Have we hit peak humanity?

Genocide in the middle-east, a climate conference organized and attended the world’s worst polluters, reemergence of the far-right in Europe, possible second Trump term, massive rearmament and military spending, a disturbingly wobbly financial and economic system, living standards starting to fall, not to mention the climate crisis which appears to be becoming more acute and more alarming with each passing year. Is anyone optimistic about the future?

Mid to end of the 1990’s was the peak, all downhill from there to the ultimate demise of the human race

Is anyone optimistic about the future?

Nope! Individually people can be fantastic. Collectively we’re a bunch of utter dickheads and I can’t see that ever changing to be honest. In short I think we’re **** in the next two to three generations.

Peak humanity was when we were hunter gatherers and not **** up the planet for monetary gain.

I fear we are on the wrong side of the bell curve now.

People have been shafting each other and nature since human records began, so there’s nothing new about that.

What is new, is that we now know exactly what we are doing as a species, and have tools and levers to control our damage, possibly reverse it. and seem to be steadfastly (as a collective) refusing to use them as it might cause a bit of perceived inconvenience to some.

This century will determine our fate, I’m sure of that.

We’ll either see a global war, AI supremacy, carry on with our global extinction agenda or get our sh*t together.

Even if we get with the plan, it’s going to get a lot worse before it improves.

I think we can expect a Chinese invasion of Taiwan within 10 years as the US’s global power wains. That could get truly nasty, just the financial shock to the world alone, let alone what it could trigger militarily.

Its climate change that will get us.  Billions are going to die in your childrens lifetimes.  the eco collapse is now visible coming towards us fast and no one in power has any interest in doing anything about it that will make a differnce.

Humankind may stabilise after the crash but I doubt it.   But billions of people will die and billions will be displaced.  We will be lucky if we can keep any kind of technological society going.

What a cheery thread, and just in time for mince pie season.

Our own fear and hubris will get us. Sadly it wont come quickly enough so we will have to endure another christmase

Tis the prophecy! Prepare for the Second Coming and holy wrath against unrepentant sinners!

I’m getting a plane ticket to Jerusalem so that I can be ready for The Rapture at the Mount of Olives.

Peak humanity and peak STW!

Ok, who works for the Star on here then? Own up!

Mid to end of the 1990’s was the peak, all downhill from there to the ultimate demise of the human raceMid to end of the 1990’s was the peak, all downhill from there to the ultimate demise of the human race

Agree, it felt as though there was some sort of progression until then (gender, race, not really peace but better, not as ridiculous politics).

When looking back at the human race in year 4,000 (the few that are left) it will be pretty clear that the species was 100% to blame for its own downfall. It could have solved a lot of the things but greed and lack of morality stopped it doing so.

Artificial General Intelligence will sort if all out at some point but may not be how the human race would have chosen to sort it all out.

Honestly, I think society will start to improve once enough boomers* have dropped off.

*Obviously, ‘Not all boomers!’ but as a generation I don’t think there is much you guys haven’t **** up.  Gave us some good music and some pretty decent drugs BITD, I’ll give you that though.

COP28 is in Dubai…

What a cheery thread, and just in time for mince pie season.

I’m panic buying/eating to lay down my fat reserves. Then we can start eating you skinny folk…..

extreme poverty is declining, extreme hunger is declining, fewer children are dying at birth and in childhood, some notable diseases are all but eradicated, people are getting taller (which seems weird but its mostly down to better nutrition) teenaged pregnancy rates are falling, and fewer people are taking up smoking. Over the long term murder rates are violent crimes are declining everywhere, and as much as its hard to believe right now, there have been fewer wars than pretty much at any time you care to look at.

There are fewer nuclear weapons, and more people live in democracies than ever before. Trump is being handed his arse in court, Musk just killed off what remains of X, Kissenger has just died, and Farage has revealed himself to be an insensitive boring middle aged bloke with nothing really to say, and he’s done it on live telly.

I’ve made my Xmas pudding already!

