Roaring 20's: Generation Alpha; Bunker Babies

in LeoFinance3 years ago

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Hey looks like the world is ending.

We should probably have a kid.
It's just so damn convenient!
Working from home is such a blessing.

Just can't get over it.

So many people decided that in the middle of a global pandemic, in which our production and logistics models (Just In Time) were laid bare, was the perfect time to have a kid. Yeah, why not? Why not have a kid during a time in which draconian lockdowns become the standard and people are rioting in the streets? Why not have a kid when it's very clear that humanity has never been in a more precarious state of affairs? The unsustainability of the entire legacy economy is coming to a head? Eh, I wouldn't worry about that. Let's just carry on like it's business as usual and this is actually a blessing in disguise. Why not?

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Let's face it

Most people live in a bubble where are that matters and all they know is right there in front of them. How many people actually care about global politics? Hint: it's a lot less than pretend to care (which is still low). How many people actually have the education, intuition, and drive to take a step backwards and try to parse this clusterfuck that is Earth?

Very few.

So it should be no surprise to me that so many people would decide now is a good time to lay down roots as the most dangerous storm-clouds ever perceived on the horizon are materializing. The tunnel vision is real, and yet I remain surprised that so many people continue to bury their heads in the sand. At this point the problem is with me and not them. I just need to stop being surprised and embrace the irony.

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  • Baby Boomers: born 1946 to 1964. ...
  • Generation Jones: born 1955 to 1965. ...
  • Generation X: born 1965 to 1980. ...
  • Xennials: born 1977 to 1983. ...
  • Millennials: born 1981 to 1996. ...
  • Generation Z: born 1997 or after. ...
  • Generation Alpha: born 2010 or after.

Look out Zoomers, we've looped back to the alphas, and what a fitting title for the absolutely grizzled generation that will soon come to be. I lovingly now refer to them as "bunker babies".

Zombie apocalypse babies.

Whenever I watch a show or movie about zombies or some other apocalypse, I simultaneously think of the kids being born today. Children are an extreme liability during times like this, but the ones that make it through to the other side are sure to be diehards. If you can't tell by now: I'm not super optimistic about humanity as a whole for the next decade. The roaring 20's are going to take on a whole new meaning.

What does this mean for the economy?

Well, when things get tough and survival becomes more of a top priority, many industries are sure to suffer. Who's going to care about fashion if there isn't enough food on the table? Who's going to care about what's on Netflix if they don't have a TV? Who's going to care about anything if they don't have access to potable water?
No, not portable: potable.

All this being said it's really hard to guess how the future will turn out. It's impossible to calculate how exponential advances in technology will interact with this broken unsustainable system. As with cryptocurrency, I believe that extreme volatility in all regards will become the standard in many cases. Stability is not in the cards over the next decade: that I can say with absolute certainty.

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Nature vs Nurture

Why are people are the way that they are?
Is it because of their environment or genetics?
The answer is both (especially considering the revelations that environment can modify genetics).

Prime brainwashing years.

The connotation behind "brainwashing" is extremely negative, but that's not necessarily what I'm trying to imply. During the formative years of a child's development, they are far more likely to solidify permanent traits for the rest of their lives. Everyone goes through this phase in life. It's unavoidable. The body must adapt to the environment it finds itself in. People who grow up in cold weather are much more attuned to the cold and might claim it's hot outside after moving closer to the equator. Meanwhile everyone else is perfectly comfortable.

Children who grow up in extremely stressful environments often find themselves developing equally extreme coping mechanisms. It's common for children who have been under extreme duress (even if only emotional) to harness some kind of genetic "survival mode". Studies have shown that these more "animalistic" humans are extremely resistant to the cold, to the point of being able to walk in the snow barefoot or take an ice cold shower without even being uncomfortable.

When life gets hard, we see the worst come out in people. Zero sum game theory begins and everyone is in competition with one another. We couldn't even share toilet-paper when the pandemic started: truly pathetic display on that front. I view March 2020 as a great metric for measuring what we can expect if shit actually hits the fan. We already got a nice taste of how society can break down in a matter of days given a series of unfortunate events.

So yeah, I'm a bit worried that over the next ten years, if things aren't going too well in the world, the kids being born recently and going to have to deal with some really serious stuff during this decade, and that will permanently alter their personality and how they interact with the world. Let's just say I won't be expecting a whole lot of sympathy going around in the midst of potential grizzled survivors.

Fun story:

I just tried to pick some food out of a molar like an ape and a chunk of tooth just shot out of my mouth onto the ground. I think I'm done for today. Fitting, considering the topic at hand. Woof.

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Actually fewer people decided to have kids during COVID-19 period.
Birth rates are way down everywhere.

This is very concerning and liable to bring about the dystopian civilisational breakdown you predict.

