Humanity is Doomed, or is it?

Some good points here. The right pretends to support traditional values by banning abortion, keeping gays unmarried and bombing Iran. The left claims to support freedom by endorsing a civil rights agenda that penalizes anyone talented, while avoiding foreign policy that needs correcting. The pattern plays itself out in every industrialized nation. The population keeps rising, as does pollution. Are we heading for doom?

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Beyond Modern Society / Transcendentalism / Pan-Nationalism

I'm not going to get left and right here, because there are some things that everybody should be doing that is more important than left/right crap. I think we live in a time where you have to be irrational to be optimistic. If you have children you must be an environmentalist. If you're not, than that perplexes me. The earth has a fever and the worst among us speak for the best. We now live in an age where the strongest nation is at war in two different nations, both practically third world countries with no armies, while the side effect of those wars has given birth to a possible new cold war era. The North Pole just melted faster in the last two years than what that Nobel Prize winning guy predicted and what all the other experts predicted. The world needs to forget about oil and move on. It's the drug that is our earth's downfall.

On one hand I find myself filled with dissatisfaction and complaints and on the other that has borne in me the feeling that there isn't any better time to be alive because progress can be made, attitudes can be changed, and possibilities at advancing are not on the horizon, they are here now in the form of ideas that would let us live in a cleaner world.

But right now my hope teeters because the rich countries and the majority of the people in them either lack the nerve, lack the political will, or are so preoccupied with trivialities and banalities that they are too lazy to be aware of the world around them. I'm especially critical of the cultures in Canada and the United States which have become idiocracies in many ways. Stupidity is rewarded as is goofing off and there is much too much emphasis on style over substance, "first impressions", and narcissism. It is shameful that a good deal of the people who live in both Canada and the US do not have a grasp on terrorism beyond the "we're good and they're bad" talking point, couldn't place most countries in the Middle East if they were tested, and aren't aware of the difference between Sikhs and Arabs. Aren't aware of the kinds of relationships we've engaged in in the Middle East and how that has affected us.

Ok I'm done, I promise. It seems that a lot of people are waking up, I just don't think we'll wake up in time as of right now.

Much of what you quote depends on attitudes towards things in our food. 40 years ago or so people used to hold mercury as part of science class. Lead and other heavy issues were also not seen as an issue. Part of the reason for the changes is due to how people look at their food supply.

I agree with your comment about education though. The public system in America is pitiful. I can't comprehend why this is not a bigger issue among Americans particularly given the importance of human capital in a global economy.

Medical technology alone would lead me to think things are better. Longer life spans, lower infant mortality rates, higher standards of living also seem better. Sure some things get better and others worse but overall I would rather live today than any time in the past.

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"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Yes, I’m with you, partofme.

I think the “humanity is doomed” mentality has the elements of the self-fulfilling prophecy syndrome. Positive thinking might not save the day, but negative thinking will inevitably limit our ability to overcome the problems that confront us.

I disagree with Conservationist’s take on the agenda of the Right and the Left as outlined in his/her OP. And I agree with Jason’s point here that there is not a clear Right or Left delineation on this subject.

While many of the points made in the OP are true, I think it is easy to have a romantic view of the past. Yes, the quality of art, music, architecture, manufacture, literature and other creative expressions of humanity is lacking in our age of mass production and throw away society. But past generations could only dream of flying, going to the Moon, curing diseases that today we can cure with over the counter medicine and the many other examples of progress that human ingenuity has made possible, and that we too often take for granted.

And yes, I admire the great thinkers and leaders of the past, and I lament the paucity of reason and leadership in our world today. Yet, how much of the past was free from devastating wars, plagues of diseases, injustices, inequality and other terrible phenomena attributable to human actions?

The survival of humanity is very much in our hands and in our grasp. But, the way I see it, it has little to do with Right versus Left ideology, good versus evil, Christianity versus Islam, the West versus the Middle East, or the other contentions that dominate the current political discourse.

