Why are we so pessimistic?
brookings.edu
brookings.edu
That's a bit reductionist and dramatic, but when you cut through the bullshit, this is happening every single day around us. Nobody wants to admit how easy their life is, how very rare actual, significant adversities are. It's part of human nature. For the time being, at least.
It's like in The Matrix, it's not until you unplug yourself that you realize that the world is worse than it has ever been. Opportunities essentually don't exist at all.
Also the argument that "if they don't realize it, then it won't hurt them" doesn't apply because it will hurt them badly in the end. Once they reach a certain age and realize that they're wasted their entire lives on video games, star wars, star treck, lord of the rings, game of thrones, etc... It will hurt badly and they won't have any way to recover.
A large part of what got me out of my depression was making meaning for my life. Discovering what really matters to me, and living my life by my discovered values.
I'm also, now, easily the most optimistic person in my peer-group (I definitely was not before). I believe the world is getting better every year, and that the human race will rise to overcome all the challenges presented to us.
That's a myth unfortunately:
> Now, for the first time, researchers went beyond deaths to examine the global causes of illness and disability. They found that the single largest cause of disability worldwide was mental disorders – largely, the common illnesses of depression and anxiety. They caused a seventh of all the disability in the world. In the poorest countries as well as the richest, and at every socioeconomic level in between, mental disorders were the greatest thief of productive life.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/30/busting-the-...
That we've evolved for the former situation and seem to be miserable in the latter seems to be the grandparent's point.
If the odds of achieving your goals and leading a satisfying life in the real world approach 0% (e.g. because of hyper-capitalism and monopolistic, anti-competitive, centralizing market forces), then it's completely understandable that you'd want to escape into virtual worlds which give you the dopamine rush which your real life continuously fails to deliver.
As a formerly homeless person living in a neighborhood filled with poverty, I'm going to humbly disagree with you on this point.
The article is about why we're unreasonably pessimistic. You are illustrating the point.
The average American will never experience homelessness so citing that as an example of adversity for the average American is wrong.
According to the story itself, most Americans are on the verge of: "reducing spending elsewhere (26%), borrowing from family and/or friends (16%) or using credit cards (12%)."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
Still worth a read if you are able to separate it from the murder he committed. I wonder if the press would still release manifestos like this today. My government would not and by doing that ironically works towards what he saw as a threat.
Movies teach nothing about overcoming adversity, because they are not like adversity in life at all. They are about someone predestined to win to win.
Your comment put it in a very different perspective. Thank you, I'm going to write that email now.
Most people sling coffee, serve food, work in factories, panic around in delivery vehicles all day, and with one wrongs step or bad health outcome they could be in doom. Lack of job stability, longer retirement, lack of community ... these things take their tole. Kind of a permanent existential anxiety.
Just 'keeping on doing', facing the daily grind and all the little things, taking care of kids - without falling down (because the cost could be catastrophe) is actually 'facing adversity'.
I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and thousands of miles away is particularly effective at altering daily behavior and mindset here, but it's important to recognize nonetheless.
Among the world's population at large, no way. Even homeless Americans are way better off than the average person in Asia, Africa, or South America. In China people regularly work 9-9-6 (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week); if you lose your job, you have zero social safety net other than your savings and your family; your property can be confiscated if you piss off the wrong party official; and there's a callous disregard for life so that if you get run over by a taxi it's your own problem. In parts of Central America the nominal government has no control, and you can be caught in a random crossfire. My wife served in the Peace Corps in Peru; she stayed with the richest woman in the village, who owned a house with 3.5 walls and a regular stream of reptilian visitors. That woman's occupation? Brewing moonshine in 55 gallon oil drums, to serve as the village's primary beverage and social lubricant.
The striking thing about what I noticed is is: Only the lonely people are unhappy. Give the average Cambodian a bucket of chicken feet and a carton of beer and they'll immediately share it with their friends/family and be unbelievably happy.
They have really strong community and family ties, and while that does have downsides (especially for women, whose behaviour is under control almost all the time), it also gives incredible support and comfort.
