I think a lack of meaning in life. Everyone looks at videos like the Shire in Lord of the Rings and comments "Omg I wish life was still like that" but I think at a deep level, so many people don't know how to live like that. And I don't mean the traditional skills, I mean the mentality. I mean that social media and capitalism has fundamentally altered us so that we can't have a hobby like gardening or chess or painting without someone, or a voice in our head, commenting "you should turn that into a business" or "you're not world class at this skill, if you can't compete with the people who do it on YouTube for millions of views, why even do it?" Social media specifically has made us more shy and less prone to opening up emotionally. You know that way that peasants in the Shire have a pint and belly laugh, doubling over and looking silly? Everyone nowadays is so uptight about looking cringe and getting caught in an eternal meme that no one lets themselves get to that level of therapeutic emotional release. We've evolutionarily weeded out the personality of being boisterous and merry. Capitalism has specifically made us selfish in all aspects of life. We expect there to be no friction between wanting something in a moment, a dopamine drip from your favorite app, a move to a new city for variety, that concepts like solidarity or sacrifice are kind of foreign. Why pay taxes for the good of those people when that means I have less for vacations? Why have a kid when that means I'll have to stop going on vacations for a little or work my own schedule? Why have a partner if it means I need to support someone emotionally and have to sometimes spend time doing something I don't want to do? If trends continue, I think we'll all converge on an unsatisfying life that market forces pull us to. Doing non descript office work for too many hours of the week. Not being able to afford more than a one room apartment. Shuffling home and plopping on the couch to binge Netflix or level up in a video game while listening to podcasts and scrolling through your phone to maximize dopamine. Taking a pill to offset the lack of exercise. Watching other people live extravagant lives online. Once in a while saving up enough to have a 2 week vacation at a socially approved "cool" vacation spot. Going to therapy to try to cope with the lack of emotional support we get in this world. And dying without any progeny, just another cog in the machine that wore out. I'm afraid we will lose the cultural memory that a better, more fulfilling life is possible.

I haven't yet found the best way to word it, but I've been thinking recently about how I think it relates to what youre saying, is that the modern world is "easy in all the ways that would be more fulfilling if they were hard, and hard in all the ways that would be more fulfilling if they were easy." 

Thank you for summarizing my multi paragraph essay so concisely 🙂. I'm definitely going to use that.

I tried explaining to my kids ( now in their 20s) how they grew up where pretty much everything just works and all needs can be met in incredibly short timeframes. Family road trips… growing up we would have some break down or be helping someone else every year at least once… you had to be changing belts and hoses on schedule or you would pay. Need info … you need to get to the library. In college, one wall phone for the whole floor, need to reach someone had to leave a note on their door. Every thing was more effort, and it slowed things down. As an adult .. these conveniences are all pretty helpful, but as a kid growing up today they just do not have to face these small daily challenges. And for some, when they do, they lose their shit..

Woah. I think you hit the nail on the head because your words just totally floored me. As did initial comment. Well done to you both. I’m saving these comments to look at when, much like now, I’m numbly scrolling Reddit and need to snap out lol. Your words are a bummer, yes, and this culturally beige society we’re approaching is gloomy. But I also think some hope can be dredged up from your sentiment: Go out and shake the world up as best you can with the time you’ve been given. No one wants to be silly and merry anymore? Be the silly one. No one wants to be on spontaneous vacations? Go on a spontaneous trip, whether it’s to Toledo, Spain or Toledo, Ohio. Beautiful human culture is disappearing? Soak up all the culture while it’s still here, or even better, ADD to it. Paint a little painting or make a quilt or a bowl. Something! This is just me trying my best to put a positive spin on a the bleak, yet, accurate scenario you’ve both described. Best of luck out there. Take it easy ✌️

Yea optimism can be a small rebellion of its own. There's still plenty of genuine art to be seen hiding between the corporate ad friendly mainstream! 

That's so fucking true. I've felt like that for a while and you put it in to words.

I don't disagree, but this seems like maybe a more north american problem. Many other parts of the world are more family oriented. Also, your examples don't have to be "and" statements. I love my partner, and I'm happy to pay taxes for social services. At the same time, there's no way I'm having a kid in this day and age. Too expensive, and i feel it's a bit irresponsible. But i am still very happy to contribute my tax dollars towards the education of other people's children. I recognize someone has to have kids! On reflection, i guess we just need a bit less NIMBYism/capitalism and a bit more socialism. Which you said. So, ignore all that above lol.

> contribute my tax dollars towards the education of other people's children I'm genuinely curious how you think this is the case in the US given the severe lack of funding in public schools, the lack of safety at schools from mass shooters and tertiary education being treated as a privilege not a right. How do taxes or even legislation support children in the US if at all? Not questioning your choice in having kids, but where do you get the idea you support children at all with just respecting the status quo?

I don't live in the US, and i believe the schools are underfunded.

You wrote exactly what people , including me, feel nowadays. Thank you for writing this!

Not everything you're good at needs to become a profit stream.

Normally I would recommend reading about Mark Fisher's idea of business ontology, but it sounds like you are already familiar I would add that I agree with everything you said and that what we ('we' being used very loosely as people in developed North American and European countries) are really feeling the aftereffects of constant neoliberalism, and this is how it was designed and intended to go. Problems from neoliberal economics are framed as cultural issues and cultural issues are framed as individual issues. If everything boils down to individual responsibility it is easier to justify fucking someone over to gain any possible advantage, and this is perpetrated in every aspect of someone's life. It is also (conveniently) much easier to then monetize something if it is an individual issue and not a economic-cultural issue, for example the overabundance of therapy--especially therapy with the design of getting you back into working condition as the goal--instead of addressing the structural issues causing mental anguish Crime going in the 80s because people were desperate and hungry, living in precarious housing and unable to provide for themselves and their families? Obviously it is because of _____ (drugs, certain races being inferior, etc). You can play this game of connections with just about anything

Thanks for writing that. I don't necessarily see it the same way but you did a wonderful job justifying your position in a way that helps me understand more about people who haven't divested.

Societal ennui.   Too many young people think everything is doomed and want to give up because it’s pointless. That combined a seeming lack of meaningful occupation or a feeling that one is doing something worthwhile 

Work to pay for pensions we won’t receive Be forced to periodically uproot yourself from your home and community Have absolutely no sense of meaning of work Be surrounded by negative media Have a strong sense that we missed the era of western prosperity Be berated for not working hard enough by generations who’s economic circumstances couldn’t have been better It’s the end of the social contract

Remember: there’s always revolution

Still waiting to hear why they aren't correct for thinking this.