I saw a matrix meme the other day.

Basically
“Matrix in 99 described humanity at its peak.
23 yes later, they might of had a point and I’m starting to agree with the machines”.

Personally, we seem to be in a cycle of hate & incompetence and not sure we’ll ever recover..

Ok, who works for the Star on here then? Own up!

Dunno, but I’m guessing one of the “Boffins” is a Douglas Adam’s fan…

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”

As to the OP…

In terms of quality of life, we’re in an unprecedented time where a generation will be worse off and live shorter lives than its parents.

https://www.ft.com/content/81343d9e-187b-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/millennial-burnout-the-first-generation-predicted-to-go-backwards-in-terms-of-life-expectancy-1.4362336#:~:text=Millennials%20are%20the%20first%20generation,be%20a%20pretty%20profound%20realisation.%E2%80%9D

So, by those metrics, we have peaked. I’m certainly worse off than my mum and dad we’re when they were my age in the 80s. They wonder why I don’t have kids yet, when I live in a tiny flat with fairly limited disposable income because of the increase in the cost of living. When they were my age, they lived in a five bedroom house and the gas bill didn’t make up 10% of that they had left after the mortgage was paid.

By other metrics we’re doing okay I’m sure, it’s not like life is totally awful.

Mid to end of the 1990’s was the peak, all downhill from there to the ultimate demise of the human race

Having had my formative years bang on in the middle of that period, yeah it felt like a hopeful and progressive time with lots of positive potential on the horizon.

But doesn’t everyone’s teens/twenties feel like that? For boomers (my parents generation) the 60s held the same rose tinted status, that generation rode the 80s-90s wave of hyper-capitalism and resultant house prices.
Early Gen Xers will get misty eyed for the 70s glam rock, punk, etc and went on to give us austerity. And our current PM (actually a couple of years younger than me) had his formative experiences during that ‘peak’ of the 90s when we were full of hope and thought the future would be more inclusive and caring, He wants to “stop the boats” fake tax cuts and cling on to the nations borrowed ‘heritage’ for culture war points…

I’d suggest that those times people see as humanity hitting a ‘peak’ or achieving their ‘best’ are simply periods of relatively comfortable living standards, with minimal conflict that give the great unwashed some respite and a warm fuzzy feeling before normal service is resumed…

Perhaps the rougher times are actually character building, I hold little hope for my own generation achieving anything positive now, but maybe by being a shower of hording bastards like those before us, our kids generation will have something worth rebelling against to achieve another positive period. Unintended consequences eh?

Humanity barely passed toddling, we’re experiencing humanity go through the terrible twos (thousands) right now! 

Nickc – all very well but you didn’t mention the elephant in the room – climate change

As munrobiker points out the standard of living of folk reaching middle age in the UK now is lower than their parents but that is mainly due to poor governance over decades in the UK.

Its climate change that will do for us tho.  Large areas of the world that now have a surplus of food grown for export will no longer be able to do so leading to severe food shortages even in Europe.  Rivers are going to dry up as the glaciers feeding them disappear.  This is going to lead to massive migration on a scale that exponentially bigger than anything we have ever seen and death on an unprecedented scale

Its just a cycle, but generally its in the right direction. We make progress then slip back a bit, but not to where we started. Parts of society move faster, the dead weights need to catch up or die and then there will be further progress.

I think many of us her are tainted by the lunacy of Brexit and Tories. Brexit is the ultimate catching up, loads of the idiots have to see how bad being outside of the EU is. Our act of backwards self harm will probably strengthen the EU as other countries realise leaving is not a great option and wont pander to the left behind and lovong in the past brigade like we did.

Also reme,ber the 90s might have been good in the UK, there were plenty of other places where life wasnt so great and is better now, lots of the ex soviet block countries that are now part of the EU for example.

Also reme,ber the 90s might have been good in the UK, there were plenty of other places where life wasnt so great and is better now, lots of the ex soviet block countries that are now part of the EU for example.