The contrast between Camobodia and Australia is noticeable: Cambodians are mostly poor and happy, and Australians are mostly rich and angry.
This is if you don't take into account purchasing power parity and the relative expense of things like education, medical care and housing.
Being homeless in San Francisco isn't going to be as fun than being, say, lower middle class in Uruguay even if your nominal income is higher.
I'm not sure the article is. Because the article keeps talking about objective realities.
But human beings experience life subjectively. Making more than your brother in law is a big ego boost. Having the highest degree in your family, even if that is only a BA.
Human beings judge ourselves subjectively.
Technology has broken down borders, increased our self awareness and provided us with education. Which is a good thing, but it also has it's negatives.
One of those negatives is the borders: we are now all part of a global economy. Everyone intertwined with everyone else. I used to be able to go to a town hall that had a lot more sway in how things worked. Now it's a global system that will grind on and grind up anyone who dares get in it's way.
The other point is our self awareness. It's now impossible to live without understanding that... I'm complicit in some child's slavery because I have a phone in my pocket. Likely some of that meat I eat was treated with horrendous cruelty. The pages I need to print and waste because of some bureaucratic rule will cost the lives of thousands of animals in a rain forest where the trees were cut down in a terrible way. My tax dollars will be used to kill and torture people for profit. My car is costing other people their live's from it's pollution, the same as my plane trip. The arguments we used to use to justify this, have been proven false.
Coming to terms with our own terrible behavior would be easier if not for our increase in education.
Since the time of the Gutenberg press, population has gone up 10~, but educated population has gone up something like 1000 or even 10,000 times.
This increase in education has had a huge increase in scientific knowledge. But it also makes any individual much less likely to be outstanding.
So again, our individuality is lessened. But worse, you are average. Mediocre. When there's 100 biologists in the world, you can always find some way to be slightly different. With 3,000,000 biologists in the world, how could you expect to shine?
I think these things add to something that's been brewing for a couple of hundred years: a loss of meaning.
The latest things that we used to feel special: capitalism, communism, our nationality, our race, our religion, have also been falling by the wayside, dying with other idols and invincible messiahs.
We use to think of ourselves as special for a lot of reasons. Science and tech have made it very clear, we aren't special. Just a random primate descendant on a lonely little rock in the middle of a totally uncaring universe.
Now we can't even take console in being the best at something in our own little area.
I think these real negatives are suppressed because they speak poorly of human nature (we are silly creatures) and it leads to irrational negativity in other areas; whether it is worrying over a 'growing crime rate' which doesn't exist, or complaining about vaccines.
Not sure how to handle these issues, I don't really have any suggestions. Just more pointless observations. :p
When there's 100 biologists in the world, you probably aren't one of them. You would just be some mediocre uneducated nobody. How do you expect to shine?
Of course, be it 100 or 3,000,000, at least you'd have the opportunity to shine if your world were the small town you were born in, not the whole planet (or continent).
There's a problem but it is not education that lessens our individuality.
The town halls now don't have that much effect. Complain about education? Worry about federal funding and national wide programs. It's not something that happened over night. It's been happening literally since the technology/science era, which I think of starting with Gutenberg.
BTW, I'm not saying education is a problem. I'm saying it has problems, unexpected consequences with the obvious good side.
But this is what is implied by the opening statement 'The Average American' etc. etc. , no?
The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by.
Imagine middle aged parents without spectacular health care coverage, someone gets a cavity and needs a root canal. That's $1000 - and actually beyond the 'average Americans' ability to pay for out of hand. A cavity can be little economic emergency. It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach, or no piano lessons for the kids, or worse, having to put it on the Credit Card, pay terrible rates etc.. And 'cousin Joe' was pulled over for DUI. He'll lose his job if he doesn't make bail, he needs you to co-sign for him. Now you have to make sure he shows up for court. Parents are inching older, have some income but likely need to go into a home, which will be exceedingly expensive. There are umpteen such challenges is 'most people's lives'.
So I agree with the sentiment that normal, employed middle class families wherein there's stability and gainful employment, low crime etc. - yes, it's effete, and not much adversity there.
