"consumatronic zombies" is one way to describe us
Posted by ontrack@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 142 comments
Posted by ontrack@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 142 comments
Possible-Thought-847@reddit
You can stop buying shit. I don't buy plastic. I use a straight razor. I wash my clothes with an old fashioned board and dry them in the air. Baking soda detergent and toothpaste. A clump of wet grass wipes your ass better than anything. If everyone did things like that. But people don't give a shit. So let's work on an engineered virus or something and takem out. There are things you can do.
Garuda34@reddit
That very well sums up the situation. And "consumatronic zombies" is a very apt epithet for modern humans in the global North.
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
i live in South and I doubt we would do less worse if we had same chance.
just look how population is still increasing is less developed countries and meat banned as commerce and indusry is sill a taboo. Religion is a worse problem in South too
Garuda34@reddit
I agree. As I responded to someone else who basically made the same point, humans are humans regardless of location. I have spent a lot of time in a number of different countries in the South, and the only real difference is that of opportunity to consume. If the economic situation were reversed, we would still be in the same predicament.
I agree on your point about religion as well, if you are comparing it to Europe. In the US, though, religious conservatives are trying their best to tear up the constitution and turn the country into a theocracy. Having lived and worked in a number of Islamic theocracies, the idea of the US becoming something similar, regardless of the particular strain of religion, makes me want to puke.
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
Very good points.
Well, i see christianism as too obsolete and exposed. In my opinion problem is that if people have a bad life with horrible conditions and exploitation, they will have to believe in "something afterlife" to justify their present life.
It is easy fooling someone than convincing him that he was fooled.
Garuda34@reddit
"It is easier fooling someone than convincing him that he was fooled."
This is soooo true. It also explains the entrenched support for Trump in the face of so much evidence that he is a complete fraud, a pathological liar, and a horrible narcissist who cares for no one but himself. That this view is so prevalent among so-called christians is not surprising in the least.
Electrical-Box-4845@reddit
You still believe in democracy. I do not anymore. I dont think there are so many dumb people for supporting conservatives in 2024 considering we are still mortals and we do still age.
Currently I see democracy simply as a narrative for people acepting life as it is and oligarchies keep their power.
Garuda34@reddit
I believe in the concept of democracy, but what we have in the US is not that. What we have is a once-shiny cover for a kleptocratic cabal that has become very tarnished with age.
The 1% own the government. The politicians are nothing but marionettes, regardless of the letter that comes after their names. They do not work for us, they work for Mammon. They have whored themselves out for personal gain. All we can do is vote with our conscience, and try to make things better at the local level. Soon enough, that's all that will matter.
Electrical-Box-4845@reddit
This seems a good plan for life. But help can cone from outside. We better do not halt it.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
I don't know how you can bear to talk to hubristic white washed "still goes to Kroger whenever they want but are oh so edgy" Roman Imperial citizens man.
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
Consumption comes a million ways. Working, breeding, just being alive...
It's a privileged take to blame your neighbors. People are doing what they are programmed to. The people in the global south wouldn't have steered this planet differently. They are just as human as us and being human, being an animal, means you will consume as much as you can. That's what makes us a successful species.
And any humans going against that will be consumed as well.
Garuda34@reddit
I don't disagree with you at all. Humans gonna human. I've spent a considerable amount of time in the global south, and their desires aren't any different than those of someone in the north. They simply lost the geographic lottery, and were taken advantage of by those of us who won. They only thing differentiating the north's consumption from the south's is the opportunity to consume.
"That's what makes us a successful species." Until we overshoot, which we have, then "success" becomes a matter of debate. What exactly have we "succeeded" at besides denuding the planet like a plague of locusts, and enriching a handful of billionaires?
BlackMassSmoker@reddit
We think we want more. We think we need more stuff to consume. In actuality, most of us would be happy to just work with our hands and spend time with the ones we love. I think knowing where we've ended up, most of would opt out for a simpler life if we could. But we've been conditioned to believe you want more, you need more, bigger is better, your life is meaningless without that new car, or that cruise, or that new phone, or new trainers.
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
Doubt that.
Talk is cheap.
Actions speak louder than words.
No_ConMKUltrapenis@reddit
Speaking words is an action bruh. Stop relying on sayings. Stories and fantasies...
lufiron@reddit
Also, you won’t hear from people who are actually living simpler lives. Its the “losers” in life who feel the need to broadcast everything, and they’re not living simple lives.
No_ConMKUltrapenis@reddit
Are the winners winning?
lufiron@reddit
Its been said that chaos is a ladder, maybe?
Taqueria_Style@reddit
You really think we're running off "carrot" right now?? I'm running 100% off "stick".
