As somebody who very much loves everything about this planet besides all the horrible, parasitic human beings
The massive collapse is the happy ending for me - sort of.
Anybody who honestly believes that we have a bollock's chance in hell of preventing a calamitous chain of events from taking place in the near future that conclude with the planet becoming utterly incompatible with human life are either woefully naive or completely fucking deluded. We'll certainly make a good go at delaying the inevitable. But it's always going to be inevitable.
The way I see it, Humanity only has two viable means of survival:
1. We successfully terraform Mars and send a select lucky few Ubermensch to colonise and begin Humanity 2.0
Or, 2. We use the technological advances we've been developing for option 1 in order to create survivable Hab-bubbles to live in on our freshly scorched earth for a select lucky few Ubermensch while we watch the rest of the planet rot, decay (and eventually, hopefully, recover) from the safety of our domes.
I suspect that long term, the solution will probably be a combination of (2) followed by (1) a few generations later. Either way, the Planet will eventually bounce back (it has recovered from far far worse shit) and future humans will be given the golden opportunity to fuck it up all over again. Hooray!
That being said- hopefully, Nature will intervene before either of those opportunities reach fruition (as it always does, eventually) and will decide that we're just not a very good fit for this place anymore and wipe us out with a lovely dose of Covid-21/Zombie Flu/Supershits/Mass Infertility before we ruin the lives of too many other plant and animal species. Or maybe we'll do the dirty work ourselves with all these fucking ridiculous thermonuclear devices and biological weapons we've all been hoarding.
Either way, yes. Utterly futile in the long term.
I'm still going to do my part by recycling, eating a plant-based diet, not owning a car, making sure not to litter and all the other things that I see as being reasonable ways of making the the environment a pleasant place for myself and other people to live in for the time being (because it's not all about the fucking future). But anybody who wasn't aware what an inherently selfish species we were before the Coronavirus pandemic but surely to fuck must see it by now. We just aren't cut out on a global level for making the changes required in order to prevent everything going royally tits up. We prioritise comfort over longevity, and we'd be completely and utterly fuckered from every imaginable angle if/when the crude oil reserves dry up - never mind actually bloody volunteering to find viable alternatives...
So, yeah. I'm all for the collapse of civilisation. I just hope it's severe enough to finish us off for good. We won't care so much about all the suffering that precedes it once we're dead. Sorry if that's a bit of a fucking downer, but it's also very true (unless you believe in all of that afterlife stuff).
(, Wed 22 Sep 2021, 22:52, Reply)
The misanthropic stance is comforting
until you know actual kids that you wish a happy life to.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Wed 22 Sep 2021, 23:28,
Reply)
an unfair and illogical rejoinder, monkeyman
pessimism does not imply misanthropy, nor does it preclude hope, happiness or love.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 1:05, Reply)
The post title is a *bit* misanthropic, is it not?
And emotional arguments are always going to be illogical.
I'm not entirely in disagreement with the post tbh - have felt similar at times. Just talking about how my personal feelings on the subject have changed.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 9:47,
Reply)
I'm unashamedly misanthropic.
I mean, we are the literal definition of a parasite. We're the only species that takes more from our environment than we give back. The whole fact that we live so unsustainably puts us right into that category.
Agreed, we've achieved some truly astonishing feats compared to the other species we share the planet with, but I can't help that's still completely overshadowed by how willing we are to voluntarily destroy our habitat in the process.
That's not to say that I wish pain and suffering on humans at an individual level. Not at all. There are plenty of humans that I'm very fond of, and like most of us, I have a family that I (mostly) care about.
My point is that I don't care about our species becoming extinct, because since we figured out how to build houses, develop medicines, mine the earth and and kill each other en masse, we've essentially been living outwith the balance of nature. I feel sorry for the people that have to suffer through the final days of our meagre existence, but it'll be no great loss once we're gone. Quite the opposite. Once we're all gone and the suffering is over, nobody will care because there won't be anybody to care and then the Planet can go about it's business in peace.
I understand my views are pretty controversial/ignorant/whatever. I'm not particularly bothered if I convince people that my world view is the correct world view, because as we've so aptly demonstrated (particularly over the last 2-3 years), most people are going to do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, regardless.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 10:13, Reply)
You can still wish them a happy life. I just think it's wise to be pragmatic about how happy that life will actually be.
And whether you want to bring another child into it at all. Especially considering that by doing so, you're actively contributing to the problem that some of us are so desperately trying to solve.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 9:21, Reply)
I haven't.
People you know do, though, so hard to avoid those feelings coming into play.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 9:56,
Reply)
Perhaps. But I suspect even the ones getting born now will be long gone before things get really bad.
I definitely will be, and I'll have a huge amount of trouble caring once I'm gone.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 10:21, Reply)
Terraform? LOL
If we can't fix this planet, what hope of creating another? Maybe we could teleport there.
