future outlook (poll)

[zetreque]

I was trying to remember what my outlook about the future was like when I was a child or if I even had one. Future outlook probably changes given one's age and awareness about the world but for this just pretend you are simply going to live for another 30 years whatever your age.
Consider all factors like quality of life, life expectancy, how easy to make a living, social network, home living conditions, cost of living, wages, environmental health, healthcare, equal opportunity and add your own factors for whatever I am missing.

[Serpent]

It's the environmental degradation that decides everything else.
In 30 years, all other things being equal, we could possibly improve our political and economic situation.
We can't stop the hurricanes and wildfires, the melting ice, rising sea, disappearance of species. We could, to a small extent, mitigate the damage, but I do not believe we will.
What we probably will do, collectively, is get crazier and crazier, attacking one another and doing even more damage.
However the near future plays out, it will take more than a couple of decades to heal - it will take a millennium. If we're lucky.

[Lomax]

Interesting question. I struggled to define the population sphere in order to answer it. Will life be better for me? Maybe; there'll be less sex but more career success, probably. Will it be better for the UK? There'll probably be less violent crime and greater wealth. Will it be better for the human population? As above. Will it be better for the overall animal population? Doubtful. The ecology that scaffolds all of the above? Unmissable signs of slippage.

[TheVat]

I answered the poll based on what life will be like for the poorest billion, or in thirty years, perhaps two billion will be in that bottom tier of struggling to eat, shelter, and find fresh water. Perhaps more. The reason I chose this was not so much an exercise in empathy as it was based on the classic adage:

"If one man lives in chains, then none of us is free."

I think there hints already that when a sizable fraction of humankind lives in miserable deprivation, then that ripples through all our lives. Sometimes, as we see in various hot spots now, when people are too crowded and underfed and fearful, the political structures that could save and nurture them will decay and corrupt and serve to amplify the poverty and sense of entrapment for all but a fortunate few.

Nations that are choosing greener solutions to life's needs, like Germany, UK, New Zealand, Japan, and a few others, will probably do better, provided they are not simply overrun by the hungrier billions who are fleeing ecological collapse.

"Slippage" indeed.

[zetreque]

I am happy to see participation in this thread. Obviously the question is incredibly poor because it depends on so many things and the results here are pretty much worthless but the value in it is just the discussion and hearing different perspectives.

The reason I have been thinking about it is because of how connected the world is these days through technology I wonder how that affects a larger percentage of people's, expecially children's, outlook on the future. The future looks much darker to me and I imagine being a child in the world today can be very challenging seeing what's going on and how dark the future could look. Maybe that's a good thing as the younger generations will be more prepared to tackle the challenges.

Children and people might have been more sheltered in the past because they didn't have instant access to global events at every moment. Their world and future was shaped off of the bubble of the community they lived in with outside news reaching them in smaller more concise streams.

Personally, I didn't think the future would be this crappy when I was a child. I vaguly remember thinking about it some, but had no idea that population and technology would grow this much and cause this much congestion and inequalities. A lot of it has always existed but it seems in greater numbers and more extreme, and accellerating now.
I had a wonderful childhood but things seem to have continually gone downhill through adulthood. This may be just me in my pocket of the world because I have heard the opposite from some people, but I also see a lot of health, money, and more problems people are dealing with everywhere.

[Serpent]

Heh
Imagine being a child of the fifties and sixties! Everything was possible! We were going to expand freedom and prosperity and happiness to the whole world. We were going to end poverty, oppression, and bigotry. We were going to cure cancer, save the whales, disarm the nukes, and travel to Mars.
My particular THUD moment was in 1976 - softened slightly, and very briefly by Carter and Gorbachev - and from there, it's been a steady slide from pessimism to despair.