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Comment by challenger22 | Hacker News Reader

One claim I imagine that no sociologist will ever be able to prove (or disprove)-

If we are living in a crisis of confidence about society- one in which people are plagued by pessimism about too many humans causing global warming, secular stagnation, overpopulation, where all the low hanging fruits are already picked, lack of moral purpose, with the impression that humans are a plague upon the world-

Won't the average pessimistic person care less about trying hard to do anything? And won't this manifest as less effort to be smart and just?

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I think it's really hard to be creative when you spend your time worrying about all of that stuff. Most of my peers spend an inordinate amount of time stressing out about every item you list. They get locked into ways of thinking that are nearly identical to each other and that lockstep voice bleeds out into other unrelated areas. There's a lot of group think.

I don't worry about any of that stuff and have a lot of extra energy to explore random topics and generally more positivity to power my endeavours.

It seems the like overt consumer marketing of the 20th century has morphed into a social/political marketing in the 21st century. Because this is a new phenomena people don't seem to realize it's happening and instead blindly contribute their mind the borg, so to say.

It's an interesting thought but it's really hard to compare societal fears across generations. I grew up knowing that if the US or USSR saw a tactical opening, the world could literally just end in something like 11 minutes. Other generations worried about global cooling, overpopulation, Communism, crime waves, and all kinds of other things we can look back at as silly now but that doesn't mean they weren't equally stressed about them at the time.

Well, you can probably prove the feedback the average person receives from media has become more pessimistic, and if you assume some people respond to that feedback, that's a pretty easy line to draw.

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