Indeed not many people in Bosnia getting all nostalgic for the 90s…

Just go out on your bike, all will be well.

Its just a cycle, but generally its in the right direction.

Yeah, apart from the bit where we’re relentlessly exhausting the planet’s resources turning stuff into a load of massively complicated and often completely unnecessary consumer goods in the name of ‘growth’ and ‘progress’. I suspect in a few hundred years times, people – if there are any – will look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

They’ll also wonder at our poor punctuation.

Individually people can be fantastic. Collectively we’re a bunch of utter dickheads and I can’t see that ever changing to be honest. In short I think we’re **** in the next two to three generations.

I think collectively we can be brilliant, however currently a small group of extremely wealthy arseholes and power hungry politicians are the tail wagging the dog, controlling the narrative and restricting the options that democracy can take.

I hope to see the power wrestled back in my lifetime, but with the control that these neoliberal influences are exerting over even the purportedly left wing political parties, I am not sure I will, at least without a disastrous event forcing a change.

I think many of us her are tainted by the lunacy of Brexit and Tories. Brexit is the ultimate catching up, loads of the idiots have to see how bad being outside of the EU is. Our act of backwards self harm will probably strengthen the EU as other countries realise leaving is not a great option and wont pander to the left behind and lovong in the past brigade like we did.

Unfortunately the direction of travel is the same in the EU as it is in the UK and the US, they may be at different stages but make no mistake that the same miss directions and populist moves are being made, unfortunately with success.

all very well but you didn’t mention the elephant in the room – climate change

Sure, I know, it was before my morning coffee. I hear what you’re saying, but you can’t state your opinions like they’re facts.  there’s always more to do on climate change, the fact is that there’s more renewable energy being used, its fact that most developed countries have policies to reduce emissions, Its fact that Oil states in the middle east are planning for when they cap reserves and leave oil in the ground, that more people are aware of the need to reduce emissions are all positives. 

I’m not blindly optimistic about the speed of progress, but being relentlessly eey-ore about it is equally reductive.

I suggest some people are viewing history through rose tinted glasses if they thing this is as bad as things have been..

take any period of history and you will find immense suffering, subjugation, and basically humans being utter shits to other humans..

as a random example, take the Victorian era..

wars, imperialism, massive social inequality, children dying left right and centre, homophobia, racism, slavery still existed across the world..

granted robots weren’t going to take over the world, but I’d happily take the society we live in now over the one we lived in 150 years ago..

What nickc says.

Westerners have never had it so good.

I suggest some people are viewing history through rose tinted glasses if they thing this is as bad as things have been..

Not really, the question is has it peaked rather than is it better or worse than not was 1,000 years ago.

With climate change and other ‘advances’ in consumerism, social media etc,. will peoples lives be happier/better in 100 year than now.

Westerners have never had it so good.

Absolutely. But is this as good as it’ll get, and either we’re plateauing, or even heading for decline? Or are things just “a bit bumpy”, and progress in the long term is still happening?

over population is a major issue combined with greed, inequality, jealousy, which hits all faceted classes in their own ways will further the divides and the next 100 years or so are going to bring with it a lot of turmoil, disease, collateral damage and regression as a species.

I also think people are getting stupider, I’ve no evidence to back that up other than working with a lot of Gen z’s at my last company most appeared to lack common sense, hindsight, forward thinking and didn’t seem to know basic world stuff. They were very good at core things like maths, geography, science but seemed to get their entire world narrative off of whatever was popular amongst their age group on tiktok and suprisingly all seemed to not have a clue about history, one I worked with thought pearl harbour happened in the 70’s and another had a heated conversation with me about Marco Polo being entirely fictional because the tv series showed him interacting with ghenghis khan which would have been impossible as the real Ghenghis was around “2000 years before the Silk Road existed”

Or are things just “a bit bumpy”, and progress in the long term is still happening?

This.

