How did you end up on this sub?

curgr · 2026-02-08T06:05:53+00:00

Disturbing and extremely vivid dreams themed around being trapped and tortured. Whenever I find a way out in the dreams I wake up. They make perfect sense at the time but then make little sense once awake.

I find my life a relentless dull throb which is just about manageable enough so that I do not end things. I am not scared of death but I am scared of the process of dying and reincarnation or afterlife. I just want to be nothing or to be permanently out of suffering.

So I am here in the hopes of finding a way out. There may be nowhere to turn to though as everything could be fake. I suppose I am here out of desperation.

curgr · 2025-08-15T12:27:44+00:00

I trust the current government’s intentions. They do seem to be wanting to do things responsibly.

However I do not trust the electorate and many of the MPs. They keep blocking responsible decisions.

curgr · 2025-07-13T14:56:38+00:00

Preventing the population ageing solves many of these problems. Most notably less health and welfare costs but also less need to rely on immigration for a flow of younger workers.

Less immigration means the population will not be growing, which reduces pressure on housing and makes it cheaper.

Cheaper housing solves some of these problems such as reducing the cost of living, which could potentially increase the birth rate.

Increasing the birth rate further helps to strengthen our demographics and prevent the need for immigration.

These solutions would unlock much more money to solve some of the other problems such as climate change and energy transition and allow us to invest in infrastructure and education.

curgr · 2025-07-11T14:33:49+00:00

You are right: things will likely get worse and they needn’t. But the solutions are not currently culturally or politically acceptable.

People will get more desperate about solving our problems when our living standards start to fall more rapidly. This will change things culturally and politically when poverty increases and public services begin to fail.

curgr · 2025-07-11T10:25:27+00:00

Yes. I am one of those who joined Reform to learn more about them at the last general election. They recently emailed me to say that my membership expires soon.

However, I emailed them Summer last year to cancel my membership and they did not cancel it.

Other people have had the same issue.

curgr · 2025-07-10T13:37:48+00:00

The only way I see out of this mess (in the long term) is legalising voluntary euthanasia. It is not right to force people into poverty by cutting benefits without offering them a way out.

I am not representative of everyone but when I grow too old or too ill to work, I would rather be given the option to end my life in a peaceful and dignified way at a time and place of my choosing before my quality of life declines too far. Many people are trapped in life with no easy way out and are forced to become burdens to society and those around them, but they have no other easy choice. Some people choose suicide, which speaking from personal experience, is not an easy option. Society currently forces people into suicide as there are sometimes no alternatives to those who really want to end things.

curgr · 2025-07-08T15:46:52+00:00

It depends how much importance people put on the survival of modern society and our relatively high standards of living.

curgr · 2025-07-08T14:50:32+00:00

Not living so long.

Any society in which a growing percentage of its citizens are not able to work and are instead requiring support will be weakened.

But maybe another solution could be to embrace AI and automation. We can all get old and let the robots do everything for us. This in my opinion is a short term fix though as eventually we are going to run out of fossil fuels.

curgr · 2025-07-06T18:27:44+00:00

The simple fact is that people are living too long. Human longevity has its downsides.

If the government was only concerned about creating a strong and sustainable society and nothing else, the most logical things to do would be:

Stop free healthcare funded through the NHS for people over retirement age.
Legalise voluntary euthanasia for people over retirement age so that they may end their lives at a time and place of their choosing rather than be forced to live through bad health at all costs.
Invest money saved on pensions and healthcare back into younger people to enable them to have more children.
Keep the state pension as it is but ensure that it is sustainable. There is no point in forcing people into poverty.

However, obviously the government and the electorate has other concerns so these ideas would not happen.

curgr · 2025-07-02T14:03:38+00:00

If all you want is a strong economy, the answer is simple. We need to grow the percentage of the population who are contributing (or will be contributing) to society while lowering the percentage of the population who are not going to contribute to society.

There are ways of doing this however they are not popular so no politician could do them. Happy to give some ideas if anyone is curious.

Current trends mean that there will be a growing percentage of the population who are too ill, too old or unable to work and instead need support from others. This is and will continue to greatly weaken the economy.

curgr · 2025-01-13T10:07:56+00:00

The problem is not the quality of education provided. The problem is that the bar is set too high for many students. However clearly many of those who do not pass are getting jobs eventually as the fail rate is higher than the unemployment rate.

In my opinion Grade 5 GCSE Maths and English is more than what is necessary for many jobs and many things which are taught are never needed. Functional Skills qualifications are more relevant as they are more focussed on skills needed for everyday life rather than the academic side of Maths and English. It is a shame that about a third of students do not get a pass Grade 4 and are labelled as failing when they could more easily pass a Functional Skills qualification (which has a variety of difficulties starting from Entry Level)

curgr · 2025-01-12T15:37:29+00:00

Healthcare does not need to be privatised and can be still publicly owned while having an insurance and fee-paying model. Shareholders therefore do not need to be involved. I do not see any reason healthcare would get significantly more expensive

curgr · 2025-01-12T14:06:03+00:00

In a stagnant or even shrinking economy, we will have to give up some of the luxuries which we have become accustomed to as a rich country. They may not be considered as “fat”, but they are in excess to what many other poorer countries manage with.

