The world is not ending...

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Many people have a sense that the world is ending because 2020 is so bad, and that humans will die out earlier than they actually will. Climate science is an example of evidence. Most organizations say that the world could be in even more of a crisis every decade, but also that humans will still be here in decades to come and living in peril. Climate change is serious, but it will not likely end everything in the next few decades. The fact that the world is not ending may be a relief, but it’s also a call of action to live like there is a tomorrow.

Is anyone else bothered by people giving up and living like there’s no tomorrow because “the world is ending”?

It does not bother me that other people are living their lives as if today is their last day.  What bothers me are those people who get in my face and preach to me about this being the Last Days for us all according to some ancient 'prophesy'.

Last edited by Fnord on 15 Oct 2020, 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, a subset of the population apparently believe us to be in the "End Times" and - as a result - find it pointless to take any action to protect the environment and future generations.

That bothers me.

If there was ever a time when the world was ripe for "ending," it was the mid-14th century.

What we are going through, for the most part, is miniscule compared to what went on during the Black Death.

I'm rooting for that giant asteroid thats supposed to hit Earth anytime!

Nope....ain't gonna happen....sorry about that!

You will never defeat me, 2020!

mwaa aaa aaaaaaa....

Only about 10 weeks to go, and I will have out-lived another year that tried to defeat me.

As much as 2020 has sucked big time, the world is not ending. It is definitely changing in major ways though. Every civilization goes through periods where it is thought to be the ending of the world, but it just changes. Sometimes violent, sometimes quietly, but the world continues on. That said, living for today, existing in the now is not such a bad thing as long as it is not reckless endangering others.

I'm just really glad that it was Covid 19 this year and not a return of the 1918 Spanish Flu - that was much worse. Even just trying to handle this we showed how sloppy, weak, and generally inept we've gotten despite all the increased technology.

The alarm bells over environmentalism, general AI, nuclear weapons, etc. are on one hand all credible but on the other I think first and foremost we have a game theory to address - ie. we're not equipped very well to handle diffuse responsibilities of this sort especially with so many lead countries in productive arms races with each other. IMHO if we can't figure out a way to solve the game theory problems we have with things like that as well as the late 2010's political retool of the Satanic Panic that kicked up to high gear in 2020 over the summer (see James Lindsay on that) then we're in a place where we might as well admit that the 'big issues' are just a way of trying to take political power from one group and give it to another - at least it will be little more than that until enough people care to grapple with the complexities of problem solving rather than playing political football.

Also I try recommending Jordan Hall, Daniel Schmachtenberger, etc. to people as often as I can but I tend to notice that if people aren't familiar with them or Rebel Wisdom, aren't familiar with the topics they hit like existential risk (exponential tech with rivalrous social dynamics), or can't pin a message down as Republican or Democrat they have a way of pitching it in the circular bin. I think it's unfortunate because we need as many people as possible hearing the highest quality dissection of where we're at and what issues need to be understood and addressed and I'm sure there are better sources out there as well, just that I don't see anyone wading out of the shallow end very often.

This statement makes no sense. Spanish Flu, and Covid 19 (from what little we still know about it)seem to be roughly the same in contagiousness, and in deadliness. Both are worse than regular old flu, but neither is as bad as the Black Death (ie Bubonic Plague).

If Covid had struck in 1919 it would killed as many as the Spanish Flu actually did. And if the Spanish flu struck today it would be about the same as the situation we have now.

The ineptitude of our current response to Covid is still more competent than that of the folks in 1919 to the Spanish Flu. Technology and communications are better now.

That's an interesting threshold for 'making no sense'.

I was hearing people talk about permanent neurological damage from Spanish flu and almost meningitis-like onset and death in the case of some of my dad's relatives. We still also had the shenanigans (2020) with whether or not the masks were effective, the WHO's bungling of the situation, and some combination of Trump blurting out random bad advice while several politicians left of center were reminding us that if we didn't eat at Chinese restaurants we were racist. 50 million is still a lot different than 1.1 million, I'm sure some of that was indeed better sanitation and more people working from home this time around, whether that accounts for most of the difference is an interesting question - our ER's are better than they were but still with treating a virus there's only so much they can do.

I should have clarified. Many people have not learned the coping skills to live for today without causing some harm in one way or another through environmental damage or consumption of resources, as in “giving up X would be miserable.” So that’s what I meant, suffering slightly so that others could have what they needed.

I've always found plastic bags convenient.....but the animals who get trapped in the plastic are very inconvenienced by it.

Reusing your plastic bags is more environmentally friendly than buying trendy reusable bags. I can only imagine the carbon footprint of buying reusable bags. I made that mistake thinking I was being green, reusable bags all the time! Meanwhile I had those plastic bags sitting right there...

Zero-waste “trends” are hype. I used to buy into them.

If you did a dissertation on comparing the two you might well be able to show that the Spanish Flu was in some non obvious way worse than Covid. But the fact that more people died in the three years of the Spanish Flu than have died so far in the less one year of covid has more to do with it being a less efficient world at the time. Most of deaths were in places like China (the poverty stricken China that was descending into civil war of 1919 is not the unified economic superpower China of today). And the countries that were advanced (western europe/USA) were purposely suppressing news about the initial outbreak.

600K Americans died of the Spanish flu in three years. 200k have died in less than a year of covid. But the later is out of a population more than twice the size of our 1920 population size. If you crunch enough numbers you might conclude that one pandemic was worse than the other. But even so the death tolls within the US were still comparable in magnitude.

In 1919 there was less global cooperation , but...there was less global cooperation. Today we have Trump, China, and the WHO. all trading accusations. There is blame to go around, but also credit to go around. The nations of the world went into various degrees of lock down early on in the current pandemic. And the pandemic was in the headlines before it left Wuhan. They did no such equivalent things in the initial stage as the Spanish Flu broke out. And that was partially because it was breaking out in the Western Front warzone, and all of the major powers on both sides kept the outbreak a secret. Only neutral Spain allowed reportage of it: ergo how the Flu got its misnomer. The point is that human folly gave the Spanish Flu a much bigger boost in spreading than whatever folly occurred in 2020.