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The Fatal Flaws of the Futureless Left | The rise in antinatalist sentiments signals a collective loss of faith in the future (jacobin.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The rise of doomers, preppers, and antinatalists on the Left reveals something deeper than the hollow posture of rebellion: a collapse of belief in tomorrow. A Left that chants “No future” isn’t just demoralized — it’s unserious, misanthropic, and bound to lose.

Tldr: How do you inspire people to work for a better tomorrow if you don't believe tomorrow can be better? Trump and the American right have a vision of a future America that they claim will be great and glorious. The American left - and the global left - have lost sight of the future entirely. Instead of promising a bright future, they merely seek to endure the crises of the present - and some on the left have given up even that.

The article speaks to the desperate need for hope - for a clear, compelling, leftist vision of the future to serve as a guiding light for left-wing activists and politicians.

And hey, what political slash environmental slash aesthetic movement focused on a hopeful future just got its instance back up?

(Welcome back, everybody!)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

I'm an antinatalist. It's a different mindset, and it's focused on "not losing," i.e. by not playing the game at all. This is in contrast to the more common mindset of focusing on "playing to win." In the fight-or-flight paradigm, it is choosing flight. I'd be curious to know what personality traits other antinatalists have, include their fear response.

These futureless left, whether consciously or not, are going on a birthstrike. This is a combination of a protest but also opting out of the future if things don't change for the better.

You may disagree and/or dislike it, but that's my take on what it is about.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I think even worse than "no future" is no change. Biden and Kamala pretty much ran on "we are not stupid (like Trump) otherwise no change" and Trump ran on "I'm going to change everything".

It seems the left is scared to propose/pitch radical change.

Not that radical change is necessarily good (see Argentina's historical flip-flop from radical left, right, libertarian, and authoritarian) its just that belief of change is required to believe in a better future.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I agree. Biden's presidency was the biggest lost opportunity of my lifetime for exactly that reason.

FDR responded to a similar global challenge - the Great Depression - by transforming the American government to serve the needs of struggling Americans - and the American people rewarded his courage and vision with overwhelming support when he ran for his second term.

Biden? Barely tried to improve America. And everything he tried failed. He couldn't even reduce student loan payments. And when Harris had the opportunity to break with him and fight for her own vision of what America could be, she either had no vision of her own or was too afraid to fight for it.

The American "left" is terrified to promote anything more than a return to the Obama-era status quo. But if they don't find their vision and courage the United States is guaranteed one party Republican rule for another generation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Its weird to have to defend Biden but he did get some things done, the way you are characterizing his record isn't really accurate. I would expect that if Biden had FDRs numbers in Congress he would have been a lot more successful too. Not that his term wasn't also a lost opportunity and full of failures, but not everything failed. There's a whole bunch of people who don't owe student loans now for example, even if they weren't all forgiven due to the courts, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

asdf

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Just because you don't have hope doesn't mean that you won't try to make some measure of difference. You can still play the hand you've been dealt, and making the outcome slightly less bad is still something to put effort into.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

asdfa

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

This generation grew up watching the rich get richer and their families get less and less. They watch the adults around them work 50 hours a week for the privilege of renting an apartment, no vacations anywhere, barely able to afford healthcare.

Do they have it wrong?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

I've never understood why breeding exponentially forever is somehow expected to work... Like infinite expansion capitalism, it's ignoring the fact that things are finite.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

I definitely agree we have an imagination problem, but I don’t think it’s limited to ‘the left.’ I actually think the issue lies squarely with (classical) liberalism and the values it instills. Any time someone with an optimistic vision starts to voice it people pile on with 500 reasons it’s impractical. People have a very “we can’t do better or we already would have” mindset. People also want there to be a general solution that works mechanically for everyone.

As mundane as it sounds I think the key really is fostering a sense of self-determination in our communities. Encouraging people to use their own resourcefulness to solve problems they see in their communities and in the world.

This isn’t limited to small or local problems, Instead of working for google tech bros could be building logistics programs to allow people to organize global food distribution through piecemeal contributions of food and transportation.

Things are the way they are because they were built that way under specific incentives and the people in power do not want to lose it. This is not inevitable or the best we can do. If we change our priorities and stop letting ‘the market’ act as a proxy for what we want to see, there is plenty of room for optimism about the future.

People are reasonable for not wanting to bring children into the world during a famine. Let’s plant some trees and pull eachother up and build communities people can imagine their kids thriving in first.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think doomerism or anti-natalism are serious positions, but I will not have leftist prepping lumped in with them! The imperial core is collapsing and that's going to be really hard to live through without at least some knowledge about canning, solar panels, gardening, rainwater collection, repair, and how to shoot a gun.

What distinguishes lefty prepping from the normal rightist variants is a focus on building community before it's too late, and that's literally how we'll build a future. In fact, prepping on the left comes from a belief that there is a future, it's just going to be hard (not even forever, just long enough that the power might go out).

Prepping is literally working for tomorrow, like???

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's the 'this will get worse before it gets better' position. That does seem rational and I am tempted to prepare for the worst too. One issue I see with that position is... if you build yourself a little life raft you probably aren't as concerned as you should be about the sinking ship.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's why the emphasis has to be on community prepping. If you build a life raft for yourself you aren't really taking the sinking ship seriously imo - we sink or swim together. We'll get through the hard times together with community gardens and communal power generation and repairing each other's things, not by becoming isolated weirdos entombed in little bunkers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah, I see what you're saying, but I think my point still holds. I'll update my analogy. You have some people that'll jump in your raft with you. So now everyone with access to the raft isn't as concerned as they should be about the sinking ship?

