Ask Lemmy

When I was a kid, there was a hole in the ozone layer and we were just going to be blown up by a nuclear war, or get AIDS.

It's always been the end times.

So no, I don't worry that much about kids. I do wish that embodiment was not a forced choice, you can't ask a baby if they would like to be born. I'm sure there are planets where the 'people' have a much harder time than we do here. Sure I am incredibly angry that we are squandering this glorious advantage we have so soon. But no I am not sorry for the kids of the future and also the past really sucked for most people, you can't compare a hard life of the near future to some idealized imaginary easy life of the past.

Absolutely yes I feel bad for them.

Some people will say that now is the best time to be alive, but I think we have hit our peak and are facing an ugly drop-off. Climate change is a big one, but I think that technology is quickly becoming detrimental to the average person because it is leading to a consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer.

Climate change is the only true existential reason to feel that way.

Everything else is just over focusing on a short term dip. On average things are getting better over the long term. The British Empire collapsed, and so will the American one, and the world will keep on turning and progressing.

Hell kids born these days may have legitimate cures for most forms of cancer by the time they're old. We won't.

Politics, economics and war are all hard to predict for long term, but just on the count of climate change kids born today are screwed.

No. I think that things have pretty steadily gotten better over time, and that a great deal of people being upset about now for any given now comes from a tendency to focus on negatives. Could be social media or news media tending to bring negatives to the surface because it drives engagement, political activists aiming to drive or leverage upset, or so forth.

More grist for the mill.

VERY specific people would have been better off born 20 years ago.

The vast majority of people would be better off today.

You can imagine in another 20 years that would be different, but almost everyone is better off today than they were 20 years ago, and they will be even better 20 years from now than today.

Specific groups may have a harder time in one time period or another, but society at large is getting better at the world scale over the long term. Hope still exists.

Very much so. I honestly think it's at least a little cruel and selfish to have a child in a dying world.

That said, I remain supportive of the parents in my life and I try to keep that feeling to myself--unless the parent brings it up (my cousin has two very young children whom he adores, but he also worries for their futures due to climate change and political instability, and he'll talk pretty openly with me about it).

I choose not to. I can choose to be hopeful for the future without being unrealistic. I can see intrinsic value in human life and the human experience even knowing that every single one of us will die at some point, some peacefully, some during suffering. The moment of death doesn't have to define one's life. Even a baby who lives for six hours has spent infinitely more time living than dying. Would you be so nihilistic as to erase that life, just because it was short?

Your philosophy is valid; it's not necessarily correct.
Starting from the assumption that it is denies you the opportunity to see things from a different perspective.

Unclear. Maybe things are going to get better; it's happened before right?

It hasn't been all bad news lately, too. If you're not straight, cis, or from the the West, being a boomer wasn't such a great deal.

When the mother bear in bondage at the bile farm kills her own cub and I gotta applaud that poor bitch

Very. I already dont see a bright future. People born today dont know anything but a broken world. Me being born 2003 atleast saw a slight bit of it

no im jealous because i miss screaming and shitting and puking constantly

You are born in the very very very best stretch the human race has ever known.

We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.

Wars are at an historical low point.

Chances are good you've never been even experienced war first hand.

Housing is expensive, yes. But chances are you're reading this on a couch or bed in a home, heated (or cooled), with a working stove, light at night and a fridge with edibles in it. And lets not talk about your immediate almost unrestricted access to all of human knowledge.

That would be unbelievable, impossible even during 99.9% of human history. (Or somewhere near this figure)

You should stop doomscrolling and start reading the real human history.

All of human knowledge at your fingertips. And this is what you chose to distill from it.

Not in the least.

You should look at people born in the past.