I obviously have none, so I’d like to see if I can mooch off of you lol.
Please don’t leave any pessimistic top level comments. Or do, I’m not your mom 🤷♂️.
Trump is old and sick. Putin is old and sick. Xi is at least old. Most troublemakers are way beyond. It’s just a question of waiting them out.
This is a bit trite, but there are a lot of delicious foods to eat, and so many cats to give scritches to. Concerts to hear. Songs to sing.
I was at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix and they had a violin made out of literal trash. It’s a testament to people’s resilience and yearning to create. There are so many wonderfully creative people out there, I’ll never have the time to consume the every good bit, especially when I feel well enough to create stuff of my own. I love seeing the things people, especially people I care about, create.
There are so many good things that are happening.
I realise that humanity seems to be on the brink of some truly terrible changes. But you have to cast a wider view than what is broadcast.
Most of the good things are happening all the time in so many places, but simple good works don’t generate clicks and engagement.
A huge part of the good in the world is coming through kids; we are teaching them to care for each other and the planet. It is working, there is pushback in some sections of society, there is serious backsliding in some countries. But overall we are moving forward toward a fairer and cleaner world.
I’m a techno-optimist, I think humanity has the capability to solve any challenge before us. It would be nice if we didn’t need a crisis to spur the change we need; but we solve problems…that is what we do.
The old ways die slowly; the victories are hard won sometimes, but they are won. Even Trump, as much as I hate all the terrible things he is doing; seems to be the last gasp of a failed philosophy. They won’t let go without a fight, but there are far more of us than there are of them.
Sorry this was the most depressing thing to read.
Maybe I missed it but all I could read was. Oh children are nice and for the future there will be technologies.
Nothing in what you mention is optimistic it’s just the problems are solved somehow.
Clean water and more resistant crops are technologies too, that makes life better for millions of people. We just figured out how to make vector-vaccines last for months in room temp (which make them possible to transfer in countries with less cooling equipment) and we were able to reduce price of solar cell compounds from 188usd/gram to 2usd/gram, both these things in the past weeks. As a humanist, these sort of things makes me incredibly happy. There’s tons of examples like this.
Developments in green technology.
The most obvious is, of course, solar power (it ABSOLUTELY ROCKS) and new, eco-friendly batteries, but there’s so much more:
- Organisms that eat plastic
- Novel recyclable materials
- Reusing industrial waste to produce tons of useful products (personally working on that!)
- Novel eco-friendly fertilizers
- Actually nutritious plant meat and milk substitutes
And so, so much more!
Also, there are a lot of organizational changes that help:
- Recycling is getting more widespread
- FOSS and hacky folks allow electronic devices to live way longer than they otherwise would
- Bans on petroleum-based plastics in many applications propel cleaner alternatives (including clean, renewable plastics like PLA)
- And more again!
We have all it takes to build a sustainable, almost solarpunk world. With enough political will, we can make it happen. It’s not “futurism” anymore - it’s a reality we can forge here and now.
I can do things to nudge towards better. Those little wins and survival is what thrivinging is built on.
I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day. -John Brown
An optimist and pessimist are in a horrible situation. The pessimist says, “this can’t possibly get any worse”. And the optimist replies, “oh yes it can!”
There’s a Bluesky thread (yes I know) going where people are contributing things that have gotten better in their lifetimes, and there really are a lot of things there. Things are still improving, there will always be setbacks and things left to fight for, but it isn’t impossible, things aren’t hopeless.
My 80 yr old Aunt can testify to how much better things are now, at least we have indoor toilets now 😂
two things
- one day he’ll die
- one day I’ll die
that’s about it.
In France, high-schoolers are launching a revolution, new generation rocks!!
Global warming cannot cause humanity to go extinct. Nuclear war cannot cause humanity to go extinct. Population decline cannot cause humanity to go extinct.
If you think any of these are possible, you do not know enough about global warming, nuclear war, or population decline.