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FeralCatMan Long ads need comments sections, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 0:16,
Reply)
What we've learned by heating up Earth would work just as well at heating up Mars.
Still got the air pressure problem too, and the cosmic rays, and everything is poisonous, but none of those problems is insurmountable.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 0:58,
Reply)
Bollocks
We haven't even understood the role and identity of all common soil organisms here yet.
Fuck we barely understand the nervous system and microbiome of our own digestive system. Let alone correctly reproducing soils on another planet.
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FeralCatMan Long ads need comments sections, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 3:44,
Reply)
Balls to your bollocks. We understand how to heat up a planet.
You're presenting arbitrary gaps in our knowledge of biology as a functional roadblock to the feasibility of terraforming.
We can engineer algae/bacteria that would thrive on Mars. I think it would be an act of self sabotage to not do this. Imagine having the ability to spread life through the universe and choosing not to.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 20:42,
Reply)
If we cannot fix a serviceable planet, what makes you so sure we can make a new one?
I'm a pragmatist not an idealist in this. There are so many unknowns, I can't say it is impossible of course.
As for spreading life, that's a little like saying because someone can have kids, they should.
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FeralCatMan Long ads need comments sections, Fri 24 Sep 2021, 1:07,
Reply)
In reverse order:
No it really isn't anything like that.
Robert Zubrin is a pragmatist too, listen to what he says about colonising Mars.
Because the problems Mars has are solvable by employing the very methods used to create the problems on Earth. Mars is an industrialist's dream, a planet that gets nicer the more greenhouse gasses you release into it.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Fri 24 Sep 2021, 15:10,
Reply)
No doubt its been done as I doubt this is original
An exoplanet in the habitable zone like Kepler 22b is found in a near future in which we're able to establish that it would be habitable. Competing nations rush to send a mission to it on the grounds that first there gets first dibs and potentially could end up with an entire planet as an extension of their nation state. Twist though is that it takes so long to travel there that its a multi-generational voyage and when they arrive they find that the planet was populated centuries before by a competing nation that developed faster space travel in the intervening time.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 12:46, Reply)
Sounds like the basis of a good story.
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FeralCatMan Long ads need comments sections, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 15:57,
Reply)
Sounds like a Tharg's Future Shocks kind of thing. Definitely a familiar tale.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 20:45,
Reply)
That's one of the things about space exploration that I think people miss:
If we can build self-sustaining habitats in space we can live anywhere.
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jonbob loves you, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 0:35,
Reply)
who can, jonbob?
how many people could you trust to keep a 'self-sustaining' habitat going, generation after generation?
how could critical rules, governing population and behaviour, possibly be enforced indefinitely?
pure romance, mate.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 0:51, Reply)
You could say the same thing about cities.
How many people would you trust not to poison the water supply, not to steal copper cables or lead roofs? How can critical rules, governing population and behaviour, possibly be enforced indefinitely?
Pure cynicism, mate.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 1:13,
Reply)
you couldn't say the same thing about cities
that's the point
and yes, i am cynical. i thought that was clear.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 1:19, Reply)
Pretty sure I just did.
A space habitat the size of a city would only need to last as long as a city, say a few thousand years at the very most. Plenty of time to build several more space habitats, or to completely expand/rebuild the original several times.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 2:58,
Reply)
ISS is falling apart after only 20 years. Those giant space cylinder things from the NASA artwork are likely to be a maintenance nightmare.
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evil_andy Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 12:06,
Reply)
How long was it designed to last?
Isaac Arthur spoke recently about air leaks in O'Neil Cylinders. He said they're likely to leak constantly, which turns out to be absolutely fine, and even fairly large impact holes can be patched up with years/decades/centuries of air to spare (depending on scale, obviously). Hollywood gets this sort of thing very wrong.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 20:47,
Reply)
can't terraform Mars
No magnetosphere = no shield from solar wind = any atmosphere you create well just get stripped away again.
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simbosan nuck nuck nuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 0:52,
Reply)
On geological timescales.
It's not like you'd notice a difference in air pressure from one day to the next.
Anyone living there would have time for civilisation to collapse and re-establish itself 2 or 3 times before needing to fetch some more comets.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 1:03,
Reply)
When I talk about terraforming Mars, I'm more thinking about in enclosed, man-made ecosystems. Not so much altering the entire planet's atmosphere.
Terraforming was probably the wrong word to use in that context, although you would need to establish such a ridiculous amount of arable land in order to sustain the population, that calling it terraforming wouldn't be so far off the mark - even if it was in an enclosed system.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 9:27, Reply)
Do these kinds of topics come up at the parties you go to?
Because those sound like really shit parties.
(, Thu 23 Sep 2021, 16:34, Reply)