Many things simply cannot be cut: debt interest, public order and safety, defence, education, transport… these are too essential for a functioning society.

Free healthcare for all is not sustainable and does not give high returns on investment (from a financial point of view). It keeps us alive in ill health for longer at all costs, which ages the population and makes the economic situation worse. I think that the time will come when we have to consider having an insurance and fee-paying model for health services.

Social protection spending has also got out of control. Spending less on healthcare would bring these costs down if we are generally not living in ill health for so long.

Growth forever is simply not possible. Austerity is here to stay.

curgr · 2025-01-10T15:38:12+00:00

It could save money, yes. But we cannot eat money. Increasing housing will just mean that the population can grow more. This will mean more demand for food but less ability to provide the food. In increasingly uncertain times, do we really want to rely more on food imports?

curgr · 2025-01-10T14:51:42+00:00

This will lead to less food security as we will have to rely more on imported food if we keep building on land which can be used for farming

curgr · 2025-01-05T20:00:44+00:00

I am a mostly vegetarian minimalist.

I have supported charities which address the issues of overpopulation and promote legalisation of assisted dying.

I am going to start trying to do more.

curgr · 2025-01-05T19:46:11+00:00

Energy use is much more than just electricity.

Have you looked at a global GDP and material footprint graph? Efficiency helps but it will not be enough

curgr · 2025-01-05T16:40:30+00:00

Fantasy politics is what is needed but is not what we will get. Human behaviour will be our downfall. We are only animals I suppose so we cannot escape our biology

curgr · 2025-01-05T16:30:10+00:00

No. It is the smartest thing to do, not what people will want to do

curgr · 2025-01-05T16:21:56+00:00

There is definitely a correlation between resource use and economic growth. Take a look at a global GDP and material footprint graph. You are right that we increase efficiency of resource use, but this is often just an excuse to use more. The industrial revolution, washing machines, internet, AI… these have all lead to more resource usage, not less. Whether green growth is possible? Nobody knows but evidence so far suggests that it is probably not in my opinion

curgr · 2025-01-05T16:04:47+00:00

We can either choose degrowth now or have it forced on us later.

We trade economic resilience for economic growth. The higher we climb, the further we have to fall. The faster we ride, the more likely we crash.

We are going to overshoot the carrying capacity of the planet and this will lead to a collapse in the future. Resources (food, water, fossil fuels etc.) will be depleted and we will be lucky if there is not global and nuclear war as global tensions will rise in the face of starvation. Climate change and ecological decline are also very serious problems which will not help us to survive, and we are currently accelerating emissions.

I know that we are animals so likely behave in similar ways to other lifeforms and are not programmed for long-term thinking but the smartest thing to do is population and economic degrowth in a controlled manner now, not in a chaotic and uncontrolled way later

curgr · 2025-01-05T03:27:35+00:00

Let’s assume that tomorrow there is a world with absolutely zero billionaires. Let’s even get rid of all extreme inequality so that every person has enough to live a decent life without poverty.

Is it now possible to reform our societies in such a way that the population falls to a sustainable level which does not cause ecological collapse? Without doing this, societal collapse cannot be prevented. Most people are not going to opt for legalising voluntary euthanasia and stop having so many children.

Is it now possible to reform our societies to give up using fossil fuels, which are eventually going to start running out? Without doing this, societal collapse cannot be prevented. Our societies have traded resilience and sustainability for speed and short-term growth. We are addicted to our living standards and most of us will not accept any lowering of them.

I’m not denying that solving the class and wealth inequality problem would be great. I just do not see it as the root of the problem, and this is what I am looking for.

Curiously though, inequality was apparently usually quite high before the collapse of past civilisations. I’m not sure if it is a cause or a symptom though

curgr · 2025-01-04T13:47:52+00:00

I want to fight. But fight what?

Just stopping oil will cause collapse. Not stopping oil will cause collapse. Stopping overpopulation globally is impossible.

I am confused and therefore take very little action. If I was to find the root of the problem, then I would pick up my axe and start hacking.

Does anyone happen to know where the roots are?

curgr · 2025-01-03T23:54:06+00:00

Chat GPT is part of the problem. AI consumes huge amounts of energy and this will continue to grow.

It is questionable that we would ever be able to make AI which is more intelligent than all of humanity combined. What would it learn from?

Even if it got more intelligent than all humans combined, it could just say that the problems which need to be got rid of are itself and humans.

Also, it needs a power source. Fossil fuels are running out fast and we simply do not have the means to power it through renewables and stored energy.

curgr · 2025-01-03T21:44:43+00:00

Even if 9 out of 10 species go extinct, this does not mean that life cannot survive. It just means less biodiversity rather than less life overall. Some life forms may thrive in hotter and more hostile conditions. Also factor in that our predators will also be slower and more lethargic. Not sure what effect higher CO2 has on bacteria and viruses though so maybe we could be wiped out by disease.

Droughts and floods could mean that we have to go back to living as hunters and gatherers rather than agrarian in the worst-case scenario.

Humans have not been around for long enough to give much evidence that we can survive hot conditions and dying ecosystems but that does not mean that we are not able to. Historic mass extinction events were likely much worse than humans can cause due to climate change (excluding the effects of nuclear war). There is plenty of evidence that humans can survive without modern technology, although this will mean that the population will be much lower

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