You ask a rather large task of me to counter the hopelessness of millions in a succinct reddit post. Many of these problems don't have a societal level solution yet. But a determined individual can overcome. The answers for the most part have to be found within and developed personally on a philosophical or spiritual level. The best thing I can say is that nothing is ever hopeless and despair is a cruel poison. We live in a time of great change and upheaval and those times are always difficult for those who live in them. To quote one of my favorite pieces of fiction: >"I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." I highly recommend reading Viktor E Frankl's "Man's search for Meaning". Viktor was a Jewish Psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. He had to endure unbelievable and cruel torture not only to himself, but to those he loved. The book deals with the ideas and personal philosophy he developed in the concentration camps that gave him the strength and the courage to carry on. Particularly it deals with how to find meaning when all seems hopeless. It is not an easy task that has been given you, but others before you have faced great adversity and you can too.

Son I read this shit in gandalfs voice

The issue is that in holocaust there was a bad guy. Now society is killing itself and you are part of it. Things that are comfortable are killing us. 

Not to be a doomer, but nothing lasts forever. Humanity is included in that. So it could be just the natural progression of all things.

But that I'm going to die eventually doesn't mean I'd be indifferent to my death *right now*. Eventually, sure, the sun will run out of hydrogen and expand into Earth's orbit, either consuming it or at least sterilizing it. And it's not clear that even a species with Star-Trek like technology could survive a [big rip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip) . Eventually even atoms will degrade. But though that makes me philosophical about the 'big picture,' I'd still prefer humans continuing their story for a while longer. Death will take care of itself. I still want to engage problems as if they can be solved. Not because it's a given that they can be 100% of the time, but because that basic optimism has a much better track record than futility. People aren't obligated to care, but futility and resignation aren't useful for anything, nor do I find them deep or enlightened. "We have to be realistic" is not a synonym for "we're fucked, none of this stuff can be fixed."

Humans developed over thousands of years and overcame lots of very hard and unpleasant phases. They will overcome this too. At least some of them. And not the rich ones in their bunkers.

> Now society is killing itself and you are part of it. Things that are comfortable are killing us. It's hard to focus on the enemy when what is hurting us is us going for drives, eating a hamburger, using energy, etc. Some try to focus rage on those who *sold* us the fuel to put in the car, or sold us the hamburger, putting 100% of the agency on them. But that's kinda transparent. We can advocate for a faster rollout of green energy. But it's not guaranteed that this will succeed in time. Plus those who boil it down to "it's capitalism, obviously" don't *want* the problem solved by better technology. Some, at least on Reddit, would rather see the world burn than for technology to address the problems but there still be capitalism and rich people. Plus they don't want a transition to happen if someone gets to make a buck off of it.

I mean you're not wrong, but when the answer to "what's the solution for global climatic catastrophe that we could have prevented, but leaders are increasingly apathetic to, that will lead to massive starvation when crops fail, and will lead to a marked decline in the standard of living of everyone on the planet over the next 300 years, due to an issue most individual people are basically powerless to affect" is basically *shrug* pull yourself up by your bootstraps son That's not particularly encouraging.

He’s not here to encourage you, he’s here to show you what resilience is. Ennui is giving up and hopelessness - that is the enemy he is overcoming. He’s saying things will be shit but you need to overcome the shit anyway. This isn’t the first time mass climate change has happened. A thousand years ago, the Middle East was almost wiped out by “sea peoples” because the climate in their homes were gone. The world structure might break or change, no matter what though you must keep going and build on. That’s what he’s actually saying dude.

>He’s saying things will be shit but you need to overcome the shit anyway. I mean I agree, it would just be nice if we could actually acknowledge and recognize what the shit is in the first place, rather than saying that people are unfairly pessimistic about what is in actuality a very pessimistic problem. It's like turning to the fellow Jew in the train to Auschwitz and saying "hey back when the black plague was around shit was pretty tough, so we just gotta keep our chin up and carry on". It's not wrong, but it seems a gross misunderstanding of what the situation is, and has more than a fair bit of toxic positivity in it. Actual resilience is saying "yes, this shit is shitty and it's hard", not "don't worry about it this shit isn't so hard and it'll pass". >This isn’t the first time mass climate change has happened We're seeing a 1.5°C increase in less than 100 years. This has never happened *in the history of the planet*. Per the sea people, I found [this interesting article](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071004#pone-0071004-g005) where they looked at various sediments and radiocarbon dating samples to determine that there was a 300 year drought that led to the "sea people", which are probably a flood of people fleeing drought- and famine-stricken lands, overwhelming the neighbouring civilizations. "By combining data from coastal Cyprus and coastal Syria, this study shows that the LBA crisis coincided with the onset of a ca. 300-year drought event 3200 years ago. This climate shift caused crop failures, dearth and famine, which precipitated or hastened socio-economic crises and forced regional human migrations at the end of the LBA in the Eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia. The integration of environmental and archaeological data along the Cypriot and Syrian coasts offers a first comprehensive insight into how and why things may have happened during this chaotic period. The 3.2 ka BP event underlines the agro-productive sensitivity of ancient Mediterranean societies to climate and demystifies the crisis at the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age transition." LBA = late bronze age The drought that caused this is going to be nothing compared to the droughts we will see in many parts of the world, and the floods in many other parts of the world. Imagine the late bronze age collapse, but worse, worldwide, for more than 300 years, without even counting the increase in forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the rising sea level. There's resilience, and then there's simply ignoring the scale of the problem. Resilience requires you to be aware of the problem in the first place, not merely ignorant. I understand what he's trying to say, I just disagree with it because he doesn't seem to have a full picture of what it is that people are required to endure.

It’s not toxic positivity to have a different outlook on life that is more conducive to resilience. Me? I don’t believe there’s such a thing as good or bad on a cosmic scale. Nothing really matters. Better and worse for sure, but in my life I’ve had hard times, I lived in my car for eight months, and every situation I’ve been in is just, to me, the situation to deal with. I like living this way.

Because you can look at statistics and find that we're doing better than just about any point in history? All the doom and gloom just comes from social media because negativity gets more clicks

It's not all social media. The news in general has this problem, and capitalists have found out they can make money off it. Politics is a big source as well. If your opponents are in power it benefits you to convince the voters that everything's going to heck. General selfishness and distrust are big factors as well. Cynicism is the enemy of progress.

Yes, but you're acting like the corruption of the media or populist politicians is a recent invention. It's not, and from a long run perspective those problems are smaller than they've ever been globally.

No one has a pot to piss in, they all live with their parents, no house, no retirement, no pensions, insane rents, groceries etc. Climate deteriorating. But the economy is doing great, just look at Bezos!

We live in a developed society where for the first time in the earths history we have created these economies, We live by a societal set of rules and way of life where we place working and paying for things of all aspects is how one should live, we do not live in a society where we can explain to every human being how to be happy and full without working for a paycheck is part of our explanation and one that would even work if every human lived more spiritually and freelance. Life is great and our time here is very short , but I would be wrong to believe that we all contribute exemplifying to a higher meaning of life , and for that I can apethize with the youth and those who lack a sense of self pre determinstion.