Most people don't like the ship anyway. Perhaps the raft can be scaled up so that it's a ship in itself and everyone who wants to can get on.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But at that point, what's the problem? The problem the OP is describing is one of hopelessness and not having a vision for the future, but the very act of building these life rafts and cooperating on the rafts to build community is itself a vision for the future.

The vision of the future is everyone working together and overcoming the dangers ahead. Prepping can be an act of hope.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Right, but it's still 'it's going to get worse before it gets better' and if you're okay and the community you care about is okay, then you may not care if the ship is on a collision course and will sink even though there's a lot of people that don't have the means to get off.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Why would anyone prep if they didn't care the ship is on a collision course? It seems like they care a lot! That's why they prep!

The issue you're seeing seems to apply to everyone who isn't prepping, so it doesn't really seem like this is a problem that's caused by prepping. Normal people think everything is going to be fine and don't worry that the ship is on a collision course.

Also, you're thinking of community as some kind of exclusive thing, like a walled private community or something. It can't be that way if the goal is to survive. Normal people don't get to pick who is part of their community, it just sort of happens based on where we live and work and such. Building community means bringing in the people who don't have the means, not excluding them because they can't afford the entrance fee to the bunker or life raft. We don't have the luxury of being so selective.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Grab the steering wheel? That's what the article was getting at. People who are prepping have already written society off. Attempts to repair and rectify are not made in earnest, instead smaller scale alternatives are sought with the naive idea that the facists will just ignore you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Communal prepping is about building a new society, not abandoning it.

This society has been rotting and has had multiple holes put in it over the decades. Grab the steering wheel? The engines are already choking with water, people are drowning on the lower decks right now. This is a sinking ship, not one on a collision course. Even if we got rid of the morons steering the ship into the rocks and tearing holes in the hull, it wouldn't change the deeper structural problems that the ship has had since it was built.

Community doesn't have to be small, either. Communities can federate, after all. By your logic, why didn't you stay on Reddit and try to repair the ship before it sunk instead of escaping onto this life raft?

And who said anything about naively ignoring the fascists? Why do you think I said people should learn to shoot guns?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

I'm sorry I got caught up arguing a very specific point that you just made. You're already in the raft and I'm trying to fix the ship. Thanks for your help.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Hmm, I find that argument not very convincing. Except for some online nutcases no one on the left seriously argues for voluntary human extinction 🙄

It is rather the lack of long term planning that brought us to the current situation that the planet has way more humans than it can easily sustain.

Trying to organize a soft landing by slowly reducing the population, especially in areas that have a high resource use foot print, seems rather like long term planning to me. And it also makes it easier to welcome others from regions that will likely become uninhabitable due to climate change in the medium term future.

In addition, I find it rather hilarious that someone seriously thinks humans procreate because of long term thinking 😅

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

People really believe this thinly veiled eugenics argument?

There is plenty of resources to support humanity. The issue is solely in our societal structures and our distribution of those resources causing almost half of everything we produce to become waste because it profit couldn't be extracted from it.

We could cut most of our production, reducing our environmental harm, redesign our cities so they are not sprawling wastelands of parking lots and empty lawns, and there would be plenty enough to go around. That's real long term planning we need to have.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

There is plenty of resources to support humanity.

I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.

I think we shouldn't use up every atom on Earth to churn out more humans. Our species has experienced a massive population explosion and is at peak numbers.

Usually this kind of events are followed by a hurtful population crash. It seems considerably better if growth ends due to a (subconscious?) decision to stop expanding, rather than a war for remaining resources.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.

The back of the envelope calculation says if everybody on Earth lived like an average American we'd need the resources of about four Earths to cover it:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712

That being said, from the same source, if everyone on Earth lived like an average Indian we'd only use half the Earth's resources and could support twice as many people.

So it's not about the number of people - it's about the standard of living those people have and the resources they use.

I think the most effective way forward is more efficient and sustainable lifeways - if the richest countries learn to consume less, if people around the world get access to better technology and better institutions to raise their standard of living without raising their resource consumption.

And it's interesting to note, the better off people are, the fewer children they tend to have. If we improve people's lives worldwide, a steadily declining population will be a natural side effect.

An incredibly difficult goal, of course, but worth pursuing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The problem is not that we do not have the resources, but rather the way humans chose to use them. Multiply that by 8 billion and we get a problem, although realistically the bigger problem are the top 2-3 billion or so that control so many resources.

In a world with a significantly lower population, the planet could absorb the issues we cause much better.

I don't see how this fact has anything to do with eugenics 🤷

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The argument that "there are too many people and we need to reduce the population" has been for decades a thinly veiled excuse to justify eugenics. Which ethnicity's population are we going to reduce? How will the social mechanisms work to reduce population? Who will hold that authority to dictate things and how will it be enforced? Historically, very violently and strictly enforced against marginalized communities. That's how.

I literally said the problem is how we use them.

The issue is solely in our societal structures and our distribution of those resources

So the answer is we need to work towards societal change and structure ourselves to incentivize sustainability, not overly simplistic and unethical arguments such as "reduce the population" so we can maintain our shitty practices and kick the can down the road.

It also isn't "top 2-3 billion", it's more like "top 2-3 thousand".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

You are arguing a strawman. Both the article and me are talking about people voluntarily chosing to not have children. I don't see anything wrong with that, and neither with promoting the idea that this is totally ok.

And no, it isn't just the top few thousand. Even if those were gone tomorrow we would still have very similar issues realistically speaking. But sure, limiting the excesses of the top few thousands would also help and is a politically reachable goal. Solving the over-consumption of the top 2-3 billion needs an strong change in mindset, and politics alone will not be able to do that. But at least many of these 2-3 billion are already getting few children voluntarily.