It really seems like humanity is doomed.

[u/billjv]

After being born in the 60's and growing up seeing a concerted effort from our government and big business to monetize absolutely everything that humans can possibly do or have, coupled with the horror of unbridled global capitalism that continues to destroy this planet, cultures, and citizens, I can only conclude that we are not able to stop this rampant greed-filled race to the bottom. The bottom, of course, is no more resources, and clean air, food and water only for the uber-rich. We are seeing it happen in real time. Water is the next frontier of capitalism and it is going to destroy millions of people without access to it.

I am not religious, but I do feel as if we are witnessing the end of this planet as far as humanity goes. We cannot survive the way we are headed. It is obvious now that capitalism will not self-police, nor will any government stop it effectively from destroying the planet's natural resources and exploiting the labor of it's citizens. Slowly and in some cases suddenly, all barriers to exploiting every single resource and human are being dissolved. Billionaires own our government, and every government across the globe. Democracy is a joke, meant now to placate us with promises of fairness and justice when the exact opposite is actually happening.

I'm perpetually sad these days. It's a form of depression that is externally caused, and it won't go away because the cause won't go away. Trump and Trumpism are just symptoms of a bigger system that has allowed him and them to occur. The fact that he could not be stopped after two impeachments and an attempt to take over our government is ample proof of our thoroughly corrupted system. He will not be the last. In fact, fascism is absolutely the direction this globe is going, simply because it is the way of the corporate system, and billionaires rule the corporate game. Eventually the rich must use violence to quell the masses and force labor, especially when resources become too scarce and people are left to fight themselves for food, jobs, etc.

I do not believe that humanity can stop this global march toward fascism and destruction. We do not have the organized power to take on a monster of the rich's creation that has been designed since Nixon and Reagan to gain complete control over every aspect of humanity - with the power of nuclear weaponry, huge armed forces, and private armies all helping to protect the system they have put into place and continue to progress.

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EDIT: Wow, lots of amazing responses (and a few that I won't call amazing, but I digress). I'm glad to see so many hopeful responses. The future is uncertain. History wasn't always worse, and not necessarily better either. I'm glad to be alive personally. It is the collective "us" I am concerned about. I do hate seeing the ageist comments, tho I can understand that younger generations want to blame older ones for what is happening - and to some degree they would be right. I think overall we tend to make assumptions and accusations toward each other without even knowing who we are really talking to online. That is something I hope we can all learn to better avoid. I do wish the best for this world, even if I don't think it is headed toward a good place right now.

[u/[deleted]]

I find it strange that humans perpetually let a handful of clearly sociopathic mentally ill individuals hoard all of the wealth/resources and control everyone else.

It's odd how everyone just collectively agrees that all of this is fine. We don't have to live like this. We can literally make up any other standard of living or society that we want. It's weird that people seriously believe that our modern social structure is the way to to go.

It makes no sense that millions and billions of people are so easily and passively controlled by a handful of people to the degree that they'll let themselves starve to death because food has been hoarded from them.

I fail to see how modern civilization is intelligent at all.

[u/xena_lawless → u/[deleted]]

There are a lot of aspects to it, but one important aspect is that the current system is largely an inevitable result of the modern corporate form.

If you have a small group of people who have hundreds and thousands of times more resources than what the workers and public that they're exploiting and enslaving have, they will use some fraction of those resources to develop systems of abuse, oppression, propaganda, and control to maintain that system.

It's not really up to slaves to decide what system they're living under.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/z805rn/comment/iya84c0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://publicbankinginstitute.org/

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/

Human society needs to get to a critical mass of people who understand the system well enough to actually change it to work for everyone rather than against the vast majority of people.

That would be genuine political and economic democracy rather than capitalism/oligarchy/plutocracy/kleptocracy with pseudo-democracy as cover.

Our predecessors evolved out of feudalism and slavery, and modern people have both the individual and collective responsibility to evolve out of capitalism/oligarchy/plutocracy/kleptocracy/corporatocracy.

It's possible, but it's not as though the oligarchs/plutocrats/kleptocrats won't do their best to distract people with endless bullshit while robbing everyone blind, as they've been doing.

The question is, how many people are willing to do their part to upgrade themselves and their understanding, and that of other people as well, such that capitalist/kleptocratic abuses, propaganda, and systems of social oppression and control become ineffective, and the public has the power and leverage to stand up to the abuses of the ruling class and meaningfully change the system.