Then again you're probably right. Homelessness or smart fridge. Tough choice.
Watching that one go down in real time. I'm not kidding about the homelessness option, I personally put that off just long enough for them, to the tune of $6000.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
What happens when the ones you love want more?
See... that...
zedroj@reddit
it's not just conditioned, it's a forced narrative, the cockroaches that rise to power with their immoral existence deemed their life narrative the correct one which everyone now must follow, the most toxic unadjusted individuals are controlling how people should operate, when they should be furthest from it
Barnacle_B0b@reddit
Victim blaming.
Industrialists and Corporations have created a system in which citizens no longer have much say in the products and commodities provided. The elites wanted to have control of everything, and now they do, and blaming consumers is their cowardice escape from acknowledging they alone are responsible for the systems which they have created and control through their influence of money.
RegularYesterday6894@reddit
true.
StatesFollowMind@reddit
The way of the world is to bloom and flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
Leifsbudir@reddit
Humanity is a caterpillar spinning a cocoon, not knowing why, just having the instinct to do so. Our consciousness has deluded us into thinking our natural functions have some sort of divine meaning, so we can’t stop or slow down. We must progress at any cost. But we are just another species among billions. This delusion we’ve evolved is killing everything.
Do people really think we can sustain this for 100 more years? 500 years? 1000 years? Does anybody ever “zoom out” so to speak? The amount of time we have been polluting is absolutely no time at all. And the sheer amount of pollution produced in that time is simply staggering.
Look at the amount of garbage everywhere, from the Himalayas to the Arctic to the deepest depths of the ocean. You probably can’t walk the road or go for a hike without seeing some fucking mouth breather’s litter strewn about. And guess what? It isn’t ever going anywhere. Nobody is cleaning any of it up. We have totally fucked this place with plastic and chemicals. We are replacing the atmosphere with gases that alter the climate, and annihilate ancient chains and cycles that keep everything balanced. All byproducts of our form of life, and toxic to everything. No different than bacteria belching methane gas or carbon dioxide.
The ones who care, the life form’s immune system, are ignored by the ever-growing, ever-consuming masses. They don’t think about it, they were born into this world a rampant consumer and it’s all they know. Hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people who won’t ever change.
The comfort we have come to know will be our undoing and we will suffer tremendously, without an all-hands-on-deck approach to combating the damage we’ve done. Only a philosophical shift will save us, and at this point I’m afraid that won’t come before the r/collapse of civilization. For some reason we have to learn the hard way.
What a truly special and beautiful place we live, and we’ve just about ruined it. I don’t want to despair, but I think this is our destiny. The human being is ushering in the sixth mass extinction whether you want to believe it or not. Our time under the sun is coming to an end without drastic and immediate action.
audioen@reddit
I subscribe to the belief that nothing can be done that is anywhere near acceptable. Short of killing like 5 billion people, how are you going to put an end to all the accessible fossil energy in the world getting used? We are at the peak right now anyway, and once that crunch starts -- once we feel the hurt from no longer being able to manufacture, transport, produce -- I bet almost everyone will long back to these days of high energy.
We are a 100 times oversized colossal beasts eating massive quantities of energy, especially us here in the West. But in general, I think everyone is mostly alive of those energy flows, which in turn enable the material flows that keep us fed, clothed, entertained, and in jobs. There is a statistic floating around that suggests about 99 % of all work done on the planet is mechanical nature, supported mostly by fossil energy at some critical point of its existence, and likely impossible once fossil energy exit the picture.
People think that by 2050 fossil energy available to society will have more than halved -- likely to one third or less, from combination of depletion and degradation of quality. That means less than half of transport and manufacturing ability remains just those 2-3 decades from now. And similarly, economic activity will dwindle by that much, and we need humans to work the jobs that machines used to do, and humans are costly and inefficient relative to our machines.
Industrial civilization is almost certainly over this century, and the desperate billions wanting to keep eating and staying alive likely see that we must use all the remaining resources we can possibly gain access to.
Lorenzo_BR@reddit
It’ll be socialism or barbarism, and we’re heading full speed towards barbarism….
FirmFaithlessness212@reddit
Does socialism lie on the other side of barbarism? Not again...
No_ConMKUltrapenis@reddit
We are? Full speed?
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
good news is that socialism (planned society) is not a taboo anymore
Grand-Page-1180@reddit
I don't think there's any coming back from the scale of damage we've done.
Nowhereman123@reddit
Most people genuinely would rather doom the entire planet than lower their quality of life to ensure a sustainable future.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
One of the knock on effects here that people may or may not be aware of, psychologically, is the following.
If you really, really, realize this is all going on. And you don't move to a poop hut made of poop in the middle of nowhere and eat bugs...
