and we'll put people without a profit motive in the driver's seat.
Thanks for participating!
Mostly I am not optimistic. There is always a little ember hope that burns inside me, but it is tempered by my experiences. I think there will always be people who seek power, and seeking power often does not align with what is best for humanity. I also continuously see my species seek short term gains at the cost of sustainability. It's interesting because at the individual level I think most people are good, but for some reason that does not seem to equate with being good as a group. I'm 50.
Mid 20's here, I seem to agree with every point there, it slightly disheartens me that the extra 25 years experience hasn't shown you any hope. I really want the world to turn around, but I think the people that grab for power are not the people you want in power.
Well, when I look at the larger problems we are facing I do feel hopeless. But there is plenty of kindness in the world, and I think being kind, and being open to kindness goes much further than people give it credit for. At the individual level at least, it keeps my ember of hope alive.
Pessimistic for several reasons:
I am in my early twenties. I am not optimistic at all. I think gigantic societal change is coming almost certainly, what I am curious about is when will this happen. In the best case if we start radically reducing emissions that would already change most peoples lives quite a lot. That's the best case. If more politicians with their heads in the sand keep getting elected, the problem will just keep getting worse.
Currently I don't have much hope in the leaders of the world suddenly shifting the gears so much. Since Brexit happened, followed by Trump getting elected I have almost no trust in politics. I don't think there is a big chance that we start working together good enough to deal with the problem cleanly.
I am also scared that the bad changes will most likely come soon enough that I won't die before it happens. The same probably can't be said for my parents (also kind of hopefuly?) and other "old" people - like the people in power.
We are better than 100 years ago in many ways, but climate change is coming to fuck us over. I'm pretty sure we'll just let it happen. I wouldn't call it pessimism, though. Pessimism and optimism are biases. The inaction of those in power in the face of global warming is a clear fact.
So I guess I think we're all going to die, but we'll probably be a better society when we do.
I'm optimistic. There are obvious societal and global problems all over the place, but currently crime, war, starvation, are all trending lower than they've ever been in history. I think climate change is the biggest issue looming over our heads, but as each year goes on, fewer and fewer people are doubting it, as the effects are starting to show themselves. In the near term, I don't thing it's going to be a particularly easy or comfortable half century or so, but after that, I'm pretty confident that it will be a solved problem.
I think humanity tends to deal with most things in a similar way. A large event or development massively disrupts the course of human society, but we come out better off in the end, and learn to account for that particular development in the future.
With the advent of data storage and retrieval spreading to more of the world, I think we're making fewer mistakes a second time as well. My main worry is that the climate crisis strains society enough that the cultural progress much of the world has made in the past 100 years is undone. It will eventually come back I think, but the less damage is done to our institutions and sense of decorum and morality the better.
I would very much bet that humanity as a species will still be kicking around in 1000 years though.