[Migrated, see pinned post] Casual Conversation

I think it's ego personally, we have to think we're here for a reason, and want to think we're seeing something important. Even with the disasters, it's important to remember this planet will keep on spinning for milennia to come. No matter what we do, life will continue and we will be a very tiny irrelevant blip. Even if all life ceases to exist - it'll only be temporarily.

And before people jump down my throat, it's just part of the human condition. Look at the Christians, they've been saying it's the end times for hundreds of years now. We want to believe we're lucky enough to be a part of something big, to be there.

I'm not saying we won't go through hard times, we probably will, in fact it's looking probable. But life is going to be fine. The earth will be fine. Humanity will probably (in the scheme of thousands of years) be fine. Even if we aren't life in general will be.

For some reason that gives me comfort too. Even if everything goes wrong, their anger and hate is such a tiny insignificant thing in comparison to actual time. It will all be forgotten. It's all just dust and echoes.

Things get worse and keep getting worse till some threshold forces radical total change.

At least this is what i understand from history.

I fully intend and hope to see “THE END” of this world because it means i and the generations after me have a chance of something better.

Do some people? Sure. There's more than a few sects of evangelicals that are all in on the end of the world.

But, frankly, outside of certain religious sects and/or cults, I strongly doubt it's all that widespread.

Even the preppers I know don't want it to collapse, they're just aware that society is fragile and is more likely than not going to collapse - knowing something is likely to happen and preparing for it is very very different than hoping for it.

I'm terminally doomer, but even I don't really think that the "world is ending" is a likely outcome, even if the worst of everything possible happens.

The question, for me, has always not been 'will humans die out' so much as 'can we stop squabbling over stupid shit long enough we don't all die'.

I do think it has to do with dissatisfaction

I have fantasised alot about scenarios I as a disabled person would not survive or remotely thrive in but also can't help but think of the scenario where I can live without the bullshit of the political world

I don't know if it's wanting to see "The End" as you put it, but at least in my case I'm just tired of all the "We're this close to doomsday!" stuff and think to myself "Holy crap, just get it over with already" - the idea being that after everything turns to absolute crap, the only direction left is back up.

Like either the world is going to end soon, or we're going to figure out how to get along as a collective, global society. But while we're stuck in between the two, it's annoying.

I think it's tempting to imagine a definitive end, especially one that's over with quickly, as opposed to a slow crawl where things gradually get worse for the people who don't deserve it.

Look at climate change, for example. People have started dying from extreme weather, but it's not the people causing it, it's the little guys just trying to live their lives. It's safe to assume that an extinction event would play out the same way, with the people on the bottom going out first, and painfully, because they aren't protected.

And people don't want to imagine that, but they can't muster the optimism for anything better than going out with a bang.

Late to the party but I'd say something about this. Sure looks like folks are plenty aware we've been on a downward track for many decades and now it's plain enough that folks are naming it "polycrisis" or "metacrisis". Baked into the material conditions of life how such as it is, I don't reckon folks want to see an END but rather see no brakes on this express elevator of combined existential threats. There is now a concentration of power such that it is so much toothpaste impossible to get back in the tube -failing awful violence or catastrophe. A divided, hopelessly propagandized culture that can never get on the same page for collective action. I hear friends talking about lifeboats and doing what one can as communities. Maybe that's all we have left now.

Welll - suppose I’m all right w/o the unspeakable horrors. But!

I’d wanna see all kinds of cool scenarios instead, parts of peaceful/bountiful trajectories :)

Well I don't want to see the end. Other than the climate issues that are already to far gone to have anything remotely like the lives we have right now. All the other stuff we can fight and get through. I do grieve for humanitys lost potential as a species. I live like someone that is terminal and charish everyday and make a bucket list for things I want to do before I can't do them anymore.

I can't tell you how much I want to be wrong but reading the ipcc reports. You can't help but count your days. It's gone from if we just stop doing what we are doing 30 years ago we will be okay. To if we stop everything right now and have a miracle tech that can pull carbon out of the air. It won't be as bad and we are not even doing the stopping part. We have to beat fascism before we can even start step 1.

I will happeily eat crow the day I'm wrong with a big smile on my face.

There was this scene in the movie "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" that always sticks with me. They are laying in the bed staring at each other when the meteor makes earth fall. I live that scene in slow motion when it comes to the climate every heat dome or winter vortex or wildfire. Is another aftershock they flinch at as they stare at each other waiting for the screen to go black.

Sometimes you just reach a point where you don't care one way or another anymore.

I just want to see the end of things getting worse; sure, there have been good developments, but for every good thing at least ten other things get worse. Be it people with seemingly unlimited funds and power fucking everything up because they felt like it or climate change (I don't even know which is the bigger threat any more).

I just want things to improve, but that's more or less a pipe dream.