Ask Lemmy

Honestly, I don't. I came up in the '80s, wasn't diagnosed with autism until 2022. My life would have been so different if I had known about it when I was a child, and if autism was as well-understood as it is today so that I had the support I needed. Kids today who have issue like that are identified much earlier and helped more. The steady march of knowledge and science is almost always a good thing. So, the present and the future are always the place to be for most people most of the time. Of course a Gazan isn't feeling the giddy excitement of scientific discovery at this moment, but for the human species as a whole, things have never been better. There is always someone suffering immense, unimaginable hardship. The human project is overwhelmingly not that.

Every generation has existential concerns, too. Climate change and the rise of fascism is on the cards right now. When I was a kid and adolescent in the '80s and '90s, I was in the middle of the N. Irish 'Troubles'. Before that, people had the Cold War to worry about. Before that, WWII and WWI. But things are always better than they were 'yesterday' if you take stock of everyone as a whole and not just those suffering the worst in any given moment.

If you took the average kid born today in an average society, and transplanted them into the 1970s with the same socioeconomic starting point, it would be tantamount to gross child abuse given the vast ocean of stuff they could have had, but now will never have (in their childhood, at least). And I'm not even talking about technology and the internet; just the treatment of children by the state and schools alone would be night-and-day different. Kids are individuals today, in the '70s you were your parents' property and didn't develop a sense-of-self worth respecting until you were old enough to get drunk.

I still wouldn't bring a kid into existence, but for those that are here already, 2025 is the best time to be born. Like if I were my parents, I would not have had me while the country was tearing itself apart with bombings and shootings every day. But I'm glad I was born when I was and not when my parents were kids.

I'm not trying to doom on anyone's bloom here, but things are getting worse all around. Even if you ignore all of the political and social strife, and all of the war and terror, there's still the warming planet to contend with, and we don't have the magic technology to fix it 20 years ago yet.

As the planet gets warmer, resources will get tighter, people will be displaced, and that will only lead to further strife. Energy crisis, water shortages, famine. They're all guaranteed. We're in the cascade now.

Your future is about surviving now.

Born 1949 would be awesome. After world war, then Woodstock, cheap housing, fucked up the world with their plastics, dead before its getting hot. These mfs had the best timespan ever.

All ye who enter abandon all hope

Seriously, you people are a bunch of cake eaters. "The future is scary and things are getting worse." It's always been scary, you've just been privileged enough for it not to be.

All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it.

Bro, people have it bad NOW. Life is and has always been suffering and struggle. Get out of your online bubble and go see some shit. Anyone here who says their life outlook looks bleak would have said the exact same shit 30 years ago or even 100 years ago.

Life is suffering no matter when.

Everyone here knows the solution; Eat the rich.

I think the whole “wrong generation” thing is a bit of a misconception, at least in terms of culture. Say you really love 60s culture, you can dress like you are in the 60s and listen to all the music from that time - including obscure stuff your local record store wouldn’t have had then but likely do now. Then additionally you can also listen to the odd song for the 70s and 80s if they take your fancy. The 60s are a part of pop culture and you can swim in that stream for as long as you want.

Socially as well, I think people underestimate how much latitude we are given to be individuals in modern society vs even like 30 years ago where social pressures to conform were stronger.

Economically I think there could be some cause for concern for the future but there were really tough economic times in the past too. Stagflation in the late 70s for example is worse than what we are experiencing at the moment. Having a kid could be something people treat like buying a property and waiting for the ideal time to do it; however, property prices are unpredictable and trying to judge it perfectly is like trying to catch a falling knife. The best advice is just to buy a property when you can afford it, and that probably holds true for having a kid too (assuming you want one… that’s another benefit of living in contemporary times!)

If we dont pass the torch only the rich will. Is that a world we want to fortify? I'd rather not. Someone has to oppose them. Thats our and our children's fight as the world begins to wane.

Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall

Yes I do. I am an anti-natalist because I care about people.

China, US, and Russia are all having growing economic issues right now. Executives and government officials are all sold on the idea that AI will replace labor and create a massive unemployment population. Resources like farmable land, water, and rare minerals will be fought over. There is a global power shift towards authoritarianism. All signs point to the fact that your kids will become cannon fodder.

As a parent in the US, yes. The future looks very dim among climate change, water overuse, corruption of civic institutions by the capital class, etc.

Even people born 20 years ago have it rough - they’re just now graduating college into a crummy job market and massively inflated housing market, with MAGA policies and AI destroying the economy for both blue and white collar folks as quickly as possible.

It seems cruel to create new life in this environment. Are you going to tell the kids that it’s their job to fix the world that the previous generations abused and degraded for short term gains, because it’s somehow our duty as sane humans to produce more sane humans to continue the fight? Many people today already live a worsening paycheck to paycheck existence, with too little free time to focus on systemic change. How will adding to that help?

Nearly every generation has felt pessimism at one time or another that the world is the worst it’s ever been. But it sure seems different this time.

The folk heroes of tomorrow will be people like Greta Thunberg and Mario’s brother, and that’s not a great existence to root for.

Not specifically today, just generally born. Some things are worse, some better.
It's just that it's impossible for anyone to consent to being born. And not many people can say that they're living happily.

I don’t. We all have to deal with the pain of existence.

"I miss the good ol' days" is basically how a certain country's fascist got elected. There's nothing to miss about the past, what's to miss? Casual "gay humor" (homophobia), racial stereotyping, misogyny and toxic masculinity, ableism, refusal to ackowlege other's mental health stuggles, or conversely, locking people up for neurodivergence, the fact that "lobotomy" is a legal thing to do, fuck that world.

Partly yes.
If I could choose, I would take 10 years earlier than I was actually born.
At least I could have experienced the early internet for longer.