Then the only way to psychologically reconcile this is by just having this low level mentality that everyone is stupid, and deserves to die, and you're going to get yours and fuck all of them.
This may be why we notice that some of the worst offenders in terms of overshoot and pollution are actually socially nice people, whilst we on the other hand are turning into assholes.
Because they don't know.
Ignorance is not only bliss it's evidently basic ethics. Sigh.
wulfhound@reddit
They don't want to know. The social niceness you refer to is valued more, by many people and perhaps the majority, than being right.
I mean you've seen how religion works, right? "We pledge our allegiance to each other by staking on a set of claims, some subset of which are obviously and provably false to anyone that bothers to investigate". (Whether that's elephant-gods or water-into-wine. The impossibility is the point.)
I don't mean this, btw, as an attack on the moral/ethical claims of one religion or another. My point is not that the whole thing is false, but that membership of the tribe requires signing up to parts of it which clearly are, as a gesture of loyalty.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
Well, yes.
And normally that's not a bad thing. Group cohesion allows for... well... groups. And groups are the only ones that can get things done.
I suppose this becomes a bad thing when a powerful group co-opts and hacks this tendency in a less powerful group, for their own nefarious benefit.
So... I mean. We're not going to solve this because it's too late, but hypothetically, if we were going to solve it, it would take group cohesion.
wulfhound@reddit
I've no issue with group cohesion, but requiring people to state their belief in something which is obviously incorrect as a token of loyalty is.. odd. Albeit not as harmful as the stuff some of the more powerful groups get their members to do as a symbol of group membership. The stories emerging about Diddy are the tip of a very ugly iceberg.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
It's not as odd as all that. Ok, the way we do it is odd. The way groups of humans do it as some kind of a flex is odd. The inability to adjust it as more data presents itself because "that's a bad look" is odd (I swear I hope that guy that said that to me dies in his sleep but whatever).
It's fine when people can agree that they have no fucking idea what's coming next. Which is 99.9% of the time. This is another one of those fun things civilization gives us. Predictability. Dystopic? Sure. Predictable? Oh yes. Yes it is.
But as materially predictable as it may be as long as you stay in the same place with the same job (hmmm... looking at me on this one)... it's in no way predictable on a philosophical and social level.
Stating one's belief in something which is (quite possibly) incorrect is a statement of "I'm loyal to the group and the process and willing to see what happens".
Stating one's belief in something OBVIOUSLY incorrect is saying "I'm a soldier, send me out to be a bullet sponge". All religions go through their warlike expansionist phase. Well. All ABRAHAMIC religions did. I suspect most others did too but I don't know their histories.
wulfhound@reddit
I'm thinking of stuff like Holy Communion and the (transubstantiation / consubstantiation) of the wine and wafers. Different branches of Christianity differ on how it's the body and blood of Christ, but all insist that it is. And to say "no, it obviously isn't and anybody can see that" is to betray the tribe.
Or leaving religion aside. MAGA's meme that the election was stolen. Clear and obvious nonsense, but they made lots of otherwise sensible, rational and law-abiding Republicans sign up to it, as a token of loyalty to the leader and the movement. Stating the obvious becomes betrayal.
Wave_of_Anal_Fury@reddit
This is the stat that summarizes what he means by consumatrons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets
Americans are 4% of the global population, but we make up 42% of all consumer spending in the world. This isn't not having any say, as u/devadander23 says. We are the ones who are driving the ship. Without our excessive consumer spending, modern capitalism as we know it would collapse. We're the ones keeping it afloat, yet we're the ones who are most delusional about our responsibility.
Last year's holiday spending alone, for example, was $964.4 billion, a 4% increase from the previous year. That's an average of $2795.36 per person. And this was spent just in a one month period, from Black Friday through Christmas, all to celebrate a single day. Another 4% increase this year will push us past the $1 trillion mark.
It's why our overshoot number as a country is so atrocious.
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/
If the entire world lived like we do, we'd need the resources of 5.1 Earths to do so. Hell, even with as resource-rich as the US is, we need the resources of 2.4 Americas to support us, which is why we have to draw on the entire planet to support us.
tony87879@reddit
But spending isn’t necessary bad, is it? Like if you’re buying green stuff what’s the problem.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
And this is legitimately why I don't understand why the rest of the world doesn't form a coalition and just embargo us. Or blow us up. Or pull a Red Dawn.
I mean basic self defense, yo?
Dry_Ganache178@reddit
Because you're thinking about this in terms of US versus Not-US.
Most of the wealthy of the second and third world benefit from how the US behaves (domestically and internationally). So why would they punish the US?
