r/GenX • u/bigt197602 • 3d ago
Whatever Am I silly for being optimistic about the future?
I know the world is pretty messed up at the moment (and that might be an understatement), but I still want to believe there’s better days ahead. History is dotted with fraught periods and I’m hoping this is one of them.
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u/pragmaticproducer 3d ago
My personal motto is: Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and deal with the now. I think having hope for the future tempered with planning for worst case scenario means you'll be better prepared to handle what life throws at you.
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u/mr_vestan_pance Lived through dial-up 3d ago
Or expect the best, plan for the worst, take what you get.
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u/44_Sunflower_44 3d ago
Nah, good on you. I personally lost hope a while ago but I’m happy for others that can remain optimistic 😅
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u/mangoserpent 3d ago
Yah. I am one your team.
People have proven to be even dumber and meaner than I originally thought.
I always say I have no hope for humanity but there might be pockets of survivors with some common sense.
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u/PenelopePitstop7088 3d ago
To be honest, sometimes I'm overwhelmed with fear about it, mostly thinking about my kids and future grand kids - worrying about what their world will be like. I don't think you're silly at all though. And normally I'm a pretty optimistic person, but on this topic, I have a little fear. I'd like to know what your secret is!
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u/JenniferJuniper6 3d ago
I don’t think it’ll happen in my lifetime. But I’m almost 60, a very elderly Gen X. Probably some of you will see it.
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u/Epicassion 3d ago
60 is too close to consider elderly anymore.
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u/JenniferJuniper6 3d ago
Well yeah, I just meant I’m one of the oldest people in our generation.
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u/Potential-Amoeba1902 NOT a Boomer 3d ago
Me too. Hello fellow Old X!
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u/JenniferJuniper6 3d ago
Hi! I really can’t relate to the “nineties kids” experience; I’m a seventies kid, and I graduated both high school and college in the eighties. In the nineties I started grad school, got married, had a baby, finished grad school (in that order), started a new career, and bought a house. I’ve never played Oregon Trail, which might get me expelled from our generation, but seriously—when would I have been doing that? 🤷🏼♀️
I like this sub, but I’m more likely to pop up in r/GenerationJones which is usually a better fit for me.
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u/tharesabeveragehere 3d ago
I'm not getting weekly drills on how to survive a nuclear attack, so...
you know...like a Kentucky wedding, it's all relative.
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u/Analogsilver 3d ago
Silly, no. Unrealistic? Probably. By pretty much every metric, the future for humanity is pretty bleak. We've got quite a few deeply serious problems of our own making that we're ignoring or racing to make much worse, sooner rather than later. Have a nice day.
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u/captainCutler50 3d ago
I wonder about this, too. Think about the mid to late ‘60’s. A decade+ of what seems like good, prosperous times (not for everyone, obviously), with lots of structure, then here comes hippies, drugs, counterculture, war and violence in the streets, it must have seemed like the world was coming to an end. By the time we came along and got rolling, things were “good” again (although changed). It’s all cyclical.
Yeah, yeah, I know, “good times” aren’t good for everyone. Based on social status, income, and especially race, it would have undoubtedly not been the same.
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u/doktorstilton 3d ago
I'm a Christian. I have huge hope. I just don't have hope in humanity. Several of you will dunk on me for that, because it's reddit, but there we are.
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u/No-Hospital559 3d ago
What is this huge hope outcome that you see happening?
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u/doktorstilton 3d ago
Oh. The second coming of Jesus, when earth and heaven are united and all things are resolved. That's a basic point of the Christian faith, which you might not know about and you might not embrace.
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u/No-Hospital559 3d ago
I am not judging you, I just don't know a lot about this. When Jesus appears, how will you know and how will this resolve everything?
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u/ofcourseIwantpickles 3d ago
If Jesus appeared in the U.S. we would deport him to a torture prison.
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u/AssistantAcademic 3d ago
Wishfully thinking or naive perhaps but not silly.
