Whereas previous economic shocks such as the oil crisis of 1973 caused a temporary dip in fertility, the 2007-2008 banking meltdown was different because birth rates continued to decline even after the economy started growing again, says to Daniele Vignoli, professor of demography at the University of Florence in Italy. He believes the turbulence a decade and a half ago marks the point at which people’s uncertainty about the future began to take hold.
I am often surprised by so much pessimism of people in Western Europe. There are of course big problems, but if taken seriously, can they not be addressed? I do not deny that many people have reasons to be pessimistic, but maybe the cause is more lack of ideas for building better future. So much was achieved, in art, science, technology, reflecting in high quality of life, how can this be seen as a hellhole?
I am aware that this is complaining on a very high standard. My life is and probably will be quite comfortable relative to the lifes of others that were less fortunate in the birth-lottery.
But to explain a little more: I am in my mid-twenties. In my lifetime I have seen (arguably tainted by a LOT of childhood nostalgia) a pretty nice world. Then, when I became more concient about politics shit started happening:
Of course a lot of this are problems that COULD be dealt with. But a big part of society seems to vote for parties that want to maintain most of the status quo. So while ‘hellhole’ is a overstatement (but one that a teenager might very well make ;)) I don’t see a lot of improvement coming.
I think, very broadly, climate change can be tackled by collective action or/and technologies which make climate-friendly action economically favorable. There was a lot of progress recently on the second part, including sizable contribution of Germany: rapidly growing contribution of renewables, electric transport, better heating and insulation, etc? I think good people putting themself to work on an important goal can achieve a lot for common good, I see this a lot in my area of research and technology. I realize there is a danger of thinking “technology will solve all” and relaxing, but what I am saying that it’s part of the solution, and at least a cause for some optimism fueling further action. Furthermore, I see that as Europe gained a privileged position due to historical circumstances, it is its moral duty to leverage this position for helping to advance the necessary technologies.
For the first part it’s harder since there is no consensus but I suspect this will be facilitated by progress in technology (yet, it’s important to work on consensus). Also I see that some understanding of the need to act is increasing in the Western Europe population, is it not?
Maybe part of the challenge with US, Arab spring, and far right, is that after the fall of Soviet Union there was too much confidence in neoliberal system automatically bringing democracy, prosperity, and fairness everywhere. While delivering democracy as a gift of historic process is somehow antithetic to the idea of democracy, which implies active agency, individual and collective action. People grew complacent assuming that all gets solved for them by the market, and politics became sometimes a dirty word. Instead, it’d be better if people continued to practice political discourse about tough questions in respectable but honest way. But now it is becoming next to impossible to avoid engagement, which makes some people loose any hope, some turn to fascism, and some searching for a better solution. I think the last, better, way is not yet lost.
Technology development itself raises further difficult political questions, about ownership of new tools deriving from commons (like LLM AI), viability of common space in privately managed companies (social networks), and so on. People need to be engaged in this else the decisions will be made for them and not in their interest (even if their consent may be sometimes formally acquired following some misleading campaign).
This potential for action, and recent history of progress, in two related directions, technology and political agency, seems to be the cause for optimism. Even raise of fascism, as worrying as it is, indicates that people are striving for change, they just do not see a better option since it is not sufficiently developed and communicated to them yet.
Maybe I went a bit overboard with my post above, I do have some optimism but I wanted to explain why there is a big tendency to be pessimistic.
Oh I am definitely not at the doomer stage. I do think that we will be able to limit the heating of the climate to something of the effect of 2,x Kelvin. That’s pretty shitty though and will still cause a lot of global change. I do agree, we likely will have even better ways in the future. What annoys me is that we have technology right now that would be way better than oil/gas based systems for heating houses and driving vehicles. We just managed to make the people poor enough so they can’t afford the higher fixed costs, so they will be locked out of enjoying the lower variable costs. (Which means we will have to subsidize them which means political debates with compromises that will probably be met half-ways between the green and liberal party currently in control, which will probably satisfy none really)
Yes, but very very slowly. That’s because there are two blocks left unconvinced:
We also see that while a lot of people (around 65%) claim that they support the climate protection movement in general acceptance of specific laws is always way lower. Meaning that they have not fully realized that to protect the climate we need to actually change some things, and sometimes dramatically so.