Ultimately this is why anti-colonial discourses, despite being correct in a lot of ways, can be really stupid.
phinbob@reddit
There's a Kim Stanley Robinson novel about that.
TheAlrightyGina@reddit
Holy shit. What percentage of Americans is this? At no point has anyone I know (including myself) had the means to spend anywhere near $3k per person for the Holiday season. That's damn near an entire month of expenses for my whole family (all bills, food, medicine, housing, for a family of four plus pets).
On a particularly extravagant year we might approach half of that figure, and that's if we travel to see family which we haven't really done since the pandemic.
Makes me think the folks at the top are once again making it worse for the rest of us.
Electrical-Effect-62@reddit
It's on average, so some people spend 40 grand some people spend 200 bucks some spend nothing ect.
TheAlrightyGina@reddit
That's what I'm saying I think this is being driven way up by the decadence of the well to do, not by most Americans.
InfinityCent@reddit
US is really bad what the hell's going on with Qatar in that link???
robotjyanai@reddit
Yeah I’m not sure whether I’m understanding the table properly.
devadander23@reddit
Most people don’t have any say whatsoever in which path we take. Capitalism and those at the top hoarding the wealth are driving this ship.
Nowhereman123@reddit
Yes, this is true, but any time we try making any small step towards more sustainability people start freaking out and screeching about 'communism' or something.
We got rid of plastic straws and people were legit having meltdowns about it.
dumnezero@reddit
I like to think that I come to the "collapse" domain from agriculture/sustainability, but it's the years of learning about human psychology and sociology that have truly made me pessimistic about the future of this species. We have ~8 billion brains running on a 6000 years old cultural operating system that's so bad, so buggy, so maliciously designed that there's nothing redeeming about it left overall, and every update just moved the freezing closer to the final bricking. And nobody else can fix this, there is no undo, no backup, no extraterrestrials coming to the rescue, no magical beings coming to the rescue.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
I legitimately don't know about that, man.
Imagine you have no idea about any of this. Or, imagine you know, think it's about 5% as bad as it really is, and are frustrated that "someone doesn't do something because it's so easy".
Like honestly, you can't accuse these people of malice. Just ignorance. The average person I mean. Literally as far as they know there's nothing wrong at all.
The people at the top? Sure.
wulfhound@reddit
50/50.
Benign ignorance rather than malice is forgivable, sure. But "Won't they do something about it" flips hard and fast to "You'll never make ME eat a bug!" the moment any of that _something_ is actually on the table.
If ignorance is the defence they want to hide behind, then maybe shut the hell up when those who are trying to run the thing at least attempt to fix some of it.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
Fair point.
The belligerence of "fix it right now but don't change anything" is something I'm all too familiar with.
wulfhound@reddit
Also "don't make the little people pay", it turns out the "little people" concerned are not in fact Kenyan subsistence farmers or Bangladeshi peasants, but Westerners who, while not living billionaire lifestyles, fly on holiday multiple times per year, own two or more cars per household, and have a planetary footprint maybe 3-5x that which the Earth can possibly bear for everyone.
Immediate-Tennis9524@reddit
It's worth remembering that the majority of people don't have access to the luxuries afforded to the wealthy and legitimately didn't ask for it either.
I genuinely believe that most people would rather capitalism leaves them the fuck alone.
KR1S71AN@reddit
You must remember too that a large percentage of people are brainwashed and do not vote on the environment but rather on stupid things like the economy, if they like the candidate or not, abortion, etc. Most are convinced our lifestyle of exponential growth is normal and not the ticking time bomb it is. They also to some extent even aspire to be those people at the top one day. The American dream is more like the ecological nightmare. So many people today are disgusting. Though I'll grant it, they are just a product of their environment. They were fed the lies of technological hope, economic growth, stock markets, capitalism, and many more. A lot of them are probably not to blame for their stupidity. They were designed to be that way by the people in power. Everything's going according to plan. But that does not make it any easier to sympathize with their views.
wulfhound@reddit
Combination of two things.
The average person is not very imaginative (even if they're capable of it, work and advertising leave it heavily suppressed), but they want something to look forward to.
(This, incidentally, is why today's vibes are in some ways so much worse than the latter half of the 20th century - despite wealth and living standards being materially much higher. It's that lack of something to look forward to).
Planes & cars: don't get any faster.
Space travel: manned interplanetary doesn't get any more realistic, such programmes as there are exist mostly as parasites on the state.
Computers: no more Moore's law, software bloat means they feel the same as a generation ago.
etc.
My point is, their current car is bigger than their last one, so the next one has to be bigger again. Their current holiday was a longer flight than the last one, ditto.