It is trite to say “kids are the future” but it’s true.
No kids: No future.
Almost the whole civilised world is facing extinction from a simple failure to breed.

Wow, I feel like I need to watch a Disney movie after reading that. pretty bleak and grim. I don't disagree with you though. There is definitely some kind of storm brewing. That sucks about your tooth. Hopefully the dentist can get you in to get it fixed.

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Perhaps I'm just being alarmist.

Perhaps...

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haha, a friend of mine said "portable water" the other day and i just couldn't correct her. It was just too cute.

Yeaaaaahhh, it's going to turn out all right, this whole thing is a facade and the illusionists are lining up their pockets, then we go back to "normal" life, except that we will be used to seeing military in the streets and have a lot more control on top of us.

Yea, I'm watching that show Sweet Tooth on Netflix right now and I have a very different perspective on dystopic fiction nowadays.

WHen I watched that kind of show before I didn't think it would be possible for humanity to sink so low but now I can see exactly how it starts.

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Why not have a kid when it's very clear that humanity has never been in a more precarious state of affairs?

Meh. People were making babies in Europe in 1943, during China’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward”, even during the height of the Black Death bubonic plague.

Not logical, but there’s no stopping people wanting to have sex.

Big difference between having a kid and having a kid on purpose.
Life finds a way, it seems.

Well the biggest issue is that we are relying more and more on technology. We probably can't imagine life without it and if I were to lose internet access, I would have trouble figuring out what my life would look like.

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Damn that was a depressing post that ended worse then it began.

However I do agree that postponing parent-hood seems appropriate, but in a world more focused on biological clocks and the right of everyone to have children regardless of their singular ability to feed, clothe, shelter the children they bring into the world. What do we expect?

I don’t want to sound elitist or mean, but I grew up with children who were hungry, dirty and clothed like beggars. I couldn’t help but wonder why their parents subjected their children to such humiliation and suffering. My parents had much harsher words for these parents then I wish to type here, but irresponsible and cruel were amongst the nicer ones.

People seem to have reinterpreted Hillary Clinton’s Book title It takes a Village to raise a child into meaning everyone in the village is obligated to contribute to feeding, clothing, and sheltering of the children of people to poor to do it themselves. Yet they still bring those children into the world. So those children can be mocked, humiliated and treated like trash.

The term poor white trash burns deep wounds into peoples souls as a dehumanizing and degradation epitaph. Slavery was a special evil ally itself, that destroyed the bodies and minds of the slaves, along with the moral compass and in some respects the humanity of the slave owners. But poverty is a very distant second on the scale of evils inflicted on humanity by the greedy of the world. Many, who amass more then they could spend in ten lifetimes, all the while paying their employees subsistence wages.

The world is filled with people who divide the poor into white, black and Latino.Then proceed to annihilate the self respect and sense of self-worth of each group. Then brainwash them into hating both themselves and the other two groups. So they can never come together to fight the true enemy, a society where legal slavery and indentured servitude were replaced by modern systems of widespread poverty, ignorance and debt, which do a less cruel but efficient job of keeping poor people poor and their labor and services cheap.

Poverty, ignorance, racism, and greed are horrors which describe many parts of the richest nation on earth. Add financial ignorance and what some say is parental irresponsibility, and you have a system which perpetuates the squalid existence of the poor, the violence and injustices that characterize their daily existence and a self-depreciating reliance on the rich for jobs, sustenance and our very human freedoms. Which they have begun to slowly take away, starting with 9-11 and accelerating with each new crisis. They remove our freedoms and build our cages around us slowly, and with each piece of the fence and with each freedom lost they reassure us, that this is for our protection.

The world is slowly getting buggered. Prepare to be mounted and violated.

Sorry to be so depressing.

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I always find pieces like this interesting and in some ways a form of sections of the Community beginning to become "woke". The World has always been burning, it has always had these issues. It's just that those impacts weren't felt by everyone in the same way.

Do I agree with the lockdowns? No, are they needed, yes. Time and time again we see it's quite often just one person who gets sick and doesn't stay home and cause outbreaks.

So unfortunately, laws need to be developed for the lowest common denominator, idiots.

There's a running joke in Australia and it is that you know you have COVID when you go to the supermarket 4 times, Kmart, Target and bunnings while stopping at 8 cafes to get coffees and a lunch stop somewhere.

It just goes to show, people aren't doing the right thing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

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I agree with you in some aspects but I think there's a big difference between a society becoming "woke" and a society being awakened.

Yes, I agree that people are idiots, but I also think that most of this idiocy is used, abused and manipulated by the media. There's a LOT of misinformation out there that people just gobble up because they don't have the inquiring nature to ask "hmmm, could something else actually be going on?" And I'm not specifically talking about Covid here, but there is a lot happening that we are not being told, that I am pretty convinced of and I have a strong suspicion that whatever the actual truth of the matters are, they're probably a lot worse than what is getting into the news cycle.