There is a class of Americans for whom life doesn't have a lot of adversity, fully agree. But it's not 'most'.
> ...
> It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach
were you trying to make the point that people concoct adversity where it doesn't exist? because i think you're doing good work on that front. keep it up.
In case you're having trouble contextualizing: a family in that situation is an inch from ruin. They will never have anything, and odds are, they'll hit a bump now and again and it will get messy.
Those kinds of families are always coming in and out of financial difficulty.
That's your example of facing adversity?
Did you read the article? If you're lying awake at night worrying whether you can afford little Timmy's piano lessons you aren't in the same boat as a cave man that's worried about getting eaten by a lion.
Getting eaten by a lion is less misery. And a lion you can fight with a few guys. Job market? Might as well be hitting a tank with your bare fists.
If anything, it's the lack of control and not the level of adversity that is the problem.
Getting eaten by a lion is in no way similar to not getting a 'good' job, in fact I'll go further and say it's not similar to not getting a job at all.
Except this one nobody can really fix. The drawback of invisible poorly understood market processes with many inputs. The only thing you can try to do is make your chances better, be adaptable and adapt.
Even bad illness can often be abated with a few (commonly known as terrible) exceptions.
My point was to illustrate a family that might have next to nothing - and who's only aspirational escape from slinging coffee at the Waffle House is a low-budget weekender at a slimly dive like Myrtle Beach, will with one tiny blip of a minor medical issue, have that taken away, and possibly go into debt.
Could you imagine a life of serving at a restaurant, never able to afford even the most basic getaway, going ever deeper into debt for basic things like 'visits to the dentist'? When you tack on just a couple of 'issues', it all comes apart.
Those families have $500 'net worth' and are at any time inches away from ruin, no retirement savings, no way to send their kids to college. If they have a bad day at work, or if their boss doesn't like them they could lose their jobs. If they inure themselves playing softball - it's calamity. Getting one credit card to pay off the other. 'Pay day loans'. Unable to cobble together 'first and last months' rent. Bad credit. A minor offence and unable to make bail. A car that breaks down, no way to get to work, and a boss that doesn't care one bit. Coming down with something as minor as 'late onset Asthma' which is $50/month of meds they cannot afford.
That is the grinding adversity that about 1/2 of America faces with no way out.
I've never heard of myrtle beach prior to your comment so that nuance passed me by.
Still if myrtle beach is that bad why go there? And piano lessons are firmly in the realms of the middle class, not 1 pay cheque from disaster poor.
Which circles back to my prior comment, so no I'm not trolling.
Having to raise a family, maintain one's well-being, and being a good community member all while having to live in dour conditions that are never likely to improve, I would argue is actual adversity.
You zeroed in on the single claim that "the average American doesn't face adversity" and ignored the broader context. Yes, that claim is literally false. But your response isn't one that addresses the substance of the comment you replied to.
In the United States, your effort towards this goal have an insanely high correlation with actually making it happen. Perhaps the best in any country in the world, in fact.
And even those people are often better off than a typical human for most of history.
I’ve certainly experienced this in myself growing up. We grew up poor but most things didn’t get us down, they were just normal aspects of life. We had to hunt for bargains, not take vacations, always cook at home. It was the baseline. When we did eat out everyone was looking forward to it and really enjoyed it. Now life in economic sense is measurably better for me, but eating out at whatever place I feel like is the new baseline. I no longer look forward to it, it’s just feeding myself. Now when I can’t decide what I want to have for dinner it becomes a minor annoyance. Something objectively better has become in some ways a worse experience.
I try to put things in perspective and be grateful for what I have now, but I admit I don’t always succeed.
Objectively we both know it shouldn't be an annoyance choosing food from a menu, so go back to cooking at home for a while, at best you rediscover your love of cooking and don't go back to eating out. At worst you learn to reappreciate just how nice it is having someone else cook.
Same principle applies to every expensive thing that you don't now judge to be a luxury.
But yeah I would have to agree with you. Family history of the same kind of poverty shopping. Making a contest of the lowest gas and grocery prices with the membership, food bank and all that. I shat myself when I got an NES from the pawn shop for my birthday once. It certainly instills something in the brain.