For that to be a cause for optimism would require me believing that we as a people will want to and be able to seize that potential for action. Which I seriously doubt at least for germany.
The reason driving a lot people towards conservatives and even the fascist parties in germany is their promise of “getting back to the good old days” which the conservatives are actually currently failing to communicate well because they have a elected a leadership that is pretty market liberal which makes the party currently a weird economically liberal and socially conservative amalgam which do not always go well together. Compared to that the AfD is publicly still putting up the charade of keeping and upholding the “good old values” while getting more and more obviously racist and fascist. Both these developments additionally to a lot of people who, out of protest against the last and the current government, vote for them to make a statement, have made them poll at more than 20% with no tendency of stopping.
So no, I don’t think people turn to fascism for change, at least not here. They turn to fascism because of the promis of keeping everything as it is or even go back a few steps.
I see, thanks, your comments are interesting also because they are representative of what many people feel, it is what I see in social media as well as in “real” life. Plenty of people take the pessimism far enough to stop planning for future generations. That is, some people might choose not to procreate for other reasons, but widely spread pessimism is indeed systemic I find, and I think you point it out as well. I guess my main point that I think it’s a pity people do not find a way to be inspired for constructing better future while there are conditions for doing so. I work in science and technology, natural sciences, and I saw progress in my lifetime which to me is amazing and inspiring confidence in what people can do if they want. This also not only potential for transformational technological progress, but also societal change.
Frankly even the fact that people as a specie are successful enough to change the planet as a whole (some species managed this in the past, but not quite so fast) is kind if inspiring in a strange way. It’s like for an young individual getting strong enough to lift a large weight, it’s impressive, but also a cause to think maybe where we want this weight to be where it will not fall and break someone’s leg or worse.
Although I grew up in eastern Europe, I spent much of my life in rather wealthier parts of western Europe, especially Switzerland, and I see better technologies really establishing: heat pumps, extensive solar panels, high-performance energy storage etc. In recent years even rather selfish and skeptical people realized these technologies are actually a very good investment, in part driven by the energy crisis, in part by accelerating progress in renewable technologies. I think in so much as these privileged spaces are morally acceptable at this time, they can at least be at the cutting edge of sustainable development by concentrating effort, and I think recently this possibility has really started to materialize.
Here I see a challenge of knowledge industry, even philosophy of science. Internet started with a promise of actual knowledge for everybody, but shaped as free-for-all anarchistic space, leading soon for all kinds of fantasy for everybody. Then, just as with free market, turns out it does not on it’s own, automatically, lead to more fair and clear knowledge. Instead, it lead to a form of digital feudalism with no regard even for fairly universal values, favoring instead basic tribal reactions. Just recently, regulations are emerging which are creating institutions necessary for actually positively free and fair space in the web. EU and Germany in particular are making key contribution to this process. Will this be enough I am not sure. But I guess we can all see some at least impact general digital space (even GDPR), and academia (the source of the authoritative knowledge on practical questions) has made a lot more progress than it might be visible from outside. And it is ongoing. Fediverse is somehow related to this process too.
There is no doubt there is a downturn in many concrete aspects of development, as you listed. This makes it harder to plan ahead, and people make worse choices, accelerating the downturn. Even if these people could actually sustain work for the future since they are not so disadvantaged. How to reverse this trend? I think at least it really helps to also remember what positive progress was made more and less recently. Really, literally, learn, teach, and communicate about technologies, history.
For me this probably falls into the veracity of knowledge industry category. Knowing as much as we can what action makes which effect helps to prevent false sense of security that ritual of sorting garbage on it’s own is enough to reverse antropogenic climate change.
Germany produced some remarkable technology, and is on forefront of some sustainable developments. And my own experience with Germans shows reasonably optimistic attitude - although my sample is very biased, and I do really know enough. Do you think there is something which could inspire Germans? It’s not like the majority are living in poverty, so they must have goals beyond survival, right?
So I had some German friends who voted to AfD, surprisingly, for a reason I could not really quite understand, since they seemed like fairly reasonable people, although a bit angry. Or maybe more than just a bit angry, quite unhappy and angry about the way things are going, and angry for being ignored by the mainstream, and finding return to “good old days” to be the answer, since “obviously” the problem is all the new progressive stuff. So my guess is that this reactionary position is a response to lack of future vision.
