I don’t think future generations will be bewildered at all, I think they will just be angry at us for sitting down and taking it because we were afraid to make things worse and collectively try anything else than let ideologically bankrupt centrists run the show with their strategy of slowly dialing back, in tinyyyyy increments, ongoing mass scale human rights atrocities and the astoundingly cataclysmic extinction of biodiversity and habitat.
I think future generations will be nauseatingly disgusted at how we laughed at environmental “extremists” who chained themselves to old growth trees, lit logging equipment on fire, blew up oil pipelines and fumbled around trying any desperate action they could to stop the incredible unfolding mass scale death, human and animal. They will look at the rest of us like condescending assholes on a sinking ship who spent the last few minutes of their life bullying the few weirdos who realized the ship was sinking and were trying to sound the alarm and distribute life vests while we sat in our deck chairs drinking with the captain, pointing and laughing at how stupid and useless the frantic passengers trying to save lives looked in their pathetic attempts to get everyone’s attention (who didn’t give a shit like us).
Future generations won’t be confused, they will just talk of the generations that were alive between the 1950-2030 as pariahs, as disgusting examples of how a generation of people can decide to en masse foreclose the future of their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren and so on… Societies all over the world for thousands of years will study how badly 1950s-2030s US culture fucked up (and also of course extending back into European colonialism) and people will rightfully use us as a punching bag when talking about how pathetic a group of powerful cowards can be.
There is always a future, we are just in denial about it because the foundation of our entire world views are reliant on an an intense alienation from futurity.
Things will not end, humanity probably won’t die out in the next couple of hundred years, humans and animals (and plants etc…) will have to subsist through an immense amount of suffering that we needlessly and knowingly caused. In some ways this is more awful than it all just ending in one big bang, which is why we are so culturally obsessed with apocalyptic visions that are immediate, complete and draw a clear demarcation between “before the apocalypse” and “after the apocalypse”. We know deep down that the scariest thing about living during this time is that apocalypses generally don’t work like that, they come in like tides, faster than you can imagine but also in cyclic pulses that recede and return with greater force… and all the time you are so exhausted from the struggle to maintain your shitty daily life that you don’t have the energy or willpower to save yourself or anyone else around you… so you have to keep going through the same awful grind you had to before the apocalypse (except now more stressful and worse) even while everything around you is comically collapsing into great heaps until one day you drop dead from the exhaustion of the daily grind or the tide sweeps in and takes you away.
I think division is actually very important, younger generations face an existential need to sever themselves from the worldview and belief systems their parents raised them under (and return to value systems that have embodied humanity for literally the entire rest of our history) in order to save as much of humanity and nature as possible.
Inaction as well is possibly our most potent weapon against the coming mass experience of suffering that climate change will wrought upon us. We all have to stop doing, we need to grind the global economy to a halt and scare the shit out of capitalists to the point that bargaining with us is preferable to letting the scarier alternative happen.
I don’t think future generations will be bewildered at all, I think they will just be angry at us for sitting down and taking it because we were afraid to make things worse and collectively try anything else than let ideologically bankrupt centrists run the show with their strategy of slowly dialing back, in tinyyyyy increments, ongoing mass scale human rights atrocities and the astoundingly cataclysmic extinction of biodiversity and habitat.
I think future generations will be nauseatingly disgusted at how we laughed at environmental “extremists” who chained themselves to old growth trees, lit logging equipment on fire, blew up oil pipelines and fumbled around trying any desperate action they could to stop the incredible unfolding mass scale death, human and animal. They will look at the rest of us like condescending assholes on a sinking ship who spent the last few minutes of their life bullying the few weirdos who realized the ship was sinking and were trying to sound the alarm and distribute life vests while we sat in our deck chairs drinking with the captain, pointing and laughing at how stupid and useless the frantic passengers trying to save lives looked in their pathetic attempts to get everyone’s attention (who didn’t give a shit like us).
Future generations won’t be confused, they will just talk of the generations that were alive between the 1950-2030 as pariahs, as disgusting examples of how a generation of people can decide to en masse foreclose the future of their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren and so on… Societies all over the world for thousands of years will study how badly 1950s-2030s US culture fucked up (and also of course extending back into European colonialism) and people will rightfully use us as a punching bag when talking about how pathetic a group of powerful cowards can be.
There will be no bewilderment I promise you.
There will be no future either…
There is always a future, we are just in denial about it because the foundation of our entire world views are reliant on an an intense alienation from futurity.
Things will not end, humanity probably won’t die out in the next couple of hundred years, humans and animals (and plants etc…) will have to subsist through an immense amount of suffering that we needlessly and knowingly caused. In some ways this is more awful than it all just ending in one big bang, which is why we are so culturally obsessed with apocalyptic visions that are immediate, complete and draw a clear demarcation between “before the apocalypse” and “after the apocalypse”. We know deep down that the scariest thing about living during this time is that apocalypses generally don’t work like that, they come in like tides, faster than you can imagine but also in cyclic pulses that recede and return with greater force… and all the time you are so exhausted from the struggle to maintain your shitty daily life that you don’t have the energy or willpower to save yourself or anyone else around you… so you have to keep going through the same awful grind you had to before the apocalypse (except now more stressful and worse) even while everything around you is comically collapsing into great heaps until one day you drop dead from the exhaustion of the daily grind or the tide sweeps in and takes you away.
And England’s dreaming!
I want to believe you, but then I look at how we view the Roman empire today. Maybe the internet will change the cheese of things this time around.
Add in something about successive generations pointing the finger at the previous one in order to feel better about themselves
Every generation has probably done that, but you know what, future generations will be right to point the finger at us.
The better damn well point the finger at us lest they risk not learning the horrific lessons of our time.
As long as they aren’t using that as a pretext for division and inaction, that’s fine
I think division is actually very important, younger generations face an existential need to sever themselves from the worldview and belief systems their parents raised them under (and return to value systems that have embodied humanity for literally the entire rest of our history) in order to save as much of humanity and nature as possible.
Inaction as well is possibly our most potent weapon against the coming mass experience of suffering that climate change will wrought upon us. We all have to stop doing, we need to grind the global economy to a halt and scare the shit out of capitalists to the point that bargaining with us is preferable to letting the scarier alternative happen.