Doomerism is Doomed

Pointing at problems and yelling about them gets us nowhere

The world is generally in a tough spot. That’s not news.

But I’ve also noticed a tendency of people to constantly point at how bad our world is, and point at all the bad things that are happening, and all the bad things that are going to happen. In essence: “we are doomed”.

Personally, I think a lot of this is some form of excuse for inaction. After all, if you could do something about our predicament, then aren’t you a super shitty person for not trying harder?

Humanity’s problems are huge. The planet’s heating up fast, the ocean is acidifying, crops are dying, and the web of life is vanishing as biodiversity plummets.

At the same time, the biggest ground war in Europe and the Middle East are becoming embroiled in irredentist wars, China is making its own preparations to invade Taiwan and disrupt computer chip supplies, populations in developed nations are aging without replacement, and various forms of inequality hold billions of people back from reaching their highest potential.

If these issues are the only things anyone focuses on, it’s natural to feel demotivated and doomed. The problems are big. How will we ever solve them?

If we only focus on the immensity of the problems, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed to the point of doing nothing.

In moments like this, it’s critical to not listen to doomers. Why? It’s because they don’t offer solutions.

The thing to remember about doomers is that each one has their own special apocalypse envisioned in their head projected from their specific anxieties and worries. And what they may not realize is that their proposed solutions to quell their personal anxieties about one apocalypse often directly exacerbates another apocalypse.

For instance, concerns about nuclear energy used to be in vogue among environmentalists. More recently, some old-school environmentalists got Germany to close shop on its nuclear power plants.

Somehow, this resulted in even more coal, gas, and even hardwood from forests to getting consumed for fuel and heat exacerbating the climate crisis.

One group’s anxieties about a nuclear-radiation apocalypse got quelled. Another group’s anxiety about a climate apocalypse worsened.

In a similar vein, many climate activists call for degrowth; a large slowdown of economic activity to reduce carbon emissions.

While this would ease the anxieties of some, economic growth has also recently helped to hoist hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. A slowdown that sent those people hurtling back down into sustenance farming for survival would very much feel like an apocalypse for those people.

It’s a similar case with COVID doomers; believe it or not, there are people still holed up in their homes like it was the first week of the pandemic. They’re still posting about how COVID will kill everyone it touches, permanently cause brain damage, permanently wreck your immune system forever, etc.

They’d rather have everything continue to be shut down, for schools to continue to only be done from home, for everyone to still wear masks, etc.

We could do all these things and their anxieties would be eased. Meanwhile, children’s education would suffer over Zoom, many people wouldn’t have a consistent way of earning a living, and the inflation would be on overdrive as governments endlessly tried to prevent social unrest with stimulus checks.

Basically, we’re living in a time where we need actual solutions to things, and creating those solutions is actually now possible – you simply need to believe in creating the impossible.

In light of this, doomers are doomed. As people feel pressed to take action, they are going to look for people with solutions. No one is looking to doomers for solutions - doomers aren’t looking for real solutions themselves.

It’s also an exciting time, because people are starting to believe in a sci-fi future again. Not because they want to, but because they have to. There is no other way forward. The problems pressing us don’t allow us to be stagnant. They also don’t allow us to retreat and regress. They don’t allow us to hide from the world, or turn everything off, and shut everyone out.

It’s a time where the only way out is through, and it’s quite apparent that the path to getting through involves building miracles that we never before truly believed we’d see in our lifetimes.

It’ll be a bumpy and trying time. But if we make it through it, we’ll see an abundance – and hopefully peace – of a modern golden age.