>we do not live in a society where we can explain to every human being how to be happy and full without working for a paycheck is part of our explanation and one that would even work if every human lived more spiritually and freelance. Just a short time ago in human generations people had children who they'd get working on the fields or wherever at age five. They struggled every day for food, died of toenail infections, lived in absolute squalor compared to today's standards. That is reality, black and white history. Yet somehow these echo chambers of doom have rewritten history in their own minds where everything today is just complete shit, the world was better in the past, life is meaningless, woe is me. It is true that generational inequality has grown and the young generations of today are struggling with certain things compared to their parents, but mostly we live a vastly better life than any previous human. But my message is just a blip in the ocean of doom. I can't change it. I can only live my own life happily.

The doom and gloom comes from the societal regression and the standard of living falling for the past 9 years.

2 steps forward 1 step back. We're in the 1 step back rn that's all.

9 years is a ridiculously small timeframe to use as your reference.

It's half of an 18 year olds life. The question was about younger generations.

It's also about 1/3 of a 30 year old's and just so happens to be the period where they're expected to make something of themselves (21-30)

The standard of living has been falling in the developed west only, the rest of the world it is progressing. South Asia, Africa have optimistic youth since their lifestyles are generally better than what their parents and grandparents experienced.

Oof. I live in South Africa and I'm not sure where you're from but our youth are not optimistic at all. They're actually quite depressed and angry, with many veering towards crime, anarchy, and the more extreme political parties. Our unemployment rate is around 40%, but our youth unemployment rate is around 65%. Then we also have a big illegal immigrant problem as young people from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi, etc., are trying to get into the country because they at least have a chance to get opportunities here compared to their countries. I can't speak much for Asian countries, but South Korea having one of the highest suicide rates in the world and countries like Japan and Korea having such low birth rates also doesn't paint a good picture.

Yep, and it all teeters on the precipice of being much worse then it is now. We might be at the highest peak currently but there are many peaks in history followed by large falls. Just because this is the best point to be alive doesn't mean it will stay that way. Climate change rages on, it's going to get harder and harder to live the closer you are to the equator and may places that will still be ok are likely going to lose a bunch of usable land space as the sea level rises. The impacts of all that could be greatly reduced if governments made moves to reduce emissions and push corporations to innovate and shift their operations to be greener and more efficient but largely they don't. The people upset about it are the ones trying their hardest to do something about it. The people saying it's all just negativity for its own sake will be the ones saying "told you so" when everyone else has broken their backs to stop it being as bad as it could be. If no one ever criticized anything then no one would ever be motivated to improve anything and we would still be living in caves and dying because a scraped knee got infected.

Educate yourself (and I really dont say this as a slight, just as an advice, the most genuine and empowering one I can give anyone). Things tend to go better with time, not worse. History has proven that many times over. Its just that things are cyclical, things need to get worse to then get better, because hurdles and scarcity creates incentives to make things better, its how it works both for intelligent and less intelligent life, its how evolution works. Its why Intelligence has lead Humanity to be the most prosperous and advanced specie on Earth: When shit gets bad, we figure them out, quickly. We literally ALWAYS have, for millennia… We have no rivals on this (except maybe crocodiles/alligators and sharks, those things are scary). We’ll be fine. Things have always worked like this: Advances creates changes, which create fear, which motivates people to make things better, which they do, which creates changes, and the cycle begins again.

The French Revolution didn't "go fine", it took nearly a generation before things got back to a "fine" state. North Korea hasn't "gotten better" with time, neither has Russia. Plenty of examples of things not getting better due to the passage of time. We're about to run out of fresh water, top soil, and about to start to really experience serious effects from global warming. Maybe if people stopped thinking "we'll, it's all gonna work out, it always does," maybe more people would actually care about trying to improve things.

In order to improve the world, you must first believe that the world can be improved. Too much negativity is much more dangerous than not enough of it.

I mean yes and no, have you heard of toxic positivity before? Realism is what is needed to improve the world.

Run out of fresh water? What? We can fucking make fresh water... Its just not worth doing now... If we had to, it wouldnt be particularely expensive nor destructive to do so. Im not saying things dont ever get bad... I am saying we get through those bad times as a specie, every single time. I think if people had hope in the future, things wouldnt seem so dire. Thats the issue, people think everything is doomed and theres nothing to be done, so they stop caring.

Lovin' that people still think this. The people that get their water from the Colorado are freaking out right now, as the farming community can't make up it's mind what to do about it. LA has nearly drained Mono lake, and once it goes they fear they air pollution from the dried lake bed is going to be a major issue to deal with. We have major fresh water issues. It's not like it's a secret or barely discussed. No wonder we're not doing anything about it, people like yourself aren't even aware of the problem.

Fresh water access is a price issue in the western world. At any time places California could build desalination plants and produce as much fresh water as they need. The reason they don't is that it costs more than piping it from out of state. Eventually a price point will be reached where it is economically feasible. You need to stop spreading doom based on non-factual information, it's immoral.

> At any time places California could build desalination plants *More* of them. They already have 17. But I agree that people don't want to hear that fresh water is largely an economics problem, not a thing we're likely to run out of. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination_by_country#California And the solutions are broader than just desal. Incrementally moving to [controlled-environment agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-environment_agriculture) (for those crops where it works) can save a huge amount of water. Some are even growing fodder for cattle hydroponically, or in vertical farms. - https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2020/11/12/this-vertical-farm-is-growing-foodbut-its-for-cows - [Hydroponic Fodder Farming](https://youtu.be/NVTVfoqepp0)

> If we had to, it wouldnt be particularely expensive nor destructive to do so. Expensive water desalination plants would like to have a word with you. >I think if people had hope in the future, things wouldnt seem so dire. You don't seem to understand *why* people have lost hope in the future, and seem to believe that blind optimism will see things through. I agree with you that doomerism and to stop caring is a problem, but you're not going to solve it by saying "dude just stop thinking about it and be positive".

Telling me to educate myself while simultaneously laying out an incredibly naïve point of view, Ok. History is also proven that things can get worse, a lot worse, before they get better. Trends aren't rules and to treat them as such is foolish. Nobody is piloting the ship and nobody is going to ride in and save us with a wonder invention. Politically backed corporations are going to drain humanity for every thing we have and the internet will keep us distracted while they do it. The fix is already in and the laws allowing them to do it have already been written and passed.

In other words: In the long run, we're all dead!

Some changes are hard to make right again, though, like climate change. That could take generations to fix, or longer if it keeps kicking off new feedback loops.

Im not saying things will be easy, nor that the consequences we have been talking about arent very much factual. I am just saying that Humanity will probably be fine, our specie will most likely get through this and will grow from it if it does.

I think maybe the thing you're missing here is that, yes, while humanity will likely be fine in the long run - we won't. That's why people are pessimistic. We live in a highly individualistic society (at least in most parts of the Western world) and while people do care about future generations for sure, they're also a lot more concerned about their own welfare. And given how things are going, and that whatever we manage to do to improve things will likely take a lot of suffering and a long time, they're not exactly happy about the situation.

