If you listen to the music of Nordic Giants, they hold the view that we already live in a dystopia. Indeed, they hold that humankind has lived in a dystopia for thousands of years (it is the typical human condtion), but that society has become more dystopic: with more powerful wars (given the weaponry we have had for the last 100 years), greater environmental damage, and increasing divisions (racism, sexism etc) in society. Their track 'Dystopia' sums it all up.

On the other hand, I would want to argue that Rosa Luxemburg, Robert Kurz and others are correct in arguing that capitalist barbarism, with the breakdown of capitalism, has not matured yet, but we are getting close to its realisation, especially when allied to environmental catastrophe (Kurz).

My own view is that communism exists within capitalist society: it sustains and supports capitalism, and is a suppressed form of life in capitalist society. But it is our hope: this hope is real, as opposed to pinning our hope on something turning up in the future (e.g. the invention of some new technology, or our politicians coming to their senses, the 2nd coming of Christ, or whatever).

Well, you can be quite sure that as dystopians quiver and shake, others will be having a perfectly good time. It maybe a failing world, but equally there's still fun to be had! Pick your place.

Christopher NOCK

the pessimist says: "it can't get any worse"

the optimist says: "yes it can!"

There is a simple metric; if there is no ice cream then we are post apocalyptic if there is ice cream we are pre apocalyptic. Everything hinges on the availability of dairy.

The point of no return is not in the near future, we're already past it. Now, the real question I wonder is "what do you call a lived dystopia or a post-apocalyptical world?"

I'm familiar at all with the idea of lived dystopia, so I'll leave it, but the post apocalyptical calls for a catastrophy to happen, a great event that creates a societal collapse or an apocalypse. In that case, we may observe that this collapse is already starting to happen throughout the wolrd (Syria is down and will probably never get back up). Western domination is there because we manage to control the flow of essential fossil ressources like oil or gas - but these ressoures are bound to have an end. To be more precise, the problem is not that they have an end, the major issue is that we spend more energy each passing day into the exploitation of energy. The cost effectiveness is decreasing, until the moment where we spend more energy into energy that we can take out.

For these reasons - and I'm not even starting on climate or pesticides destroying our cultivable grounds - we are bound to live this Collapse. Even if we were to stop everything RIGHT NOW, it would still collapse because the problem would be the same: no fuel to put in cars, ergo a western country is blocked.

That's why I say we past the point of no return. We are bound to go forward. If not, collapse. But by keeping going forward, the only possible conclusion is collapse. And an even worse one.

Now "lived dystopia"? Well, one could say this collapse is also the best thing that can happen to us... But that's another matter altogether.

I agree with all of those points. I think much of the world will come to what Syria is now.

I think US has turned back the clock 50 years from an energy and environmental and societal perspective and bit looks like a lot of other countries are following suit from a sociopath-political perspective. Once the war machine starts churning, there really is no timely way to stop it. A little off subject though. I think the planet is an energy form. And we, as hard as we try, cannot destroy energy. The world will regenerate and survive, ultimately. It seems we are more likely to destroy ourselves than the planet. How long will that take? It seems we're getting closer, but I think we have a long way to go. It may not take much to fervid there with current and future technology, but we've been in worse situations before. WW1, the plague, WW2, Genghis Khan...

My last response was typed on my phone. A few errors I noticed after posting. Socio-political, not "sociopath". May not take much for us to get there...I don't know where "fervid" came from..

to answer the question, I think we should have hope whether or not we are in a post-apocalyptic world and to focus on rebuilding what we have destroyed and "preventing further destruction"

Maybe this can help: Martin Heidegger in "Only a God Can Save Us":

The Spiegel Interview (1966)

An interesting view on fate and prediction.

If your indigenous to the Americas, the antipodes, and most other regions of the world --and alive --then the answer is an emphatic "yes." The word apocalypse is invariably presented in the singular, but humans have accumulated quite a few --with more to come.

Presumably the dinosaurs have met with their moment. That seems to have given us our big chance. Perhaps one species' apocalypse is another's genesis?

NOCK

Christopher, Yes, funnily enough, I was just reading something about NEOs. These are the rocks that may hit the earth--asteroids. All things change when something not interested in politics or economic systems come -a-calling. Good point made about how one species exit as a major actor can be another's entry cue. Or maybe,as in the Karel Capek play RUR that introduced the word 'robot' in 1920, that cue may be that it is time for androids to have their day.

Well... I think your guess would be better than mine on that one!

NOCK

I shouldn't say this, and I apologize deeply in advance, but having seen the Laval campus architecture, you might well ask the question you have!

Sorry, just couldn't resist!

NOCK

In my opinion, we live in an era preceding a global climate catastrophe, which, according to forecasting models, may already occur at the end of the 21st century if the global warming process continues to accelerate and we do not have time to stop this process.

Regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Dinosaurs have disappeared, the human race could also disappear it suffices, for example, to have new mutants and recombinant of several kind of particularly infectious viruses combined with the extreme mobility of humans!

This question was first posted in 2018. At the time, it referred mostly to the dystopian effects of environmental degradation, financial crises and social inequalities and discrimination. Three years later, the perspective of recurring pandemics must be added to this picture, further complicating our understanding of what hope can, or should, be.

That's "funny" cause I had a conversation on that subject yesterday with two friends and I ended up expressing the idea that we are in a sort of "slow apocalypse" meaning that there has not been a single event that has totally change our world and forced us to radically change our lives. The discussion was about the global state of the world and the pandemic that still allows most of us us to continue business as usual with a few adjustments as opposed to a zombie apocalypse where everything falls apart and you just fight for your survival. However, in connection with what Mark Spence said, my idea comes from the position of a white european person, for Indigenous peoples colonization could be experienced/seen as an apocalypse in that sense. And the same apply for the pandemic: I experience it in Quebec but it is clearly different in other places in the world.

We could say that we are in a multi-dimensional-apocalyptic world where we are at different stages of various apocalypses depending on our positionality/identity...

On the aspect of hope I think that hope is not a limited resource so we should have hope about what we can do about the current dystopia and about what we can do about a potential catastrophe/apocalypse too. Especially as here the dystopia and catastrophe are connected, hope can apply to everything and actions should be focused on all "stages" too. At least I have hope ;) in the way that adrienne maree brown and other have expressed it, that we can act right now in a way that nourish the world we want in the future, despite the dystopia as much as possible and in hope that the little changes we make in this dystopian world will help avoid more apocalypses...