Is everything falling apart?

Whats odd thou is, (1) there is no clear definition of wokeism, like its an arbitrary stereotype used by demagogues and (2), that woke is often displayed on the other side of right/conservative. This makes it a strong indicator of propaganda. A surface, people can project their negative emotions to, which is another red flag in terms of populism. Even you used it indirectly, to refer to your peers "not liking woke", which is why i asked.

I am not defending wokeism too. One core value of the left is equality and solidarity. When you define wokeism as some LGBTQ-stuff, it would be just a subset of these values. So being woke does not make you left.

This is my answer to, what is the difference between woke and left.

The US has had a strong anti-protest culture for decades. March in the street, for anything, and the response is near universal cynicism and derision of the "hippies". With OWS this was apparent with traditional news coverage that constantly focused on the most ridiculous looking protestors

I was a "doomer" back when everything seemed fine. Nothing since 2019 has surprised me at all.

Things will continue to break down at a faster rate and more severely. However, one of my earliest realizations upon waking up to this was that as things become more obvious, people's denial will be not chipped away but rather strengthened.

The collapse of industrial civilization (and the non-zero possibility of species extinction) isn't just scary for most people, it deeply cuts into existential crisis territory. The vast majority of our strategies of copping with existence and our deep rooted fear of our inevitable death is a system of meaning largely created around our hopes in the future of society. As society collapse we are forced to start confronting things that terrify us, and the natural psychological reaction is often to just double down on not seeing it.

There are already so many things that we've normalized that would be shocking to someone from 2012: Global pandemic, land war with Russia, lake Mead on track to stop water flowing through the Hoover dam in 10 years, crop failures, supply chain crises, etc.

In a very literal sense "everything is falling apart". We have destroyed vast portions of the biosphere, we're seriously looking at ecosystem devastating ocean acidification, most of us will live to see a blue ocean event. But people will be unlikely to ever recognize this, rather they will continue to double down on "this is fine" and the associates madness and extreme cognitive dissonance required to maintain this illusion.

People have always migrated into the unknown in the hope of something better for the people who will call them ancestors. But they've also always been able to make certain promises: that the sun will shine on them as it does on us, that crops will grow even if they aren't the crops we know, that the air is safe to breathe, that god will hear them there. Some of those people have been wrong about some of those things, but they always had good reason to trust in them.

We don't have reason to believe any of that about anywhere other than here. It's possible to imagine a future so grim that the best chance for our offspring is for us to force them to risk these unknowns. It's our responsibility to prevent that choice being necessary.

We can imagine things that could change this calculation. FTL, centuries-long human cryogenics, cross-lightyear microbiology. These are fantasies. If these powers are ever in anyone's grasp, that people will be fundamentally different from what we are, even if they came from us. I don't know what will be right for them and I have no claims on what they do.

Focusing on those far off fantasies of another people is a failure to appreciate our place here, the cosmic gift we've been given with our solar system. It is an understandable weakness but we should fight it. We have enough future in front of us as ourselves, we should leave the unrecognizable far depths of it to the unrecognizable people who will inhabit it.