Outside of alt circles - which are growing, but slowly - there's not a convincing narrative about how to look forward to less of everything, how that might in any way lead to a better life.
(I think covid lockdowns may have been a glimpse of that for some - albeit the benefits were unevenly distributed - perhaps that's why others are so quick to tell us how much they hated it, the idea that life can be better with just a lot more birdsong and a hell of a lot less empty consumer-recreation is somewhere between taboo and heresy).
Taqueria_Style@reddit
The economy might actually be the environment though.
Just not in the way they're thinking.
m00z9@reddit
Reproduction is still actively evil. Who is responsible for that embryo-burden? Can humans really claim to be perfectly unconscious and innocently instinctual?
Immediate-Tennis9524@reddit
I agree with you. Western humans specifically have been brainwashed to believe that we are somehow separate from nature. Surrounded by capitalism to the extent that some people never even see outside of their cities and are actively afraid of nature.
I agree also with the statement that a lot of people aspire to be the oppressor, as though that's the destination in life.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
I mean YES.
Like, I'm legitimately not going to say I don't appreciate certain things. I appreciate a grocery store. I appreciate a hospital. I appreciate toothpaste. Radiant barrier in roofs. A window AC. A refrigerator. Internet service. A basic computer. I appreciate a car but would prefer very much to not need one. If we're all so scared of trains and want to be alone and not mugged, radical idea... just put a train with like phone booths inside. Just. Wall off the chairs. I mean I get it, in LA I'd rather not get second-hand high off of crack.
But I mean anyone that can do the basic math? Come on. The fucking we're all going to get in old age (or hell, even in child care) is in no way compensated for by the extra conveniences and luxuries we have now.
Medical inflates at 5.15% historically. That's per YEAR. 5.15% that's outrageous. Groceries have been doing that for a few years and everyone's losing their minds. This is EVERY YEAR FOR THE PAST 60.
The cheap seats on elder care are going to go you 2.3 MILLION by the time you are needing to use them. That's if you're in perfect health. Triple that if you're not.
Yeah I want it to leave me the fuck alone. Jesus. That's impossible.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
This whole thing about communism I swear to God. Just because we felt like we deserved Germany like 80 damn years ago? Time to get over it I think.
dumnezero@reddit
Most people don't revolt, in any way really. The capitalists are a tiny minority, they could be dealt with by the majority populations with ease.
No revolt in any way, no signs of it, no effort at all.
Let me make this clear, as it's necessary:
Nobody else is going to evacuate the capitalism from your head. There is no exorcism ritual to perform from the outside. Attempts to do that externally will backfire as there are a host of capitalism defense mechanisms in which you're engaging right now as you read these words.
devadander23@reddit
It’s simply the global economic system within with multiple generations have been indoctrinated from birth to believe it’s the ‘way things are done’. Ending it isn’t something that is going to happen voluntarily. Collapse is inevitable, climate change is a one way ticket. I agree this isn’t something we are going to overcome on our own.
dumnezero@reddit
There are a bunch of big things that are putting cracks in Capitalist Realism, climate chaos being one them. None are nice or pleasant. It could be called the hard way.
This is why I think of extinction. We have to get rid of this culture, this Wetiko culture, but it's global. Relying on some survivors like those uncontacted peoples... is unlikely, they'll probably be murdered or die due to climate chaos and novel diseases. I can't see the continuity without the problem, without reproducing the same mistakes, at a low level of effort. With high effort, of course, I imagine that humans could truly rewild themselves, could successfully deculturate. That would be truly revolutionary.
Creamofwheatski@reddit
Learned of Wetiko mot long ago. It is really the perfe t word for the sickness of our society.
wulfhound@reddit
You can't get rid of it all, but you can get rid of some. One step at a time.
Opt out of what you can, little by little, and live well.
If others see that's possible, some will begin to do the same.
devadander23@reddit
Or magic mishrooms
Brandonjh2@reddit
Your comment and overall Reddit/technology usage are contributors to global warming, if you practiced what you preached then you’d cut down on your own waste instead of contributing more to make zero-value comments and further the doom
Less_Subtle_Approach@reddit
You are very smart.
Brandonjh2@reddit
At least I’m not a hypocrite posting about how others should take more action to reduce emissions
Nowhereman123@reddit
Brandonjh2@reddit
Another post creating more carbon emissions but I guess only others should be mindful of how wasteful their lifestyle is huh? Rules for thee but not for me
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
Meat industry and commerce need to be banned asap
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
Yes go see how much of a struggle it is to be the one person who tries. People will treat you like absolute shit.
When you say things like this I assume you haven't even tried to stop your own excess consumption.