But maybe some people just inherently fascist, but I do not find most people to be like that.
Anyway it is a problem that even those who focused on reactionary “solution” proving them wrong is hard since the very origin of their position makes it hard to accept a mistake. I do not know what to do about that, especially in Germany, since I am not really in touch. Maybe creating new inclusive narrative for future could help here too. I’d say it’s good to talk to them, but it may border on compromising with fascists which is hard to accept. But if I may suggest, as external observer, very cautiously, I think German can not continue ignoring the`right wing problem, and it can not just arrest them all too, so something resembling dialog might be needed, not speaking to their solution, but to the root of their concern which might be elsewhere. Not sure, dangerous road.
First of all thanks for the detailed response!
I think you have a pretty rare viewpoint in two regards:
You have that insight into new developments in these fields. Most people aren’t that connected to research and only see what actually reaches the wider market, which is often a version of a cool technology which has been twisted by corporate needs and greed.
I am in computer science and hoenstly the developments seem rather bleak. The two “cool” things funding is being funneld to are AI and to a lesser extent quantum computing. Both have to potential to revolutionize the computer world and by that most of the analog world. But the powers that actually control these are not democratically chosen and have their corporations goals in mind before those of the wider society which is pretty scary.
I agree that that is pretty amazing in a weird way. But I don’t think the analogy is great. We did never want to change the planet as a whole. It just happened because we are bad at estimating and good at ignoring the influence our behaviours have on the world. It’s more like the person lifting and lifting because they want to become stronger and then after some time it breaks their spine.
At the same time we see the EU make every effort to undermine this fair space in the web by implementing rights for the governments to snoop on each and everyone of the users communications. There are not just positive forces at work in the EU and the negative ones seem to only win in power in the last few years.
I don’t think that is a solution to the grievances people have with the current situation. I do know that we have a pretty nice past few decades. But I am aware that those are very likely over. The developments and growth of wealtch in the past was possible because capital was distributed in a growing society. We have stopped growing and that vastly slows down economic and social mobility because the inheritances gain more and more influence on your own wealth compared to the work you do in your lifetime. No technology is going to fix that.
I’d claim that most people know that actual change would be necessary but they have not yet accepted that they themselves will have to change. And that isn’t changed by teaching I think.
Germany has a very good research community and a pretty vivid green movement. But it also has a very big very conservative community that does not want to accept this new reality. It’s hard to get to know them if you are from another country and in the academia bubble, it’s not surprising you don’t see them too often. Remember that about 40% of germany is not living in cities but in rural areas.
That paints a pretty positive picture. Maybe you overestimate the wealth a common household owns. 50% of the people above 17 have less than 20k€ to their name. That is not even cash but just value they posess in form of money and things. [0] What also does not help is that families with childs are more likely to be in poverty (about 20%). Additionally in the range of 18-25 about 25% are in danger of poverty. [1] (The definition here is that you are affected if you have less than 60% of the median national income) All while the differences between the rich and the poor keep getting bigger. And remember the economical and social mobility is VERY low in germany. Your starting point is very likely to determin where you will end up in life. What would inspire people would be actual change in the way we distribute the financial burdens. Our taxation system leans heavily on taxing work and taxing wealth very little.
I don’t think it’s a lack of future vision. The current government had a pretty clear vision of where they wanted to go when they started. They do fail to deliver on some of it which angers their voters and they manage to suceed in some other parts which angers their not-voters even more. And those that are inclined to vote AfD dont do so because they are angry, they are angry because they support the backwards and nationalist thinking the AfD supports which clashes with the direction the other part of the society is moving in.
I think that is a social bubble thing. I also know very few people that vote AfD. That does not diminish the fact that there are 20% of people who say they would vote for them. Just because I don’t see them does not mean they aren’t there and it especially does not mean that they are not dangerous.
Definitely, we cannot ignore them. It’s impossible anyways and it would be dangerous to do so. I don’t think an inclusive strategy is the right way. It’s the way they want us to move, to see them as something normal that we should just accept. There are interesting times ahead one way or another.
(Sorry the links are german but the numbers should be relatively self explanatory provided the context)
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