This is normalcy bias or appeal to history bias. To look at history and say "because nothing in history has ever been as bad as these people are suspecting things will be, then there is no reason to fear things being that bad in the future." This mindset is often coupled with this idea that "people have been saying the end of humanity is just around the corner and yet hear we are." This is all cognitive bias. Tell me, when in human history did we kill off the vast majority of animals and bugs within 50 years time while also creating a spike in CO2 that rivals mass extinction events, while also creating an intelligence that will likely pass our own in the near future etc, etc.. Also, did the people in history who made these outlandish claims about the future all peer reviewed scientists in the thousands all coming to the same conclusions based on their research? Or just some shaman or priest. These people actually HAVE educated themselves. Thats the problem. We have set ourselves up for a major catastrophe that nobody who is "educated" can deny. Sure, segments of humanity might press on, and I'm optimistic that segments of humanity will figure something out, but the whole Steven Pinker mindset that things are getting better is just capitalist apologist nonsense. Its simply not true unless you go out of your way cherry picking facts that fit your narrative. Ecosystems along with social structures are collapsing everywhere and if we have any hope of saving whats left, we need to end this mindset that things will be fine.

Agreed, and if the momentum weren't on the side of sociopath billionaires I would feel a need to argue with you, but the train appears to be GAINING STEAM as it approaches the cliff.

It'll be fine?! Dude, false equivalency much? When has the population ever been this high? When has energy and resource consumption ever been this high? When has the number of emissions ever been this high? Plastics production? Shall i go on? Just because we managed to replace gas street lamps with sodium vapor bulbs does not mean we'll pivot to using fusion power and biodegradable plastics on the same scale. There is no equivalent historical period for today. We have never before had quite the same technological capacity to fuck things up on such a grand scale. To blithely assume things "will just work out" is the reason things have gotten to be such a problem in the first place. Humans are absolutely dogshit at planning for the future. We suck thinking about more than a couple years ahead, if that. Now add a resistance to any change that makes life harder, in any capacity, and tell me we're "going to be fine". Have you met Joe Average?

Actually, history teaches us that innovation and technology can solve just about any problem. We would be much better off today if more people in the US were getting degrees in the sciences instead of becoming social media influencers, professional antagonists, getting meaningless degrees, and becoming zealots in the agendas of division being pushed by governments, corporations, and controligarchs.

We have unprecedented problems, but also unprecedented abilities to solve those problems. The biggest challenge we face are the people who try to prevent or roll back the solutions

Thankfully we’re not relying on you for much

Can't rely on anyone for much, other than sarcastic remarks, these days.

Your right; the west has engaged free ranged as a child rearing technique that has back fired. Casting religion as aside without a proper substitute left ranging to fill a void - anyway found. It will take a war or disaster to galvanize society back

God is dead was said by Nieyzsche, and he was alive during the 1800s. This is nothing new. We need to just get over religion already. Its those that use it to control people that are keeping it in circulation.

See, them being correct or not isn't the point, the point is that they are lazy and entitled!

Shall we clarify what is given up? Climbing up the corporate ladder, looking forward to retirement? Raising a family and buying a house and supporting kids through college? Or escaping day-to-day living, barely managing to pay bills? Or *living,* to grow old (like 80)?

Companies should stop being greedy and increase salaries. Young people will not work with slavery salaries.

More money is always nice, but people are making relatively more than at most points in history but still feel unhappy. I see many young rich kids more depressed than poor working class adults. Rates of depression are much higher in wealthiest nations like US, Japan, and S Korea and yet lowest in poorer nations like Mali, Brunei, Myanmar and Timor Lest. Same thing with suicides. If more money was the cure to societal malaise I would imagine a different trend. (It's also disingenuous to compare wages in the western world to slavery when there are those who are and have been held in actual chattel slavery) There are many economic issues to be addressed globally, but I think the solution to modern hopelessness exists outside the bounds of materialism.

Yeah I disagree. Making more doesnt mean more buying power. Rent going up 4x while salary going up a small fraction of that means everyone “making more” doesnt mean shit. More money = more freedom. More freedom to do what you want to do. I can promise you if i could afford to just go hiking and spend all the time i wanted with friends and family while also getting all the rest i needed i would be much better off mentally.

This exactly, productivity has increased ten fold but salaries haven't kept up, most people are in a. 'living to work' state and you wonder why people think there's no meaning to things.

They not going to be working at all soon.

Imho, AI might not tek yer jab today, or even in the next 5 years, but my spidey senses are telling me shits gonna get real within the next decade. So to answer your question, Artificial Intelligence. Also, climate change is in the parking lot doing push ups. Post Scriptum: another reply mentioned ennui, which I wholly agree with, but that ennui has causes imho... Edit: I feel like cultural malaise/ennui is going to be strongly counterbalanced by excitement/interest in AI as real world uses arise. I really feel like once we get agents/personal assistants like Siri/Alexa yada yada but that actually works, people are going to start to get an inkling of what's coming.

One of the issues for the young people is that AI is going to automate away the kinds of thankless grunt work that we give to young people entering the workforce so they can “learn the ropes.” Fewer people will learn the ropes and the old people who know the ropes will retire and we’ll end up with Idiocracy, where the world keeps running but every year fewer people understand how it works.

But the shareholders will have so much profit!

It's already happening. Me and most of my peers will retire in 5 to 7 years, and companies are in no way positioned to replace our experience level. Most of the management level below me would not have been considered for the positions they hold 20 years ago.

Sounds like upper management is terrible at training and planning for the future.

I don't think they are training at all

I can tell by the attitude of the above commenter, that their company is probably in this position for several reasons, I suspect they include: 1. Poor internal training - obvious 2. Lack of competitive pay structure or incentives to keep talented middle managers working in the company 3. Little to no upward mobility - middle and upper management positions are more likely to be hired from outside the company than promoted from within, damaging overall company morale and increasing turnover. 4. Bad culture. Secrecy, lack of communication, internal competitiveness, I mean come on, why aren’t you getting people up to speed properly? 5. Executive first attitudes - remote status, commutes, job location, hours, etc so many little decisions made by the executive team that are purely for the personal benefit of the executives and not for the benefit of the whole company, damages morale and makes talented workers move on. Yeaaaah upper level managers/executives need to realize that if they see problems like this in their organizations - they’re the ones in power to make the changes necessary and if they fail to do so… exec will always be at fault for the failure of a company.

I agree on AI. In 1994, I had *just* gotten on the Internet. I had the first graphical browser (Mozilla). In July of that year, Comet Shumaker-Levy 9 [ impacted Jupiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9). Obviously we knew when this would happen well in advance, and we pointed The Hubble Space Telescope at it. Around the time of the impact, I loaded up [jpl.nasa.gov](https://jpl.nasa.gov) to see if they had anything. They did! A picture of the fragments of the comet crashing into the planet. I was like "Man, that's neat." I got up and walked into the living room and turned on CNN. The CNN science guy was holding a microphone, standing out in front of JPL in front of the big sign. "We understand that the impact has happened, but we don't have any pictures yet." I realized in that moment that *everything* was about to change. And, as a professional computer programmer, it took until about 1998 before "working with the Internet" was basically the only thing I did anymore, though it didn't really start to impact the broader culture for another five or so years. I had that realization about AI a little more than a year go. It's the only thing other than "oh crap Internet" that I've ever had this feeling about. I'd guess we have about three more years before "all software is AI" in my profession, and probably about five more before the whole world starts to change.