Or really, what you're actually telling people is to kill themselves in a polite way because you can't stop consuming if you're alive. You will overconsume just by being born to this system.
But I'm probably the bad guy for putting real words to your empty statements.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
You can't. That's my point.
I can, sure, go live on a dirt farm in the middle of nowhere and raise chickens and be the hermit that everyone treats like a bum.
But unless I want to off myself at age 84, I have to be in the stock market.
The stock market is a perpetuation of slavery. Like let's not white wash this. It's also tacit approval of the system with the only voice it recognizes.
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
You can help with your consumer choices. You will not literally die by eating plant based, biking to work if you are able, not flying, etc.
m00z9@reddit
https://libquotes.com/john-kenneth-galbraith/quote/lbm2c5m
Keynes and Galbraith separately foresaw it all. And Marx.
goochstein@reddit
You'll have to be a bit more specific, that's a broad expression. I think it's shifting the other way. Meaning it's pretty obvious what is happening yet we still have to work and also make things right, can't be thinking you'll be spared in the blink of an eye, even during the dark ages there is still writing and art, it will serve as inspiration for future generations, it has to. otherwise.. 🥺
CollapseBy2022@reddit
Probably the only time temperatures rose faster during the past few billion years on this planet, was the short period after the dino asteroid, when it caused a 'nuclear winter' and that winter ended.
No other extinction event comes close to the amount of destruction we're about to cause. https://i.imgur.com/B9ZMdKD.jpeg
goochstein@reddit
I'm not giving up I like these communities to learn perspective, as it tends to swing either way, no middle ground here. Giving up is what is leading to this collective funk many are in rn
roboito1989@reddit
People giving up is a consequence to what is going on, it’s not leading to the “collective funk.” The fact of the matter is that if you look at the cold hard facts, comb through them, there is only one logical conclusion to come to, that we, as a collective ecosystem, not even just humans, are fucked. Anyone who is not arriving at that conclusion is ignoring crucial pieces of data, whether knowingly (like the scientist shills that work for big oil), or unknowingly (people who think that there is still hope because they likely cannot handle the truth, and ignoring such information paints a rosier picture that they can deal with.)
The only way to maybe “fix things” and still remain with any semblance of an okay ecosystem would be to end things right now. And as other have said, tipping points have already been passed. But if we stopped it all now, perhaps something salvageable would be left. But the only way to do that would be to cut the population of humans down by an insane amount… like 90% gone or more, the death of almost all domesticated livestock, and an extensive project to decommission all nuclear power plants and the innumerable other hazards that dot our planet and that cannot continue to function without the modern industrial system… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Technology won’t save us. It sucks, but it’s true. We are in this situation because of it. We have little to no control over what is happening here. No one person really does, save for some people at the top, and even they are only one person. If any of those psychopaths decided they wanted to change course, they’d probably just get replaced. Modern man has little to no control over anything in their lives.
So, yeah, unfortunately there isn’t anything being done, there is little to nothing we can do, and there is no reason to think that we are on track to fix any of this. Literally nothing is being done to fix anything on any meaningful scale. As long as the destruction far outweighs the prevention of, or repair of it, we are fucked. And there’s a good possibility we would be anyway.
Designed_0@reddit
Technology could save us if we pumped the trillions of dollars into it instead of making war....
jutzi46@reddit
Sure would be nice, but it's not likely.
At this rate the ice caps will melt, when not if. They are not a permanent feature of this planet, they're leftovers from the ice age. Once they're gone it would take another similar "ice age" to recreate them.
Not even just looking at sea level rise, literally the movement of heat from the equator to the poles through the ocean currents will no longer function as we know it. We have no idea what that will mean.
tony87879@reddit
Yeah I think the energy to turn ice to water is huge and once there’s no more ice we could see a large jump in water temperature. Probably large enough to be catastrophic.
jutzi46@reddit
Definitely.
My very basic understanding comes from a heating/refrigeration background. I think of it as the ice caps are the earth's air conditioner. The habitable land masses are out "house" and the ocean connects the two. Obviously far more complex than that, but at its most basic Ice cap gone, no more Ac for the house.
dumpsterwaffle77@reddit
It still would be created under our current system that stifles the many in favor of the few at the top. Whatever tech achievements will only further enrich the elites and take us further down our current path and create an unlivable environment on earth. This is disregarding if we can even control AI or new tech systems instead of it destroying us. It seems though that's the course that's been laid ever since the industrial revolution.
Semoan@reddit
hell yeah brother, cheers from the Hyperloop headquarters
pajamakitten@reddit
Where are we going to get the resources for that tech? How will we generate the power for it?