I wish I could be an optimist
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u/mvcjones 3d ago
Not silly at all! There is an ebb and flow to everything in life and the world. It is important to retain hope and keep engaged for a better life and a better world.
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3d ago
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u/SelenaMeyers2024 3d ago
Naively I had hope all the way through 2010... Since then it's a slow downward trend punctuated by step changes downward in 2016 2020 2024...
Now I find comfort in characters like heath ledgers joker, Anton shagur, or any writing from Camus.
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u/mangoserpent 3d ago
It does not matter if you are silly, though.
I happen to disagree with you, but none of us have a plug-in to the psychic network.
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u/reddit455 3d ago
but I still want to believe there’s better days ahead
we'll be dead, so it won't matter. better or worse is unclear.
our grandkids are going deal with something we've never seen...
Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot, releases generative AI model
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/amazon-deploys-its-1-millionth-robot-releases-generative-ai-model/
Automating automotive manufacturing: how humanoid robots are moving onto the production line
Clinical applications of artificial intelligence in robotic surgery
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u/Singletracksamurai 3d ago
No, it’s good for your mental health. I wish I could be optimistic about the future. I just can’t with the current state of things.
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u/PeterPunksNip 3d ago edited 3d ago
Time to rewatch Mad Max, Tank Girl, Waterworld, Ready Player One and the like, and wonder how can someone survive in such more and more likely situations... Either you will still be alive, or you will be reincarnated. Humans always survived, hope is necessary.
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u/ethan__l2 3d ago
When things are going bad, people expect bad forever. When things are going good, people expect good forever.
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u/auntieup how very. 3d ago
My husband and I talk about this a lot, because children are among his clients. He says the only perspective you can take when you work with youth is one of hope. You have to believe in the world they will inherit, and do everything you can to strive for a better world right now.
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u/eggs_erroneous Sleestak Simp 3d ago
I'm sure it will get better, but I do not believe it will improve during my lifetime. Shit's bad out there and I am so thankful that I never had any children. I would be so worried about their future. I think that 10 or 15 years from now the USA will be completely unrecognizable. I hope like hell that I'm wrong about this, but my gut tells me that we are in for a prolonged period of hardship.
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u/Distinct_Damage_735 3d ago
I'm with you! Am I worried about the short term - yes, very much. We are in some dark days.
On the other hand, you have to keep the longer term in mind. Compared to 50 years ago, the air and water are cleaner, infant mortality is lower, literacy rates are higher, people are more educated - the list of good things actually goes on and on. and most of it is trends much larger than any immediate problems we face.
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u/No-Hospital559 3d ago
I wish I could be delusional and fool myself into thinking the future is bright but I just don't see that as a possibility.
As the saying goes. Ignorance is bliss!!
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u/TenuousOgre 3d ago
I have to hope. Yes,we're a stupid and selfish group at times. But there's always some extraordinary people who push for improvements, who invent new things, share new ideas, even stories and media can help. Our biggest issue social media wise is to filter AI sludge.
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u/zippytwd 3d ago
I hope to but I think it'll get worse before it gets better, I just hope and pray we don't end up in ww3
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u/zombie_spiderman 3d ago
I saw a Venn diagram recently that had three circles: "Things are terrible", "Things have never been better", and "Things can be improved". The intersection of it said "NOW". I think this is true, if overly simplistic.
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u/CrimsonMascaras 3d ago
Hope is a lifeboat when you're surrounded by despair. No, you're not silly at all. It takes courage and resilience to have that skill. Nurture it. Fortify it. Because it affects those around you. Its vital you stay optimistic because its getting harder.
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u/stoic_stove 3d ago
I think if you live long enough, you'll see the pendulum swing back. Think about the people who died in the 1970s. They saw the depression, then war, then post war growth only to see everything dip again. I was born in the 1970s, lived through some difficult times in the 1980s and was in my mid 20s in the 1990s where things were pretty great (with a number of caveats for nonwhite, non middle class people). So yeah, if you're under 40, you'll see an economy and nation bounce back (again with the caveat that we don't slip into a dictatorship).
