this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
730 points (94.4% liked)

Showerthoughts

29709 readers
1198 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics
    1. NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
    2. Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
    3. Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I have seen a few of these with similar story lines and realized we are living it right now. They have the best healthcare, the best food, the best everything and most of us are a few dollars from disaster. That scares some of us to death literally from all the stress it causes.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 151 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Elysium!

You’re not wrong. And anybody who could afford to stop them is too busy fighting a culture war to organize. Who do you think is stoking animosity? MLKJ wasn’t assassinated for civil rights, it was for the Poor Peoples Campaign. The only thing that could stop them is the unity of all those living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of religion or race.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like a movement is actually happening, but slowly. Look at all these unions forming and people striking all around. It gives me hope, to be honest. The media is fighting it hard and somewhat succeeding, but just to an extent. We will win

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That sounds like a pretty terrible dystopian movie that should not be made into real life.

So, please, support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Hopefully there will be some good news soon.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just get your negligent employer to irradiate you and give you cancer, making you a man with nothing to lose and then go up there and get your cure while toppling the status quo. Easy.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Just give me a cool robotic exoskeleton and I'm sold

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good sci fi usually isn't about the future, aliens, etc. It's about the present, but portrayed in a strange way so as to bypass your existing preconceptions about the situation, so you can look at it with fresh eyes.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It also makes it 'safe' to discuss controversial topics, because it's 'only scifi' (or horror/fantasy).

Allows creators and authors to fly under the radar with stuff that could potentially get you arrested, censored, cause controversy or end your career. Prime example, Tarkovski movies like Solaris or Stalker, which are full of religious metaphors, despite being released in the USSR.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

It's okay. There will be no Elysium. They'll die on this molten rock right here with us if they're still alive by then.

I think our reality is more like Idiocracy than Elysium.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago

The people in Idiocracy were wiser because when they found the smartest person they put him in charge pretty much straight away.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Can confirm! Just rewatched Idiocracy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

it won't be a space station but on earth. the rich been building bunkers in new Zealand. which..has a really fucked up wealth disparity and cost of living crisis before it was cool.

good luck staying safe fuckers

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I think there will still be many places that will be livable even if the temperature rises to +10, such as Nothern Canada and Russia. So it seems probable "rich" people could be able to have their own colonies their, though it's probable rich will have a different meaning then, maybe more about water and food than numbers on the internet. Our species is far from endangered, it's rather our civilisations that are, the bad and the good in them.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (7 children)

All I know is the second the very second that we are sure they're starting to build the cloud cities, we need to start murdering people. You can't let him finish the cloud cities. Cannot happen. The second construction starts we start cutting off heads. That's our only chance.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Stopping things now would be easier than the future. In the future they'll perfect the killer dog robots etc. and things will get harder.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

We should start cutting off heads right now tbh

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

"Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration," == Mike Pondsmith (creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG)

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is water at the bottom of the ocean

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (11 children)

People working 40 hours to make 10 things. Technology improves so that one person can make 20 things in 40 hours. People now get paid twice as much? People now only work 20 hours? Nope! Half as many people now work at the same pay. The rest have to go find something else to do.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well on the plus side cardboard drones laden with explosives are cheaper than ever. /s

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That /s is doin some heavy lifting

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

It wouldn't fly without the lift.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

It surprises me how many people dont realize that most rich people are rich because of poor people.

Stop change your phone each year, stop buying brand clothes, stop going to movie and music concerts. Start buying clothes by your local people, support new artists.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I feel like we're actually the prequel to WALL-E

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If anything they’ll start tunneling under the Earth to escape the brutal conditions they created on the surface.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How long until they farm us and eat us?

Ah, who am I kidding? Morlocks and Eloi would never happen. They wouldn't give us free food.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I think you have that analogy backwards. The point was that the industrial proletariat stayed underground while the bourgeois regressed into the eloi bc they had built the overworked utopia and had no need to do anything. This is the literal way the rich.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you read/watched Alita: Battle Angel? That's the situation there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is one of them. yes.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You should check out the movie Elysium.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I knew this reminded me of a movie, just couldn't remember the name. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

It has never been any different. It's worse and exponentially more visible, but is not new by any means.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Every capitalist society trends towards this, as too do all other forms of society as well. Also remember that in the Western world, even someone who is next to outright homeless can have a better life than something like 90% of people around the globe - the water from most streams is safe to drink (unlike many places in Africa and South America), there are currently no missiles raining down from the sky (unlike Ukraine), if you have friends or family that you can stay with there is a good chance that someone can make room for you (unlike super crowded places where there are already ~20 families in a small household - and at the risk of repeating myself, yes I meant families there, not just people), plus with a mere handful of dollars we can get treatments for diseases that even Kings and Pharos of the past who were considered to be literal gods could not.

So it is a spectrum where we are not as well off as we used to be a few decades ago, but are still doing well globally speaking. The problem is that we are changing, so not yet used to there being such rigid divisions between "classes" of people as now exist, so people still talk as if mere hard work is all that is required to deal with it. And they aren't even fully wrong, bc that really is a part of it, though there is a significantly higher uphill battle than there used to be.

Just do your best - what else could you possibly do even? - and also remember that kinder people are happier people, and that is literally something that no amount of money can buy:-D.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

There was a point, around the end of the Gold Rush and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when they were still building that floating city, that the common man could work his way up and get on it. Unfortunately, as time has passed and conditions have changed, the floating city is now all but completely out of our reach.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No, we still have a chance.

We could stage a revolution, overthrow the oligarchs and restart with whatever we want.

But it ain't gonna happen.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem: human nature is such that those who overthrew the tyrants would shortly find themselves in power. They might even be just and true leaders. But inevitably, greed will out. I suppose the silver lining is the resulting system of oppression might not be so... efficient as it is now.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This won't last for long. This capitalist with corporate socialism system has a short life span eventually what happens is inflation moves the poverty line far up enough that it collapses. Right now people are struggling to purchase just groceries compared to just last year. Either regulation or wages move up.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Children of Men always struck me this way

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Well yes, those stories are often written as critiques/analysis of real world culture

load more comments
view more: next ›