Designed_0@reddit
Solar, nuclear & the insane amounts of money tech companies are throwing at fusion means it wont be long before we have commercial reactors
KR1S71AN@reddit
There's no giving up or fighting. Both are inconsequential to what's coming. Tipping points have been crossed. We have locked in our future. All there is left to do is either prepare for it and try to survive whatever amount of time is possible before there's literally no way to feed yourself anymore or just go enjoy the last few years of civilization and die with it.
jedrider@reddit
True. Resistance is futile. But, try to leave some of the Earth intact so my children or grandchildren can appreciate some nature and wild animals in their natural habitat, just a tiny bit, please.
KR1S71AN@reddit
Sorry but I don't think that's happening. This is a mass extinction event. Neither humans nor wild life will make it. Life will go on but most complex life won't. Most likely upwards of 99% of all life will go extinct.
NoseyMinotaur69@reddit
Most people can't even imagine that, lol. I wish I was ignorant again.
BowelMan@reddit
True death for our species. No past and no future. I welcome it.
TheArcticFox444@reddit
Is that fact-based or wishful thinking? I believe/hope our high-tech civilization fails and the sooner it happens, the better it will be for the survivors.
Someone just pull the plug...Lights Out!
See:
Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Edward J. Koppel; Broadway Books, crownpublishing.com; 2015.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber-Weapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth; Bloomsbury Publishing; www.bloomsbury.com; 2021.
talkyape@reddit
#2. Make as much money as I can gambling on stock options and try to enjoy a year or two of my life before too late all gone 🤗
pajamakitten@reddit
It is human nature to fight though. It might be futile but it is something instinctive in us and people will fight until they die if they have to.
Mountain_Fig_9253@reddit
It’s not giving up.
It’s getting to acceptance on the stages of grief.
goochstein@reddit
Try as you might, we're still here, it's like nature and the forces in physics, come and go if you'd like but "we" are STILL here, and the planet.
Aw_Ratts@reddit
The dinosaurs were still here until they went extinct.
talkyape@reddit
There is nothing to be done. Earth's sixth mass extinction event is locked in. The funk you speak of is one step after awareness and one step before radical acceptance and nihilistic freedom.
TheRealKison@reddit
And we're going for the speed run record.
disturbed_ghost@reddit
Yeah, best we can hope for would be a quick ending to this.
m00z9@reddit
how does one do the "submission statement" trick ?
Straight-Razor666@reddit
there isn't. We passed the point of no return long, long ago...the sociopathic monsters who run the world know it and are filling their wallets as fast as they can and tirelessly work to keep the sheep in the dark about the reality of the terracide they've waged and the real hell soon to come...
Sooner than expected, worse than predicted™
rmannyconda78@reddit
“Nothing like mindless consumerism to fill the void”
-Trevor Phillips (when buying something playing his character in gta v)
ontrack@reddit (OP)
SS: we have become useless to the planet and the next generation and we will be assigned by earth to the recycle bin. As we do not have the capacity to stop overconsumption our civilization will collapse leaving behind only a rump of humanity. Treating the earth as an unlimited supermarket is going to result in us having nothin in the end.
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
Doing the best things for the earth and living as best as we could for the planet will still result in...
Collapse. Leaving is nothing in the end.
This is the state of our universe. All of this will end no matter how much you try to stop it.
Humans overconsuming are just following programming. It's this hubris you all have to think you can stop this inertia. When no other species has ever done that before. When groups of humans try to live in a way that is good for the earth other humans kill them. When species are successful they overconsume until they collapse.
We are animals.
We are following our programming. The same as every single thing in this universe. The sun consumes the planets. The black hole consumes galaxies. The animals consume their planet. The bacteria consume the animals.
No_ConMKUltrapenis@reddit
Doomer boomer. Go buy a tombstone mate.
mistyflame94@reddit
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collapse-ModTeam@reddit
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TheArcticFox444@reddit
Is it possible to stop it? Yes. Is it probable? No.
True. But, we are abstract-thinking animals. To fix a problem: 1. Correctly identify the cause of the problem instead of the results of the problem. You're blaming human artifacts...the results.
No_ConMKUltrapenis@reddit
We do have the capacity to stop overconsuming.
DrDeboGalaxy@reddit
Now that’s a word salad. It always seems ironic when people talk like this on twitter which uses the consumed materials espoused by them.
Neat_Ad_3158@reddit
Right. Forget that the super wealthy and corporations are doing the most damage. Blame everyday people struggling to survive.
ontrack@reddit (OP)
If the poor traded places with the rich we'd see the same thing. Humanity is the problem.
jedrider@reddit
Strip mining the Earth (and Ocean floor, as well, soon). We took away nature, so what did we expect?