To me, it’s about humanity striving to find the way to co-exist peacefully on this planet, and to cooperatively tackle the various natural and social challenges that affect us and our future. It’s possible, if we pull our collective imagination, skills and resources together, and, above all, if we have faith in humanity’s spirit of survival. I do.

Tethys

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-- Harry S. Truman

The average IQ, by definition, is 100.

Ocean fish that are high on the food chain have always been high in mercury. We don't eat a whole lot of land predators, especially those that predate on predators of predators of predators of predators of predators. There's a natural concentration that occurs.

There are very few spots in most American cities where you can't stop your car for fear of crime. (I haven't spent enough time driving around Europe to judge)

Drinking river water is asking for giardia - it's not a new phenomenon, just a reduced resistance because of our consumption of purified water - much like polio.

In-city polution (in the 1st world at least) is on the decrease.

Food does not create heavy metals in the water.



Science > paranoia.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

lol, i like pessimistic people, they always complain, never happy, i found them funny for a while, after you better go away before you get pessimistic too

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lol, i like pessimistic people, they always complain, never happy, i found them funny for a while, after you better go away before you get pessimistic too

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I think pessimism is like a black hole...when you get caught up in its pull, it's lights out.

Tethys

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-- Harry S. Truman

I don't believe that civilization is in decline.

(I don't think 'humanity' could be so characterized as that seems meaningless)

However, due to 'peak oil theory', I'm thinking that some serious declining is due on our medium term horizon...

That only applies to USia.

This is the exerpt ffrom an article in Washington Post :
Duh ! This is what you call civilization ? Lone superpower nation of the planet ? Yeah, right.

It may seem so, but higher living standards lead ho higher levels of consuming, and longer life spans lead to degradation and lowered rates of repopulation. EU and US only grow through immigration nowadays.

I'm a great fan of pessimism....you never feel let down by something and often you get to be pleasantly surprised by how well things turn out

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

There was a point in the history of humanity where it wasn't possible, logistically, to eat fish in the first place.

There was a time in history where we didn't have cars at all. There was also a time in US history, not too long ago, where blacks couldn't stop their cars, or themselves for that matter, in a whole lot more places than that.

There was a time in the US not too long ago where "smart children" didn't attend any kind of school, but instead worked the fields or toiled in factories.

Instead, we drink water that is pumped into our houses through a filtration process and food that is inspected for problems. Hmmm... methinks I'll take this tradeoff, quaint as it might be to go apple picking down by the Mississippi.

As opposed to when and where? Cities of the industrial revolution that were burning coal and had no watchdog organizations or health standards?

*yawn*

These sorts of things (generally in the trite medium of "email forward") are tiresome. It isn't particularly difficult to cherry pick a set of factoids and then preach doom and gloom. Most people swallow up this kind of sophistry as well, without giving it much further thought (I'm not accusing you of doing this - I don't know your posting style well enough). But there is no theme or common cause linking these things together.

I could just as easily cite a bunch of factoids to tip the scales in the other direction: increasing human lifespans, increasing global standard of living, the ability of children to communicate, practically for free, with children in other countries from their home desktops, increased racial/ethnic tolerance in many places, etc.

There are problems to be addressed, and you could certainly make the case that some things are getting worse, but I'd advise sticking to a specific theme with a traceable cause that can be discussed. Every time I read one of these general "hell in a handbasket" type things, it makes me think of people out there screaming "ohmygod the sky is falling!!!"

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I agree to some degree.

There is a massive decline in male orca whales because of high mercury concentrations in their bodies. The females excrete their mercury toxins through their mother's milk and pass it on to their young. The female calves continue to pass along their toxins to the males who eventually die premature of toxic poisoning.

I don't think that's natural.

Agree. I don't think we are any near the co called collaps. I understand polititions voicing concern (Al Gore) but hey, ...be happy, stop the war, drive hybrid cars, work on recycling garbage properly! System is set to save. No one can push you. Up to you to care and start saving now.