The "THREE PROBLEMS" humanity faces

[Hygro]

What are yours?

Here are mine:

1) Climate degradation and warming.
2) Erosion of Democracy worldwide.
3) The increasing depression and internal disempowerment of individuals where there's the most power and agency (like how we at CFC are sufficiently educated and "woke" and largely sedentary).

 

[El_Machinae]

1) too rapid ecological degradation
2) increased ease of creating existential risks
3) erosion of global coordination

 

[Berzerker]

Habitat destruction, food, extinctions

 

[Grendeldef]

Those are fine but in my minimalistic version it's just

1) overpopulation

and most if not all other global(ish) problems are results of this, often indirectly. The obvious handicap with this is that the main issue can't be directly solved in any generally acceptable way. It will or at least it might resolve itself eventually but no one is going to like the process so the short term solutions are to be found by tackling Hygro's list.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I guesssss my top 3 is like:

Global warming
Income/wealth inequality
Antimicrobial resistance

I could probably be convinced racism is one too, but a lot of that feeds from capitalism and we have enough threads on that. I suppose "anti-democratic movements" kind of covers it too.

Finally, risk management in general is probably one you could also argue for. Managing nuclear stockpiles, not being antagonistic to potential countries you might bomb/liberate wahoo, and responding to global pandemics right now is in the dumps in the world's most powerful country. A few other countries struggle with this, and we have problems.

 

[Narz]

1. Too many people
2. And they all want fancy quality of life
3. And that's not gonna happen

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Hygro: I have no issue with your first two. The third for me would be the general dumbing down of education - how education systems work (or mostly don't), how teachers are increasingly vilified and not considered as deserving of a decent salary and standard of living, and how kids are being used as political pawns in politicians' power games.

This is going on in my province, and my own MLA is at the heart of it. She has some sort of pathological vendetta against public schools and public school boards, and her post-secondary colleague (cabinet minister whose portfolio includes universities, colleges, vocational training schools) also has a hatred of public institutions because (his words) "they teach a radicalized, immoral ideology". I'm talking about people who would love to remove age-appropriate sex education from the curriculum (in the belief that it promotes promiscuity and that the teachers are "pushing an LGBT agenda"), allow parents to remove kids from any science class that dares to hint at evolution or the Big Bang (goes against Genesis), and so on.

This is a serious problem because it's setting up a generation of kids - who will be in charge some day, in 20-30 years - for learning only the narrow views of one political party, and not teaching them to think critically and evaluate all sides of an issue.

Multiply this by other provinces of Canada with similar problems, and other countries (Betsy DeVos has similar notions, and the only significant differences between my MLA who is the Minister of Education and Trump's education secretary is that my MLA is not a billionaire, and she has (so far) not advocated arming students so they can protect themselves from bears. Neither has the first clue about how the public school system works, neither has ever attended it, had a child who attended it, and neither has ever been a teacher - yet both claim to be experts.

Our province is in trouble. And while that may not have worldwide consequences, it's a significant problem that this little corner of humanity is facing.

 

[Cutlass]

Conservatism, conservatism, and conservatism. They are either the cause of, or prevent the solution to, all the others.

 

[Patine]

1. Demographic thinking, in all of it's form on the social left and right of the political spectrum, including all the warped ideas, dehumanizing and divisive views, beliefs in long-debunked myths as well as bad stereotypes, and even the tendency to phrase and view demographics in absolutes, and more and more ignore the individual's own cache and merit. We are one species, with our own individual goals, merits, achievements, failings, and issues, and demographic thinking, across the spectrum, will do more harm than good in the long-term.

2. Rampant Capitalism.

3. Hard Nationalism, regardless of the nation (or desired, aspired to, or claimed nation) in question, and whether the political basis beyond a particular Nationalist movement is left-wing or right-wing, or Third Way, in nature.

 

[innonimatu]

1. the ideological hegemony of the "pursuit of profit" as the form of social organization (i.e. capitalism)
2. the weakening of democracy brought upon by excessive internationalism
3. technological fetishism, as in always believing that new technology will be the solution to today's problems (environmental and social), willfully ignoring that new technology necessary comes with new "bugs"

imo the big conflicts of the day are relatively unimportant distractions that keep people from tacking these more fundamental problems.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Those are fine but in my minimalistic version it's just

1) overpopulation

and most if not all other global(ish) problems are results of this, often indirectly. The obvious handicap with this is that the main issue can't be directly solved in any generally acceptable way. It will or at least it might resolve itself eventually but no one is going to like the process so the short term solutions are to be found by tackling Hygro's list.

Overpopulation is very unlikely. Most western countries aren't even at replacement level birth rates, and I'm not convinced other countries stay as higher as they are as they catch up in technological advancement.

Erosion of democracy/freedom and humanity-threatening tech being available to relatively small % of population are standout threats. I'd tentatively put environmental issues at 3 as a humanity threat, but expect damage from that to cause societal levels of implosion/destruction before the environment itself becomes unlivable.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

1) Idiocy
2) Extreme mass idiocy
3) Obligatory extreme mass idiocy

 

[Narz]

Overpopulation is very unlikely.

It's already present.

Most western countries aren't even at replacement level birth rates, and I'm not convinced other countries stay as higher as they are as they catch up in technological advancement.

As they catch up overpopulation becomes worse for it is not a matter of people but the stinking, toxic footprint of each person. A typical Westerner may have the footprint of a whole small village somewhere in Bangladesh or Africa. As they come up even if the birthrate decreases the footprint will increase.

 

[Lexicus]

It's already present.

By what measure?

 

[Zardnaar]

Wealth inequality
Environment
Over population.

 

[amadeus]

(1.) Chicoms
(2.) Anti-Western thought
(3.) Nuclear proliferation

 

[Hrothbern]

(1) Disposable non-durabe goods amplified by over-population & over-consumption causing an unsustainable Earth of the profile we enjoy now. Future techs can do a lot to mitigate, but no free ride.
(2) NBC weapons proliferation.
(3) Growing marginalisation of the influence of the commoners on the structural settings in which they live and likely accompanied by de-emancipation processes to get us more obedient. Only fancy identity pacifiers allowed to keep us sucking

 

[AmazonQueen]

1. Climate change/ecological degradation
2. Economies based on wasteful and ever increasing consumption (causing the above)
3. Growth of populist nationalism

 

[Tee Kay]

1. information pollution
2. democidal environmental management in general and climate change in particular
3. the idea that overpopulation is to blame for the above

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

1. Technology create problem. As technology advance so do the damage humans can create such as global warming and nuclear weapons and the solution seems to be to advance the technology even more which can lead to even more dangerous situation.
2. People in developed countries accepting poor/worsening work conditions, seems especially true in newer industries like video game industry and that the perception is shifting towards the worst thing in the world is lazy workers, not poor work conditions or that the profit go to the few.
3. Polarisation of politics, like communism is automatically tied to China and perception if China is bad must mean communism is bad. This basically lead to only one good path which is not really good for anyone other than the people in power and can lead to dangerous situations such as ignoring climate change.