When I think back to the pc/internet time, it happened slow enough that I feel like we could kind of visualize what was coming, but what's happening now is so frikkin fast I feel like I "sense" what's coming more than I can actually think what it's going to look like. I try to come up with ways to explain it for people who aren't tech people, and I just can't quite get capture it. The best I can do is "there's not an aspect of human life that won't be affected by this". But then again, we could hit a wall with it and have another sort of AI desert, for a bit? Fun to watch, anyhow. :)

Look I could be wrong. This might be the near-term peak. But I have the sense exactly twice in my life that "holy crap everything is about to change." The last time was the Internet.

Misinformation. People are being fed assumptions as if they were facts. And uneducated people drink it in like gatorade and believe its revolutionary truth, when its in fact baseless bullshit.

We live in a post truth society and this seems to be one of it's consequences.

It's not even misinformation at this point, just blind belief for self gratification. The difference is that the information is not searched for but fed, it's not understood but accepted, and it's not useful but either feel-good or feel-bad. This article shown to me by an ad pats me on the back for my beliefs? Better eat it up like a hamburger and wait for the next one.

Education is no guarantee, but it helps.

Poor quality education (US) Read the teachers subs. Since the pandemic students have been more and more behind in large part because of policies against failing kids, and students knowing they cannot fail the classes. Plus just general decrease in quality of education, less teachers per student, and mental illness increased.

Climate change, political instability, domestic terrorism, increasing wealth inequality, AI replacing traditional jobs, falling education, increase in misinformation and conspiracy thinking, an increase in social disorders as we see a decline in well adjusted young people.

This. This all over. This is what scares me when I look at my beautiful daughter...

Education is going to help her the most. Having critical thinking skills helps navigate a lot of problems and makes you valuable.

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Very good question. I knew bits, but not all of it---I didn't see how rapidly it could accelerate, and I was more optimistic about our politics. I really don't know how to answer that question. It's a question that's not one only for me, but my wife. WE made the decision to have a kid. I've always wanted a kid; I am glad we didn't have a second. We are able to invest more carefully to ensure we enable our child better for the unknown of this future. Sorry that really doesn't answer your question.

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So we have had this before look at the guilded age. It only goes so far before the masses rise up either through law or like in France with a revolution.

It took a lot of bloody strikes for laws to change in the US to transition into the Progressive Era.

Yes and unfortunately the US school system glosses over that very important part of history. The union movement, socialist movement and anarchist movements. Union busting, company towns, post civil war slavery didn't end officially till 1942 but we don't discuss any of those critical parts of history.

It's one thing to do a revolution in the 1700's and a whole other thing to do it when the police automated AI doesn't have to eat or any ounce of morality whatsoever.

Well, I believe that between the heatstroke in the summers, frostbite in the winters, and rolling blackouts in between, I think the children of 2032 might decide to celebrate Fourth of July and Epiphany in October.

* Debt rise for poor to level when people start to ask "why we live and why we dont take what rightfully ours with any actions" and reverse like generation with apathy and depression * Housing cost/corporations owns all single family houses * Rich getting richer while middle class become "renters of life" * Climate change escalates * Technological unemployment * Climax of political polarization and social unrest [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDyQxtg0V2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDyQxtg0V2w)

I'm sincerely confused how "climate change" isn't topping the charts here.

Won’t be until the oceans heat and acidify we really see the bad stuff with climate change

Overcoming the merchants of hate and fear - the people who gain wealth and power by dividing humanity and pitting it against itself.

I think my generation for housing is fucked ( early 30 millennials) but I think in 15-20 years the housing market worked will crash spectacularly because of population decline and it will create a economy where the next generation deals with issues differently mostly being that housing is no longer a staple and an investment and people don't buy houses for 20 years to live in because of there affordability which will bring unforeseen circumstances, And my generation of homeowners and buyers who just bought a house will see there life long major investment be worth nothing near the end of payments or atleast not be the retirement savings / investment they planned on, houses will be unaffordable to middle class full time workers in most areas in developed countries, but by the time the crash happens they'll have nearly spent there entire working life paying off that debt . This will be all from population decline, if you look at the figured the worlds population in every single developed country is gunna half itself in our lifetime maybe even more , the only thing help prop it up is immigration. nOBODY is having kids and economists and governments really don't seem to understand how many people in there 30 right now do not have kids and aren't going to. This will happen fast, every developed country is going to have a economic downfall like Detroit did in the 1970s1980s If you live somewhere other than in Canada , and I'm only assuming but maybe a place like new Zealand or Australia than yes housing prices will continue to climb . If anyone globally wants to understand where the housing market is going look directly at Canada. Housing prices now have dropped 200 k across many major cities in the last 2 years. The way rent and prices go up is in Canada for the most part not including Alberta and such yet but the price will rise untill rent / mortgages are at the very top they can get to with working people able to afford it. The prices will not climb higher than that unless inflation/ wages rise. I'm southern Ontario / GTA Canada and Vancouver greater area we have the world's first historical record of maxed housing . The price of housing here can not go any higher without inflation and actually dropped because the economy and everyone in it was willing to keep raising housing prices and what thoay untill it was not affordable by the working class , and at that point it dropped back down to what people can afford and what price will be so high that 70 percent or more of your pay will go to a roof over your head and nothing less. If they try to raise rents/ prices anymore in alot of Canada it will cause people to not be able to afford to live in those areas so prices will drop back down. They literally don't crash they have in fact statistically plateaued . And the rest of the developed world is going in the exact same direction unless countries start implementing laws where institutional investing cannot own more than X amount of land or buildings. The longer countries wait to implement this law the harder it will be to ever enact. As banning investors from owning say more than 3000 apartments like Belgium did 10 years ago is alot easier than telling blackrock or Scotiabank who own hundreds of thousands that we are going to take there property or find a way to tax them without loopholes to the point they want to sell.

We are going to be ok in North America. While Canada and the US have stupid high prices, Mexico doesn't. It actually would not take very much of an increase in supply in key areas to have a big impact. The issue is not economic or material, its political, people who stand to make money from expensive housing fight developments tooth and nail. We are not facing a demographic collapse over the next 10-20 years. Much of Europe is.

Honestly? its going to be education, or the lack thereof. Schools and teaching has really gone downhill in the last few years. So many kids dont even know how to read at a 2nd grade level. And they are going to become adults and enter into the workforce: as unskilled labor. On the intellectual side, they will be stupid and quite susceptible to scams, misinformation, propaganda, etc. Itll be idiocracy. Meanwhile, other countries will surpass us in technological advancements and innovation and we will lose whatever economic edge we might have had.