Mask mandates haven't worked because they are ineffective against a virus. Lockdowns may slow the spread of a disease but they won't eradicate one. If Covid was engineered in a lab and leaked out whether intentionally or not, I'm almost certain that it wasn't the only thing that could have leaked from that lab and that was probably the reason for the mass panic in the first place and the lockdowns, perhaps they were assuming that it was only one of ? number of things that could have got out. Obviously this is hypothetical here and we'll probably never find out exactly what the real situation was at the time.

So yes. Idiots: Governments allowing and funding gain of function research ie: biological warfare agent research is a good definition of idiocy in my mind.

It's kind of like that saying "if it ain't broke why fix it?" Why in the world are governments researching viruses with the sole purpose of finding out what the infectiousness in humans would be if the virus wasn't adapted to humans to begin with? That's just asking for trouble.

So yes - people aren't doing the right thing. People in power who are meant to serve society, keep them safe for one - aren't doing the right as in the morally and ethically sound thing, so to assume that the rest of us would is kind of the pot calling the cocoa tree green. And are they taking responsibility for it? Hmmm I doubt that there will be accountability because, well - politics and politicians are the most slithery slippery kind of creatures there are, granted not all of them, but most of them.

Can you tell that I'm pissed off? Everyone should be.

Well not having babies means we lose, permanently. So we have to keep doing so. It's either now, or later. You're saying it should be later. You're assuming things aren't going to be more fucked up in 10 years than they are right now.
Quite the assumption I think!

Interesting write-up, and I can see your worries. This kind of things, that we could see coming for a long time, worries about humanity, life, living, and having the means for a good living, were the biggest reason that I decided a long time ago that I didn't want to raise a child in this world.

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That may be the best decision for you, but hopefully those of us with genetics and skills to pass on will continue to do so, otherwise the past several million years of struggle has been for naught.

Are you suggesting that I don't have genetics and skills to pass on? Thanks for that...LOL.

The reason I have decided for myself not to want to put children in this world is that I have been confronted with the dark side of humanity at a young age. That I was confronted with worries about many things from a very young age. And that as I grew up I saw many situations where not only the parents but also the children suffered under the circumstances. Do you want to do that to a child? In addition, my personal circumstances were not to offer a child a safe harbor without worries. And so I see a lot of children living ... the parents can barely keep their heads above water. The parents cannot keep up with the pace of society, live on benefits and cannot offer their children what they need. Are you doing such a great job of wanting to pass on your genes and skills to an innocent child who, due to this situation, does not even get the full opportunities in society that it deserves.

I'm not saying that no one should start having children yet. Of course not. But I do think that one is obliged to his / her future child, to make a FAIR assessment whether you can offer a child everything that is necessary. And if your answer to that would be, "No I can't". Then you have to be honest and not give birth to a child at that moment in your life.

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I don't have such a pessimistic view, though I do think it's really up to US (As in YOU, whoever reads this!). I think our addiction to status quo will prevent us from becoming all that savage. Even though we'll fail miserably as keeping that status quo, a combination of the effort of the powers that be fighting against each other to hold on to their power, the rise of new forces, and the spread of new models for living, I think things will look a lot like the bitcoin charts. 100 steps forward, yay! 90 steps back, end of the world!!

I'm not so sure about the superpowers though, I think they may become hellscapes for a while...because old borders are disappearing and these countries have the most to lose. Things will simultaneously be better than ever, and worse than ever and it really will depend on our ability to focus on the right things and stay focused on cooperating and to make our surroundings better rather than just fighting and letting them erode.

A Decentralized world. At first it'll be a bit chaotic, yeah.

It's Time to Make Children, I Want a Smart and Handsome Father! It's No Good to Be Afraid, they just need Good Food and Love to form a New Generation! Let's Not Lose Faith! No one thinks with Hunger!

No, not portable: potable.

Oh.

People should think long term and having a baby is something that should not be taken lightly. Unfortunately those who overthink and care about the future of humanity do not hurry up to make babies while some people who are more ignorant and oblivious rush into it like they go to the shopping mall. Baby after baby after baby. It would be great if these parents would be capable of spiritual, moral and emotional support for their child in these rough times. But I see many adults incapable of regulating their own emotions, being a hot mess. I can't imagine how the offspring of such an adult could end up well. Maybe just by pure luck for a few...

These most recent injections may sterilize many people. This could be your last chance to make a baby. Unless you have an excellent social credit score, then you may be allowed to CRISPR a new citizen.

It sure has been a crazy 18 months, I like hope things will improve.

Just going by the current climate its difficult to be optimistic

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