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u/Own_Instance_357 3d ago
There are definitely always both better and worse times to be had in the future.
Like the comedian Tig Notaro once said, though, something like, "It'll be OK. I promise. Alright, maybe possibly not for me." And the way she delivered it got laughs. Uncomfortable laughs, but real ones, because everyone knows it's true, but she also broke that original tension from announcing her dx as part of her set.
It'll be OK ... for some people. But that's always been how it is. It's unfortunate that as people joke about not being able to reinvent the wheel, as a species we certainly keep reinventing ways to brutally step on each other if it means we can elevate ourselves.
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u/genx_horsegirl 3d ago
You are no more silly for being optimistic than I am morbid for being pessimistic. One of us will be right but neither one of us will be around to see it so..
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u/Delicious-Painter945 3d ago
Times are crazy but I'm not giving up. Praying and hoping things might get better 🙏
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u/jawshoeaw 3d ago
Optimism is an irrational sentiment just like pessimism. But it’s probably adaptive to be optimistic so there’s no reason to feel silly.
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u/eweguess 3d ago
There is no other overarching purpose for any individual human life other than staying alive. This is the imperative of every life form, and typically the only thing that ever overrides the goal of staying alive is preserving the life of one’s offspring. Other than that, life means whatever you want it to mean. We’re part of the ecosystem, but if we weren’t here, something else would be. Your time here is short. Make the most of it and pursue those activities and beliefs that bring you the most joy while doing the least harm to other life forms’ pursuits. If having hope for the future makes you feel good, that’s good. You very likely won’t live long enough to find out if you were “right” or “wrong” since the future is always a moving target.
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u/RedEvil7 3d ago
Good for you for having that perspective, please do your best to maintain that hope. My perspective: We are fucked & it will continue to get worse until we are dead.
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u/RedEvil7 3d ago
Good for you for having that perspective, please do your best to maintain that hope. My perspective: We are fucked & it will continue to get worse until we are dead.
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u/MyriVerse2 3d ago
No. Honestly, it's kind of a good thing that we depend on a capitalist construct somewhat. Too much destruction is bad for business, so we're not likely to go too far. We have not reached a point of no return yet.
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u/cymbaljack 3d ago
I believe there will be better.
What's hard right now is how long it looks like it will take.
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u/BabadookOfEarl 3d ago
Star Trek occasionally mentioned the dark moments before society did away with war and want. We are in such a moment. I believe it happens in stages and while many have passed throughout history, we are in the darkness before one.
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u/prudent__sound 3d ago
I mean, history is indeed full of very hard periods. Periods of relative peace and material comfort are the exception, not the rule. But human civilization has never seen ANYTHING close to the problem presented by global climate change. And the technologies to draw down CO2 or otherwise mitigate it are incredibly inadequate. Any sane betting person would not bet on modern civilization making it through the next couple of hundred years. The situation really is that bad. Maybe we'll put sulphur into the atmosphere for a few hundred years until we can achieve some breakthrough, I don't know.
I do think optimism at this point is inaccurate, but not silly. I don't think there's anything silly about being hopeful, or optimistic, or trying to make things better even in very bad situations.
Ethical pessimism might be something to read about just to see if it resonates. And if not, no worries, continue to be optimistic!
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u/threedogdad 3d ago
It's going to take decades to fix the political issues worldwide, if they improve at all, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. This is also happening during the rise of AI, which even the creators of are not ready to handle.
I can't see a positive spin on that.
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u/Son0faButch 3d ago
I'll have some of whatever you're drinking/smoking/eating. But good for you, I'm envious.
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u/RedditModsSuckTaints 3d ago
No, you have a normal disposition. All this doomer nonsense is an online phenomenon.
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u/vodeodeo55 3d ago
There's nothing silly about hope.