I have lost all hope for the future.

So many wannabe revolutionaries on this site. Is the rest of the Internet like this or is it a special feature of OTC?

All I can say is, all that has a begining must have an end. Who knows what form that end will take for us? We can guess though that only get's you so far. You might as well just enjoy your life.

Hey, man, I'm not revolting. I'm going to sit and watch a while longer; see if it all falls down under its own weight...

That's kind of how I feel on the matter.

But I work for the Government in a certain capacity, so I'm not really out to see it overthrown. But if it happens, cool, I'll just become a raider or something.

I'm closer to a cautious survivalist type than I am a revolutionary, I don't like anarchists or revolutionaries.

edited 7th Dec '11 10:07:06 AM by Barkey

On the economic side, as Karl Marx would have told you, capitalism is inherently prone to cyclical crises and this is a particularly bad one, especially if you're young and hence more vulnerable to unemployment because you aren't yet in the labour force.

Logically, it'll either lead to the collapse of capitalism and the rise of some new economic system or to capitalism recovering and going on in the normal way. It's unlikely to lead to the wholesale collapse of civilisation though, because before it gets to that people are going to turn round and say "Screw this, we aren't going to let it happen." That could be your revolution, if it ever came to it.

People aren't passive victims and they don't just sit there and let doom overtake them. They take collective action to protect themselves from it, whether within the existing political system or outside it. Ultimately, humanity's always survived because it collectively refused to die. I can't logically prove that this will always be the case, but it'll take a lot to overcome this quality.

I keep hoping that we will only move on to greater things in the future. Stagnation, the collapse of society, or its transformation into a more dystopic society would be too terrible for me to handle. We've come so far. We can't stop now.

edited 7th Dec '11 3:40:57 PM by SonofOrion

25: Great, I'm sure the OP is very comforted by that sentiment.

OK, I have read some interesting responses. Thank you for taking the time to answer me.

(Potential massive derail ahead)

I'd like to follow up on the depression theory. What Bluesqueak said does seem to match what I'm feeling. However, I am pretty hesitant into getting medication because 1) I am afraid of potential side effects; 2) My parents seem convinced that this is all because of the difficulty I have in writing my Master's Thesis (I've already passed the dead line meaning I have to pay another years tuition, I've procrastinated and struggled with writing for months: I haven't spoken to my advisor in quite some time) and I believe they may be right, 3) Again, for long periods of time I don't feel sad, I don't feel hopeless, I just feel apathetic. and 4) I'm afraid that if it doesn't work my parents will be afraid that I "made this up" just to find an excuse for not working (they were quite mad when I tried getting tested for ADHD which led to nothing besides wasted time)

Perhaps I'm just feeling terribly lost: I've lost all interest in my field: every day I wish I had gone into something else, but I can't change now that I'm on the verge of finishing. Unfortunately I fear that the longer than usual amount of time I spent on this (as I mentioned in another thread) coupled with the fact that this course is so theoretical that I feel as if I am graduation with A Master's without knowing how to DO anything (even this thesis is just plugging a bunch of data in a computer program and getting graphics) makes my future seem bleak.

If you feel like this discussion turned pointless feel free to lock this thread. Again, thank you for your time.

I skip eating all the time. Food costs too much.

Writing theses isn't easy, OP. I think some of your problem is probably the equivalent of Writer's Block and you should talk it through with your academic adviser. You can't do much, on your own, about the state of the world, but you can get your thesis done if you concentrate on it.

As for ending up with a degree, but not able to do anything; I think most degrees are like that. They're about learning how to think/write and maybe accumulating useul knowledge, not how to do a job. You learn how to do a job by doing the job.

Yes, but isn't Engineering supposed to be the exception to that? Maybe I spend too much time on American websites but I had the impression you're supposed to leave university with some sort of design experience. I feel as if though I had to take a bunch of loosely connected courses so theoretical that it's often joked we're actually taking MATH degrees with no practical application and now I chose a thesis topic that I THOUGHT would be practical and yet proved to be something that looks like useless busywork.

I'm starting to wonder if there are people out there who genuinely get depressed about humanity's future as a whole, instead of their future alone.

Watching Idiocracy can turn you into one of those people, temporarily.

Does anyone else wonder if maybe our issues with thinking about the future are hard-wired? I mean, for a while, we only had to worry about whether or not tigers and other large animals were chasing us, or if we had enough food; we really only had to think about the present.

Now that we don't have to be concerned about that, we have all this time to scare ourselves with images of the future.

edited 8th Dec '11 3:25:54 PM by BlackElephant