We live in a society that is generally internationally rules based, I think WW2 was a turning point when most nations realised that broad scale land wars between major developed nations just couldn’t happen any more. Once you’ve decided that it makes the space for everything else that’s flowed from it. You can’t have the sort of technological progress we’ve had if every 20-50 years or so you’re killing a good percentage of your young men in nonsense wars with your neighbours (Germany; I’m looking at you here) . There’s only one way to improve the lives of billions and that’s the slow steady march to social-liberal democracy. The fact that the right are going down fighting will be a chapter in the book titled “Stupid shits of late 20thC who did stupid shit because they didn’t want to not own all the toys and didn’t want to share” and like we do now at people like Napoleon, and Romanovs; Laugh and point at how dumb they were.

I also think people are getting stupider

It’s boomers/gen-X who are voting for all the stupid shit that’s happening whereas young folk are generally voting against it.

So they might be thicker but at least they aren’t ****.  Although I also don’t think they are thicker.

For a counter to some of the negativity, have a read of Factfulness, ten reasons why we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think.

Spoiler. On nearly every metric you might care about, the world is improving rapidly and at a rate that is accelerating. Child mortality, literacy, life expectancy, vaccination rates, crime, violent death, number of wars, female education and equal rights, tree cover, pollution, access to clean drinking water, disease reduction, birth rates and population trends etc.

The book authors quizzed policy makers and experts around the world and they consistently got questions wrong about these, always assuming things were worse than they were. So what chance have the general public got of having a balanced view?

The book goes into the reasons why we get these things wrong, and gives you the tools to see beyond the headlines for a more balanced view.  It’s not claiming there aren’t bad things happening or many problems still to address (climate change is the biggie of course) but that progress is being made. It’s honestly worth a read for the good of your mental health.

Sadly the main author died in 2018 as the book was published, but his children who coauthored it have carried on the work at https://www.gapminder.org/

I’m not blindly optimistic about the speed of progress, but being relentlessly eey-ore about it is equally reductive.

I get your point but you IMO totally fail to understand the seriousness of the situation.  1.5 degree temp rise is baked in now.  2 degrees is almost certain, 3 degrees is likely.  thats going to have apocalyptic effects on food supply and water supply.  I’m not being eeyore – I am being realistic

there is no significant attempt anywhere in the world to do what is required.  all folk are doing is burying their heads in the sand and fiddling while the world burns

All the other issues we discuss pale into insignificance alongside climate change and the effects are now starting to be seen.  We have 30 – 50 years left IMO untill large sections of the world become uninhabitable with mass migration on a sale that makes what is happening today look like nothing and food shortages that will lead to mass starvation

I’m panic buying/eating to lay down my fat reserves. Then we can start eating you skinny folk…..

When it comes to choosing your Christmas turkey do you pick the skinny malnourished looking one or the plump well fed one….🤔😁

It’s not humanity that’s peaked, it’s the unfit for purpose neoliberal capitalist economic system. Everyone knows it is destructive and dysfunctional, even it’s main supporters in the US, UK and Europe, but no one has quite figured out what to replace it with. When that happens we’ll see enormous improvements across the whole of society, but it’s going to be a bumpy road on the way and we’re slap bang in the middle of the transition. I reckon we’ll start to see a solution emerge when action on the climate accelerates and the social forces which result from that begin to take effect.

The fact that the right are going down fighting will be a chapter in the book titled “Stupid shits of late 20thC who did stupid shit because they didn’t want to not own all the toys and didn’t want to share”

This. The rise of the far right is a symptom of the attempts of the super-rich to hang on to their wealth and power. They know that the days of them being able hang on to their unjustifiable riches are numbered, and they’re using every tool at their disposal to hang on as long as possible. It will change though, sometime in the next couple of decades I reckon.

I get your point but you IMO totally fail to understand the seriousness of the situation.

No, I know how serious it is thanks. I’m also aware that we either need to get doing stuff, or we just sit around and tell each other how bad its gonna get, and I know which camp I’m in.