What do we tell the children about the future they're inheriting?
They're realizing they're f@$ked and are asking questions
Questions I've recently heard:
The scientists warned you for decades - why did you do nothing?
Why are people so selfish?
My life is pointless. Why should I go to school and save when I'm just going to die?
If you aren't getting asked these questions by today's youth, you will. I have and I'm not sure what to say. How I respond of course depends on their age and knowledge, but simply answering "yeah, you're fucked" isn't fair.
Teenagers are already factoring suicide as an exit strategy when shit hits the fan, whatever that looks like. They've explicitly told me.
At a time when they should be contemplating which path their lives might follow, hedging with an exit strategy makes the effort put into studying and building a life seem pointless.
It starts with understanding the ongoing destruction. Next, recognizing how we failed them. Yes, "we". I'm not going to shirk blame because I'm aware of the issues. I, like almost everyone else, benefited from the system. We all gained at our descendants' expense. While most of us reading my collapse2050 rag are doing what we can to live sustainably, our very existence is part of the problem. None of us can claim we're not contributing to the problem in one way or another, and that's what the future will see. Only our deficiencies will be highlighted when a breadbasket collapses.
I have long contemplated whether this was all inevitable, given our internal programming to consume, expand and control. We knew what needed to be done, but competitive pressures prevented us from acting. Like the prisoner's dilemma, scaling back industrialized society requires cooperation amongst competitors. Under such conditions, cheating - and the expectations others will cheat - undermines the objective.
With that said, did we even try? Besides empty promises, our starving descendants would say we couldn't be arsed to save civilization. Why would we when we had it so good?
So how do we explain our failures and help youth navigate their future?
I recently asked people what they tell the young ones. Here are some of my favorite answers:
The future is bleak but people will carry on. Don't waste your time trying to learn skills for the world that exists now, instead learn how to adapt to what's coming. Learn the skills of ancient people, of pre-industrial society, of indigenous tribes.
Accept that even if you prepare you might still die, that even if you survive it'll be a difficult life. Surround yourself with good people, and enjoy the good moments while they last. It won't be all doom and gloom though. People lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years, we're more adapted to live in traditional ways than in our current capitalist system, that's why despite being so wealthy we're still so depressed. The comforts we'll lose will be replaced with stronger communities and a greater sense of purpose. We'll no longer chase dopamine and instant gratification, instead well focus on personal development and practical survival skills.
Things will be difficult but people have survived difficult times in the past. Read these stories draw inspiration from them. I often think about my great grandmother who traveled across Alaska on foot with nothing but knowledge and primitive tools. Your ancestors struggled to stay alive for thousands of years, you are here because of their strong will to survive. You are a survivor, it runs in your blood, keep the light alive and keep pushing forward.
I'm sorry this has to be the word you live in.
Collapse, like the future, is unevenly distributed. Live your life in such a way that you can deal with events when they happen near you, and also so that you can change locations when needed. Prep, but be able to move if you need to.
Even if the future looks bleak it’s still better to prepare for it however you can. Get a degree, place a garden, make local friends and connections, buy a bunch of bikes and learn to maintain them, take up woodworking, learn to sew. There is still joy to be had on the road to collapse. When the end comes, if it does in your lifetime, you’ll have done what you could which is all any of us are doing.
I would encourage them to read about Greta Thunberg and connect with young activists/peers who are also aware. I'm not a young person, so I can't even imagine how hard that would be right now. Also, the Sunrise Movement is youth based. Maybe start there.
“Sorry” would beca good start.
And then try to give them the information, skills, resilience and attitudes that will help them cope with a very different and much more dangerous world..
What I'm missing from this is "capitalism" and class consciousness. Climate collapse is a direct result of a very narrow period of history, petrocapitalism, that's lasted about the last 130 years. It's not like the entire 10,000 year history of humans on this planet have been leading to this, but rather that it's a result of a specific set of circumstances. My own existence isn't "part of the problem," but rather my existence within the context of petrocapitalism. This framing gives both kids and adults something to fight against, to work against: to fight on behalf of the working class against the elites. That brings meaning to our lives and gives us something to live for.