Alarming_Award5575@reddit
don't get me wrong. the planet is fucked. but what romantic over dramatic tripe. humans are behaving stupidly like any other species with a sudden abundance of food and no foresight. we aren't 'consumatrons.' we are fucking lemmings.
TheArcticFox444@reddit
How do you fix a problem? First, you must correctly identify it. You must identify the cause of the problem.
You're just blaming the results of the problem.
No wonder the problem isn't getting fixed. You're not only barking up the wrong tree...you're in the wrong forest.
TheArcticFox444@reddit
Just pull the plug 🔌 The sooner, the better...for the sake of ecosystems and its survivors...including humans.
See:
Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Edward J. Koppel; Broadway Books, crownpublishing.com; 2015.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber-Weapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth; Bloomsbury Publishing; www.bloomsbury.com; 2021.
LudovicoSpecs@reddit
It wouldn't have surprised me if this had been written by a singularity-level AI.
Humanity isn't the problem. "Westernized" civilization is. Plenty of people in "less advancedr" nations live with minimal impact to planet.
ontrack@reddit (OP)
I agree that many people do live with minimal impact to the planet, but I would also bet that many of them would consume at western levels if they could.
goochstein@reddit
This raises an interesting point, kudos to calling it what it is, the term tho is a bit much, and consumer and,, whatever the other word is doesn't quite flow.
We DO need to figure out as humans how to re-align with this planet, our calling, what it means to be humans, fast.
bipolarearthovershot@reddit
I feel this too and I often wonder why did all the other movements for getting back to the earth die out?
Taqueria_Style@reddit
It can't be done on an individual basis.
That's not to say it can't be done at all. You're gonna need like 30 people and multiple acreage. But yeah at that point it's probably possible.
ishitar@reddit
I think it's a very apt term as we grow our consumption beyond physical goods to electronic instant gratification services like LLM and image/video gen. Each paragraph generated by an LLM consumes a liter of water and all that.
The current AI is actually an existential threat because instead of paper clips, in pursuit of money we will turn the world into silicon and power generation.
Taqueria_Style@reddit
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Wait for the tax bailouts for the losers. Of which there will be legion. And they are spending money faster than we can even print it.
thoptergifts@reddit
A hurricane just caused the national parks system to close all of the blue ridge parkway. Let that sink in and tell me having kids is an intelligent, reasonable decision in the same breath.
markodochartaigh1@reddit
Juvenal spoke about the political aspect of this 2,000 years ago. "Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses."
DarthKushHybrid@reddit
Bingo
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1fd2a2k/capitalisms_bad_deal_trading_what_we_need_for/
djtibbs@reddit
There would be balance if we didn't pack humans into cities like schools of fish. There is an amount of land needed for each person. We have decided to concentrate the people and spread the farms. No herd of animals could survive in LA county for the amount of time people have lived there
thepersonimgoingtobe@reddit
He went about getting attention for his ideas in a very bad way, but Ted Kaczsynki had it right.
esanuevamexicana@reddit
Who is "we?"
ontrack@reddit (OP)
Good question. IMO it's anyone who lives an unsustainable lifestyle and anyone who aspires to live an unsustainable lifestyle, from the point of view of consumption and waste.
Longjumping-Path3811@reddit
So literally all of humanity and the animals we care for because that's what a successful species does. Every single successful species will consume until collapse. Every single one.
You think we aren't animals? So you think we are special? That's a joke you played on yourself.
ontrack@reddit (OP)
A successful species finds an equilibrium in their ecological niche, like the ones which have been around for millions of years with little change.
NyriasNeo@reddit
well, it is not a "must" to secure humanity's survival. In fact, it is impossible. All individual dies eventually. All species go extinct eventually. All civilizations collapse eventually. It is just a matter of time.
Life changes conditions around it, but evolution does not catch up fast enough. So it is inevitable that life dies because of the changed conditions. Look no further than the early life which excretes oxygen, poisonous to themselves, wiping themselves out, but gave rise to oxygen breathing life like us.
Flaccidchadd@reddit
It's the unmitigated multipolar trap playing out to the final conclusion for this cycle which is the 6th mass extinction. Once we reached some critical tipping point in population and complexity, that is well in the rearview, the outcome was deterministic. Suffering from success
IndieStoner@reddit
Maybe the real killer robots were the friends we made along the way...
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/ontrack:
SS: we have become useless to the planet and the next generation and we will be assigned by earth to the recycle bin. As we do not have the capacity to stop overconsumption our civilization will collapse leaving behind only a rump of humanity. Treating the earth as an unlimited supermarket is going to result in us having nothing in the end.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1fvy4q4/consumatronic_zombies_is_one_way_to_describe_us/lqaionr/