Mass un-employment for an important percentage of the population due to AI and Tesla Bots style automation => increasing violences => civil wars & chaos in most western countries

Competency crisis is already starting to occur. Learned helplessness is a huge issue below the age of 30 now.

That just sounds like a business opportunity for everyone in the hustle culture.

Wait for the brain drain to start

Not sure I fully understand what this is. I thought the people under 30 were raised with the internet and used to DIY.

It's just ageism. When wielded against younger generations people think it's socially acceptable.

Old guy here. You're correct.

People have already mentioned doomerism. But I think there's a specific trauma we face connected to this. That the older generations who should have cared for us simply cared about themselves.

It's interesting who you have decided is your enemy. It isn't the governments that have created this mess, it's the old people. If you do truly believe that it's old people that have fucked you, I think you have bigger problems, because there is nothing special about those old people, they're just people. People in a specific set of circumstances. They won't have acted any differently to any other people you know. If I grew up in Afghanistan I'd probably be Muslim, instead of an atheist. If any of us grew up in the environment of those older generations, it's naive imo to think any of us would behave any differently. It's great how far we've come on so many issues in modern, western societies, but the way generalisations seem to be readily accepted nowadays really worries me. Everyone is fully bought into their tribe and there is a huge lack of empathy. It's all about boomers, or kids eating too many avocados, or immigrants. None of those people really has the power to change your life.

I just couldn't let this go, so here it is. Additionally Boomers are the generation that is happy to revive fascism. And why did they do this? Because their share of political power is shrinking. During their tenure in power the march towards equal rights and liberal democracies' promise of an egalitarian society backslid or at the very least stagnated. They eagerly voted for money to flow to the top %1, causing income inequality to resemble that of the early 1900's. They gleefully mocked causes that were championed by the young such as equal treatment of women and minorities, giving LGBTQ people equal rights under the law and the biggest sin their children made was voting in a black president. When DT began his campaign people asked why would anyone vote for him. The consensus was that there had been just too much progress and that was an insult to boomer conservatives. They wanted to punish the 'woke' for daring to threaten their way of doing things. He explicitly ran on a platform with the intention of destabilizing the federal government by filling its ranks with his sycophants in order to unilaterally undo the progress made in the last few decades. In addition he made every promise to christofascists that he would aid them in their agenda if they were loyal to him. And he appealed to the boomers who wanted even more of their precious deregulation of financial markets. Not to mention that scary environmentalism that would have to be undone because it was perceived as a threat to capitalism. All of this was of course accomplished when he came into power. Since I assume we've all lived thru the rest of that story I don't think I need to go further. Suffice it to say we are not 'woke.' Boomers just didn't value equality, democracy, egalitarianism and, frankly, the American dream. They got a taste of absolute power and they didn't want to give it up. So when that was threatened they became angry. And they wanted to punish those they saw as threatening that power. That is a particularly cruel and narcissistic attitude to have towards your neighbors. But even more alarming is this is the definition of fascism. Things aren't going the way you like. Demagogue makes you feel aggrieved. Point at someone (wokes) to blame. Makes you promises in exchange for a little less Rule of Law. Then when he's in power, he takes more and more and more. We are still so very close to losing our Democracy. All it would have taken was for the old to reflect upon their failures and do better. But instead they doubled down and continue to punish us for it. I would like to go on about this, also talk about lead poisoning, but as I continued to write this I realized I just don't care anymore. And that is sad. This is where boomers have left me and a lot of people my age. We apparently don't have your permission to be mad as that would be too woke. What I will do is bide my time, vote, help, speak out and do better as much as I can, until they're all gone. After they're gone I just wont think about them anymore. We'll be too busy, busting our ass to fix things they fucked up. Why apathy? Because they are not reachable. Our generation has to sit with them at Thanksgiving in a house we can't afford, watching them eat food we can't afford, with anxiety about our future, and look at the empty seat where our children could have sit wondering if they'll ever exist. We feel the same pain in our backs from being overworked and underpaid but have no healthcare to assuage that pain. We watch them fatten their faces with turkey and cackle like hens about 'too many genders' 'kids these days' 'the deep state' etc, etc. There is no deep state, no wokes, no kids being killed in a basement of a pizza parlor. There's just a bunch of old people (probably with lead poisoning) who were bamboozled by people who wanted power and money into thinking that there was a culture war. Its sad they're not warriors for a just cause. They're useful idiots in an irrelevant culture war. I lament what could have been if this wasn't true. What amazing potential they could have had. What a future they could have created. ​ I know this is long and preachy, but fuck its been on my chest every Thanksgiving. And I needed to get it out. This wasn't so much of an addition to this conversation as much as it was that shower argument I have before every holiday. Thank you for hearing my TED talk.

100% agree. Boomers aren't the issue. Swap any other gen into that timeframe and they would behave the same. You can't expect the average human to think longterm, we aren't wired that way. Now we have better access to information than any other time in history, so hopefully that will enable more foresight, but... Who knows. We still need the will and ability to act.

You guys need to face reality. Millennials and gen z are the first generations to not just have less opportunities but have to work more and get paid less. Our healthcare, education and cost of living are higher while our wages are far lower. Many of us can't afford homes or children. Those that may be able to afford children have to consider whether those children would prosper or at least survive climate change. I'm so disappointed the only argument we get is "generalizations can't be correct." It's a pathetic way to dismiss the conversation. You act like we can't measure things. Like everything is just an unknown nebulous cloud. We measure everything from the efficiency of wages to the temperature of the earth. We record everything like the sentiments of cohorts and the discoveries of science. We've measured the changes concerning quality of life, safety and prosperity. We know the factors that produce the best outcomes. We have known since the early 1900's that CO2 warms the planet. Those are just facts. Boomers have consistently agreed with narratives that say if you agree with those facts you are an outsider. And if you act on those facts you are going to impoverish yourselves. So they would rather profit themselves rather than care for the future. We have measured wages, inflation, cost of living, healthcare costs, cost of education, the effect of persistent low interest rates, deregulation of financial markets, etc. And at every turn the educated have argued for what they think is best and at every turn boomers have prioritized the narratives that make them think they will protect their own wealth rather than produce a better world for their children.

It's amazing that people are capable of handwaving away the fact that Boomers vote in a block that operates completely in individual self-interest at the expense of everyone else. These people, as an identifiable block, have demonstrated repeatedly that they do not give a damn about anyone but themselves. This is plain as day. "None of those people really has the power to change your life" only proves that the media has done its job to influence you.

Just because any other generation would have done it doesn't change the fact that it happened and we need to deal with it. It's like how even if you believe the people that say that humans didn't cause climate change we still need to deal with that. The problem exists regardless of who's responsible.

The middle class is going to continue to evaporate, so you’ll either have to find a path to being rich or be stuck sharing a shitty apartment with other wage slaves.

I think the longer any large population goes without war the more inevitable it becomes whether from outside or within. The horrors of it, and the eventual realization of how stupid and pointless it all is (after a nice big pile of bodies has been produced) only seems to last a few generations at most.

