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[Scoops Novel]

I've been here a little while, and have avidly read the threads discussing life, world events, science and nigh everything else under the sun. I have had the suspicion for quite a while now, and it's getting stronger, that things have begun to kick off, to move faster, heavier and thicker and important, gathering momentum. Not this year or the next or possibly the next after that, but soon. A shifting political landscape with the west having stronger competition, increasing climate change, the pace of technological advancement, overpopulation, increasing levels of public dissatisfaction. I know it's vague, at this stage of course it is, but i doubt i'm the only one to have the feeling. If i were more inclined to prophetic hyperbole i would say something about the tides of change stirring, but at the least they're lapping, and sometimes not very gently.

I suppose what i want to know is this starting to sink in to the general populace, are fears becoming more and more material, what do you think, what can we do about it and how long until things come to a head?

[Flying Dice]

Except that it has been like that for at least half a decade if not more. In some ways, it's been like that since the end of the Cold War. Societal-level change is very rarely definable as a single "moment" (so to speak), hence why such things tend to be notable.

[King DZA]

Nothing lasts forever. Regardless of the time it takes, change is always a certainty.

The only thing I'm truly interested in is what that change will end up being.

[Montague]

King is sort of thinking on my wavelength. I'm less concerned about delaying the inevitable collapse of the current paradigm, or trying to make life better right now, but thinking about what will replace it and how to make the most out of the new world.

[Loud Whispers]

Considering how the worst case scenario is the destruction of our species or civilization (which is just as worse in most cases imo), feel privileged that you might share the burden as the last generation of our species, and enjoy your slow apocalypse.

[mainiac]

None of those things are really come to a head type situations except for public dissatisfaction.  Consider the worst case scenario for global warming, it's what we're in right now where climate change is disrupting global agriculture and the arctic ice sheet is disappearing.  Yes it will get worse, but it's been worsening for a while now.

Public dissatisfaction is probably going to be improving everywhere but Europe and China by 2014.  There is good reasons to expect the world economy to be making good progress in 2014 with the latest moves by the central banks in US and EU and the economic policies in China.  China will slow down but it's a planned slowdown and they'll still have good growth.  Europe still hasn't worked out their currency and banking issues and will continue to suffer but eventually the rest of the world will drag them back into recovery.  I suppose there's an outside chance of war breaking out in Europe but I don't see that as happening.  So there will be a bit of increased poverty but a few years from now Europe will have hit rock bottom.  I suppose you could say that we are in the worst case scenario already for Europe as well.

[Seamas]

Except that it has been like that for at least half a decade if not more. In some ways, it's been like that since the end of the Cold War. Societal-level change is very rarely definable as a single "moment" (so to speak), hence why such things tend to be notable.

Yes, I have to agree with this.  The change we expect to hit us like a bag of bricks really just happens bit by bit, until one day years from now you look around and think: Wow, everything really has turned to shit!  Why didn't I notice?

Also, the rate of shit accumulating seems (to me anyway) like an exponential function.  Sure it was moving slowly twenty years ago, and still moves slowly, but suddenly (tomorrow, next year, next decade?) that incremental growth takes off like a rocket and the tipping point is attained.  Yes that's another way to think of it - the tipping point really is just one more hair on the camel's back and the downward slide is swift and unanticipated.

I'm getting very abstract, humor me.  When I was younger I anticipated armageddon (as portrayed in the movies) with some sordid glee but now, I'm sort of enjoying this science fiction distopia we live in and don't want it to fall to pieces just yet!  Maybe five years from now, but just not yet.  I'm having too much fun.

EDIT: Positive feedback!  That's the term I was looking for.  Explains everything I meant to express.

[SalmonGod]

To be honest, I've had this vague gut-level notion my entire life that something huge was going to happen in my lifetime.  I mean this is something I've noticed since before I was even capable of appreciating the concept of apocalypse.

From a more objective standpoint, I think tensions are incredibly high right now.  I think that at its most basic level what we are seeing is this:  We are near the height of a major inflection point between the ancient establishment of society based on centralization and the broadly emerging realization in our culture that technology is rendering much of the basis for that centralization obsolete.

[ChairmanPoo]

 

How long until things come to a head, more so then there already starting too?

28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. That's when the world will end

[MonkeyHead]

Without wanting to sound like an ass, but human history is basically the history of change and conflict. Our generation is no different. Think, in the last 200 to 300 years or so we have had the fall of dynasic monarchies in the west, the rise and civil war of the US, the rise and fall of the British Empire, European imperialism, the great depression, 2 world wars, communism as the opponent in the Cold War and its fall, radical islam in the middle east, the attempted overthrowing of dictatorships in the middle east and possibly the beginnings of the ends of western capitalism. What is different is that the pace of change appears to be increasing, which is probably the result of technology, most probably communications.

[Frumple]

Yeah... awareness of the changes going on is probably the biggest difference between now and the past. Lots of crazy shit has been going on constantly for forever, more or less, but fifty or sixty years ago the chances of you actually being aware of what was going down outside of your local area or, at the most, nation, was pretty small. Now... now we're having regular conversations, sometimes in parallel, with people all over the world and getting news from bloody everywhere, every day. That is a pretty big change for us little people.

Personally, I've thought for long while it's not so much that so much is happening now as it is that so much has always been happening and we just didn't have the technology and methodology to be consistently aware of all or most of it.

To be honest, I've had this vague gut-level notion my entire life that something huge was going to happen in my lifetime.  I mean this is something I've noticed since before I was even capable of appreciating the concept of apocalypse.

As for this... personally, I've seen huge things occur, especially in the field of technology but also in many other areas, dozens upon dozens of times so far in my life time, and I'm younger than you SG. From a historical perspective, compared to a lot of the things that happened in the past and shaped the world, we've already had game-changing events flop around like a bucketfull of live fish dropped on the concrete. I'd wager we don't see them as such because we're in the middle of it, but I'd also posit that the people going through world-changing events in the past didn't really stop and think, "My god(s), this is going to be huge," very often.

[mainiac]

[alway]

I've been here a little while, and have avidly read the threads discussing life, world events, science and nigh everything else under the sun. I have had the suspicion for quite a while now, and it's getting stronger, that things have begun to kick off, to move faster, heavier and thicker and important, gathering momentum. Not this year or the next or possibly the next after that, but soon. A shifting political landscape with the west having stronger competition, increasing climate change, the pace of technological advancement, overpopulation, increasing levels of public dissatisfaction.

Congratulations, you have described every year for the past 150 or so years.

[Loud Whispers]

So, it has come to this.

[kaijyuu]

That is has.