In short, things may get very, very, very bad. But hope springs eternal. And there are very, very few scenarios that won’t leave many millions of people alive to pick up the pieces.
Ah, but you forgot about the Death Star!
A death star can’t cause Alderaan to go extinct. A fleet of gold plated death stars though…
This was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Humans as a species surviving or not isn’t really what bothers me. It’s the billions of humans, and animals who will suffer and die in the meantime that bother me. I get what you’re saying, but it comes off as “a million or even a billion people may survive so ignore the rest” to me who’s a cynic. Sorry.
I’m not sure if optimist is the best term to describe be but at least I don’t go out of my way to find the worst possible intreptretation for everything just so that I can then go around complaining all the time and acting as if all the bad things in my life are someone else’s fault and outside of my influence.
I, for one, don’t fully understand my optimism, but I like to attribute some of it to a sort of autistic stubbornness that things must get better at any cost. Combine that with a little bit of delusion, and you get how I am able to remain optimistic.
China
China is very multifaceted, but there are some awesome developments happening there - particularly in the field of clean energy.
They made it - they put renewables on such a scale where it just crushes the competition. That’s impressive.
Apart from their continued trade with Israel, the politics of China also brings me hope. One of the only actually democratic countries, and it has an actually competent government.
One of the only actually democratic countries
That might be a liiiiiiitle bit of a stretch right there. Not being subject to liberal “democracy” doesn’t automatically make the regime any more democratic.
But I’m not here to talk politics. There are less controversial reasons to praise China.
I think its democratic due to its democratic processes, not due to the absence of neoliberalism
I am mortal.
Three Thoughts:
- In the long run, things have steadily improved for the majority of the world’s population. That doesn’t mean there can’t be setbacks along the way in the form of dictatorship and mass murder… but viewed over the long term, we’ve all become wealthier, healthier, and lived longer. Of course, this isn’t a sure thing, but it gives us hope that things will eventually be even better than they are now.
- Billionaires aren’t superhumans, even if they think they are. The fact is, capital doesn’t create anything. WE create value through the work of our hands and minds. Without us, these people are nothing, and even with the stochastic parrot currently being hailed as “AI,” they’re just fooling themselves. It follows that even the biggest narcissists don’t stand a chance when we work together… and if there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s that.
- People are much better than their reputation. If someone falls in a pedestrian zone, someone helps them up. If a traffic jam forms on the road, a rescue lane opens up. If you ask a stranger for help, you’re usually not let down. Far too many people believe that humans are “just animals with a thin veneer of civilization,” yet the vast majority are clearly more social and altruistic than is generally assumed. The narrative that “all people are bad” is, in my opinion, merely a self-serving narrative propagated by the ruling egoists to justify their own authority, and it’s passed on based on the assumption that we’re all just as selfish as our leaders.
Are these points open to criticism? Sure. Still, there’s at least a spark of truth in them, and that gives me hope.
Was gonna ask if you lived in Europe, then saw your instance hahaha. Here the rescue lane thing works but I have lived in other countries where it doesn’t happen at all. Though at least is not because people “don’t want to make room” but because driving is a nightmare and people usually pack very tightly in traffic jams as if that’s gonna make it any better. The madness of crowds…
Yes! And especially the third point.
Most people are good. We are divided and put against each other, and the important component of this is pitching that humans are terrible and evil. We are not!
Think of all the random acts of kindness you see around. If you can’t recall them, go outside and start noticing. It can be someone giving directions to a stranger, freeing up a seat in public transport to those who need it more, helping someone carry something, giving a lift, offering a discount card at checkout (even if it doesn’t accumulate points), seeding flowers in communal areas, and just so, so much more.
Look at how people care of their close ones, too. This is where people are allowed to care for the other without toxic boundaries stopping them. This is what people are really like.
I’ve read all the comments on this thread so far. There were a lot of good answers, and I think this is the one that made me feel the most optimistic about the future. Congrats!