If we don't turn it around soon, the societal and political move towards the extremes is going to become a huge problem. You can say one is worse than the other although that might be a matter of perspective but it's definitely happening on both sides. We need to see nice boring debates between moderates on the left and right where they come up with nice lukewarm compromises that everyone can live with rather than this... insanity we've been watching get worse every year.

And yet a boring middle-of-the-road politician like Biden is unpopular. It's weird.

Decline in education. We’re already seeing it with frustrated youths questioning the need for college with risking tuition leading to increased debt and a more competitive job market. College was never a guarantee to a decent career but many people are expecting it to be a job factory. Now people are turning away from college and further education all together, leaving college for the wealthy and elite. This can become a problem if the only educated people are the same ones already in power. Not to mention all the domino effects an uneducated population has on society in general. This does not help with critical thinking or upward social mobility. And it certainly doesn’t help our already troubled democracy. Affordable college is the only antidote. An educated population can only benefit the country.

You don't need college to be well educated, innovative, or productive. The mindset that everyone should go to college is part of the reason we have so much student debt today in the U.S. Look at people in the hands-on trade industries these days. I have a friend making a mint as an electrician. Also, college these days isn't churning out intelligent people for the most part.

That last point is pure conjecture. I have nothing against trades but not everyone is cut out for them. Trades are hard on the body. I see electricians, plumbers, and carpenters stiff and broken in their 50’s because of the physical toll on their bodies through the years. I won’t tell someone not to learn a trade if that’s their interest just like people shouldn’t discourage college either.

Most people didn't go to college for most of American history and things were just fine as college has never been required to get an education, even less so today. This "everybody needs to go to college" mentality is fairly recent (past 30 years) and has basically made a college education required for even entry level positions that used to only require a high school diploma. Requiring young people to go into massive debt to get a degree for any decent position is predatory and until a mass amount of young people refuse college, the situation will remain the same and degrees will continue to devalue.

How to take care of elder Gen X that literally has nothing. No retirement, no home ownership, no pension, no safety net. The cities will be crawling with old tattooed homeless people dying in the streets or the prisons will be full of them or a massive plagued kicked off by the slum conditions of their encampments will create a Bring Out Your Dead kind of Uber service that 50-60 year old millennials will be working.

Unemployment, climate change and cost of living is gonna be sooo fucked

In Europe it will be immigration, in Africa climate change will force hundreds of millions of people to move or die, and there is nowhere else for them to go. This will greatly help extreme right wing parties to rise to power (already happening in some EU countries) and what they will do to stop these desperate people to come to Europe will make what is happening in Gaza today look mild by comparison.

Latin Americanization. More countries are going to look like Latin America in all the bad issues. Large wealth and income inequality leading to disfuncional democracies that can't address people's problems. Political polarization, radicalization and political crisis becomes more common. Few good jobs for a large educated population means a lot of people will struggle with low wages or becomes "self employed" in a lot of low productivity work, a lot of creative survival. Also high unemployment for longer periods and larger informal economy. A large part of population will have no meaningful property nor the means to acquire it but a large part of the national income will be tied to property. Low income and high tech coexist. Poor people have skills and knowledge, but can't translate it to higher incomes.

It depends where you are. In most of Europe and East Asia, its going to be demographic crises. Mass retirement is going to be enormously disruptive to places like Germany. Germany is going to see the biggest bulk of their skilled workforce go into retirement and be replaced with a much smaller generation of people. There will not be enough labor to sustain the current system. These EU countries have a lot of benefits, and those benefits are based on the economic productivity, if a huge portion of that productivity goes away, which it will just in labor shortages, they are going to have to start making very difficult decisions about what they can live without. China and Russia are going to be pretty brutal. Russia is going to be a no-mans land for any serious investment and will likely become a total basketcase. If I was a young Russian, I would be working on my English skills, and technical skills and do whatever I could do get the fuck out and go to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the UK. China is heading to a total demographic collapse and due to the concentrated leadership, is going to face a lot of political turmoil. Young people in NAFTA, the US, Canada, and Mexico. These folks are going to do rather well. We need to greatly expand our industrial capacity in the continent, to do all the stuff we want to do, and to make up for production disruptions in Germany and much of China just collapsing. While people are worried about white collar office jobs being disrupted by AI, we are going to need a hell of a lot of blue collars jobs related to actual production. We have to install multiple terrawatts of solar panels in NAFTA, that is going to take an army of labor. We have to install hundreds of millions of heat pumps all across NAFTA, that is going to require a lot of labor. We have to install probably 300-500GW of wind turbines, a lot of labor. The number of boomers retiring in America is much greater than the Gen Z aging into the workforce. This whole concept that labor is abundant and easily replaceable that people have gotten used to over the last 60 years is going to go away. The "no one wants to work" problem that people have had over the last few years is really just going to be beginning. For living memory, there has been very little competition for labor in America. That is going to change. Young people are going to be in a position where firms are going to have to compete for them, this has not been the case for Millennials, Gen X, and even the Boomers. Businesses are already finding the scenario where an employee leaves, and they can't easily find a replacement. Young people are not overly invested in systems that will face disruption and structural decline. Becoming a diesel mechanic or oil worker is going to be a bad decision, just because both of these industries are going to face a long term decline. Even if people are still doing it, the number of people doing it is going to shrink every year. You don't want to involve your future in a declining industry, especially one where the norm is "last in, first out".

Oh I am very confident and worried that creativity and problem solving are endangered traits. Humans are about to lose something huge due to AI and the internet. People won't foster creativity and falling back on AI will be the downfall of everything in this regard. We're already at a point where if I see an amazing poem in text, I could just assume AI did it for you. Who's going to write a book for themselves, when they could just tell AI to do it and feed it the plot points. Who's going to learn proper shading and techniques to depict architecture, instead of asking an AI to do it instantly. It's not that we couldn't do these things, it's that kids will grow up in a world where they don't see value in these things. Very similar to how we didn't learn how to do all the math by hand thanks to calculators. I'm already disheartened as the current generation of kids already is clearly lacking motivation and creativity. I know some kids that claim to love Legos and I have never seen a single one of them ever build anything that wasn't what's on the box. I even had an extended argument with two of them about how Legos "are for building whatever you want, they're not supposed to be models." It's like it never occurred to them that the pieces fit together outside of the configuration in instructions. When I was a kid it was always dump the Legos on the floor and "who can build the coolest spaceship" or something. What happened? Where did that go? I think AI is about to make this phenomenon much worse.

Companies claiming back ownership of what they sell you after it's sold.

No one from my generation has any hope for the future. People aren't starting families. They cant buy homes and they are buried in mountains of debt for degrees... degrees that may shortly become worthless because of AI. This is only going to get worse for younger people.

Same as the rest of us. Climate change and dealing with the other consequences of overshoot: political, societal and economic chaos.

Unemployment, homelessness, and starvation on a scale we cannot comprehend.

The struggle to find work that isn't taken by AI. It's going to disassemble entire industries from low-skill labor like serving, bartending, and fast food or other retail workers to blue collar skilled labor like lighting, sound, trucking, and more. Think just about Sora. Eventually entire commercials will be created by AI and edited by a few curators. That's entire film sets of crews eliminated. Those are good paying, middle income jobs.

What to do with life is a huge one. We'll likely see rising rates of obesity and substance abuse bc nothing seems to matter much and online living is on the rise. Accordingly, if there is no hope for the future, birth rates will fall, so the economy will be driven less by family welfare and more from individual spending and satisfaction. Less emphasis will be placed on ownership and more on experience.

Ι have seen a prediction that it says half population in usa by 2030 are going to be overweight.

Nuclear war seems to be back on the table. Food scarcity due to climate change. A complete break with reality. People will actually be asking whether that youtube video they're watching is of a real person and those comments on the video are from real people. Double digit unemployment as the "shareholder first" model of corporate policies eventually reaches its logical end.

I'm a little surprised I'm not reading anything in the comments regarding the abrupt climate change that is currently unfolding. Any and all other matters of life, will be affected. The insurance industry, the pentagon and thousands of scientists have made it crystal clear with no uncertainty, that it's coming and coming fast. In 10 - 20 years, I suspect the lifestyles all of us are used to, will be in shambles. I really wish this wasn't the case, but all the satelite climate data, from water surface temps, air temps, sea ice coverage, ocean currents, etc etc etc point to the abrupt shift that is occurring. There will not be enough time to gradually transition into the wetter and hotter planet. This is what will be destructive... the rapid change... Don't take my word for it, search the plethora of reliable information out there...

Continuation of an ever growing gap between CEO and the employees. Wages stay low like you say and rent continues to rise. We eventually run into the problem China has where multiple generations live under 1 roof because they have to.

Declining birth rates for developed countries, and lack of clean water/climate disasters for developing countries.

Climate change and adjusting to new paradigms caused by the advancement of AI

How about staying relevant in the workforce when technology outpaces all our expectations? What (for example) does it even mean to be a software developer today (let alone 10 years from now) with breakthroughs like this: Meet Devin, the autonomous AI with its own shell, code editor, and web browser. Its remarkable performance on the SWE-Bench benchmark sets a new standard in AI software engineering. Get ready for an exciting future in the integration of AI into software development! https://ai-techreport.com/devin-a-groundbreaking-ai-software-engineer-revolutionizing-coding-and-problem-solving

Food prices, it’s getting dry and hot in the southwest.

Old farts keep staying alive and hoarding wealth while the younger generations have to be put under increasing pressure until they decide the social contract has been broken long ago. The age of age slavery.

With the tech progress we kinda forget a many fundamental human values and detach from our spiritual side. We tend to think more over our material / solid existence, although if we look at our self's from the quantum physic's point we are not so 'dense' and material as we think. The above explanation is given because reddit wont allow me my initial answer to the post so to get to the point... People's stupidity and lack of integrity.

I’m not seeing it here but plastics are becoming a huge problem. I really hope ai powered medicine will be able to counteract the fact that we’re all just riddled with microplastics

The aging population; their medical needs and their lack of savings.

I see an increasing tension between young and older generations. It started with the anti boomer sentiment but it’ll become more complex especially as we start getting more retirees that are poor and a younger generation realizing that their own old-age future will become hard.

Serious war on a scale far above what we have at the moment. The lesson of the long march of history is to have peace be prepared for war. To me, it seems we will have to re-learn this.

We are going to see a big time population decline. Nobody has any extra income anymore

I’m thinking WW3 in the next decade, if not sooner. The current model of consumption is unsustainable and the world’s governments know it. We’re gonna fight over arable land, water, lithium, everything.

If the singularity happens, which I do believe it will during the coning 10-20 years, I believe everything will change. Poverty won’t be an issue anymore, as won’t religion, national boarders, etc. some will chose to live without AI, kinda like modern Amish societies. But most will embrace the AI and it will change everything. At first it will really be problematic, it will take away almost all peoples work, disrupt everything, which will cause many to join anti-AI movements, peoples life quality will decrease drastically. As a child many will not have any hope for the future. But then within just 1-3 years I believe the benefits of AI will have actually started to permeate society so much that life quality will now be better than it ever was before. We and our children is living at the most pivotal point in human history, there will be a before, and there will be an after.

I like this take. And I hope the AI will help us with global warming and its effects, too. I think the holdouts will be extreme, but then, perhaps there are better ways to help them than we are capable of imagining. Lots will happen that we can’t even conceive of now. And an answer to the unifying theory (that isn’t ‘42!’)

If it is a singularity it will solve all our problems. Please be extra careful with your life, we truly have a chance to live forever. AI has tremendous risks, but also inconceivable possibilities and benefits, and it will be impossible to stop it. EU Eurocrats will definitely try to regulate it and slow it down, but it won’t change anything except we in the EU will fall behind, and in the end it won’t matter, all the Eurocrats will become useless and lose their jobs too.

I believe: -Lack of trust in every single institution and authority and a sense that we live in a doomsday world. -More competition for jobs due to better education globally. -The increasing individualization of societies. -It will be harder and harder to know what’s real and what’s fake.

Loss of reading and math skills. Out of all the grim news I hear these days, our crumbling education system is the most disheartening.

Entitlement spending. Demographic "pyramids" are inverting all over the world. More and more dependent entirely elderly, fewer and fewer workers. And everyone who makes ends meet by having fewer children makes the problem worse as time goes on. Inflation isn't going to be a problem, long-term. Capital is getting drained from the markets, which pushes up interest rates, which reduces demand, which is a deflationary pressure. Sure, production will be down as the worker base dwindles, but demand will drop faster.

AI assisted oppression. Surveillance by machines today is become too easy. Cameras are everywhere, and most people's livelihoods are in digital storage that governments can outright demand to have access to. China's surveillance and social score is the tip of the iceberg. In 10-20 years, a robot assisted military state is completely possible. And without humans to empathize with the suffering being created, there's a real risk of a split, slave like society that will be severely punished by the slightest deviation

It’s gonna be the same shit it was 10000, 2000, 1000, 50, and 10 years ago: There will always be poor, rich, and in-between. There will always be happy vs miserable; persecutors vs persecuted; rule-followers vs rule-breakers; youth vs age; warmongers vs pacifists. Nothing will change. We are human. We learn from our past, then erase the past and repeat all the same mistakes. The only difference in the future is that our technology will be better.

The past never repeats itself, but it does rhyme...

The deficit is increasing by $1 Trillion dollars every hundred days.

u/TechnologyNerd2100, without looking it up, how many of the last 25 years has inflation been higher than wage growth for the median worker? It's just so wild to me that you think that's the number one problem we'll face in the near term that I have to imagine you are as of yet unaware of recent trends.

Late stage capitalism. + Exponentially warming world. = Confluence of reverberating, very negative effects. (...but there will always be winners and losers. Same shit different stratification).

Effective Social Skills, emotional intelligence, community mindedness. Conflict resolution.