I mean I'm still the guy that subsists on plain fruits & veggies, noodles, rice, beans, plain oats and the occasional indulgence of pizza and steak. But I'm also not worried or hurting for anything currently and am happier than I've ever been previously. Which I imagine is optimism, and other concerns tend to make other events kind of feel like noise.
The cumulative inability to relate to pop culture or current events really wrecks my networking efficiency I feel like. I'm not sure I should be so unaware about the news and encroaching issues. But oh well. The ultimately important things have a way of finding themselves to oneself I guess.
On the other hand if you're living in places that have generally always been good, it's likely that things are starting to regress.
Given that most of the people who comment about such things on social media and otherwise or likely from the latter camp, it's not surprising that the general tenor is pessimism.
In America for instance many indicators are going south. Life expectancy, suicides, debt, freedoms, etc.
While America has always had problems, it seems we are close to a tipping point where we may lose what semblance we had of a democracy.
I think the disappearance of a transcendent purpose, especially in the public sphere, combined with those little things that has brought on the pessimism.
When everyone’s getting richer, being a hedonic consumption machine is a rewarding existence. But if ones highest purpose is a pleasant and pleasurable life, you’ll be ill prepared when adversity strikes.
It feels to me like we peaked in the year after Trump was elected and things have been easing since. I'm basing this mostly on my FB feed but I think it's a fairly good barometer to gauge it because I live in an area where 76% voted for Trump. They were riled up when they did that.
My right leaning neighbors are posting near as many anti-liberal memes, almost no flat out lies about "liberals", and not much at all about Trump. This past year I started asking them to "make a list of things Trump has done that is good for us." and none, not one, has taken me up on that. Not even the "Wall" has been offered as an example.
This doesn't mean most won't vote for him again, but it probably does mean not as many will vote. They're not as motivated as they were in `16. Not as feisty. And they don't have near the disdain for Bernie, or even Biden, as they still have for Hillary. They really do not like her.
I have not heard a single one of them support Trump saying that he should get more than two terms or be appointed "President for Life". Right now almost none of them are posting anything at all about Trump. In fact, they haven't worked up a good outrage since the Kavanaugh hearings.
Very few of my FB friends trust the big Corporate Network News anymore on either side. They're all producing to much "Opinion" which is blatantly one sided and they all focus on the same "News of the hour" stories.
The result is the level of awareness of bias in those "News" reports has increased a lot the past couple of years and overall people are beginning to ignore it more now than they are to react with passion.
It was getting scary for awhile there though.
I expect most will claim I'm hyperbolic, and I understand why they would say that, but it doesnt dissuade me. Every society ends. Almost always abruptly, and with high levels of surprise.
If I had told you in 2010, about today, would you think I was nuts? I'm sure you would have.
Oh please. I grew up in a post-communist European country. You guys are doing great! Keep it up.
Nobody seems to have contested that the emails released were real emails written by the Democrats. It is a pretty disgraceful violation of privacy, but ultimately if honestly talking about what your political opponents are doing is an election winning strategy the future is bright.
Most of the evidence is telling the truth about politicians doesn't move the needle all that much. I doubt it is a trend that will catch on, the Republicans are probably going to stick to calling people names.
Are the Russian spy agencies conducting propaganda? Of course they are. Are they the reason Trump was elected, or people voted for Brexit, or the Yellow Vests are marching in Paris? Hell no.
There is nothing about "Russian cyberattacks" in the link you provide. And while there is evidence that the Russian tried to influence the election there is no evidence that they succeeded.
Clinton's egregious conduct in handling her e-mail servers speaks for itself. People tend to classify such activity as either stupid or an attempt to hide information from the government or public. She was her own worst enemy in that regard - no Russians required.
I know of no explanation for what Clinton did that would not taint her permanently.
"According to security researchers at Secureworks the email leak was caused by Threat Group-4127, later attributed to Fancy Bear, a unit that targets governments, military, and international non-governmental organizations. The researchers report moderate confidence that the unit gathers intelligence on behalf of the Russian government."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_contro...
For years, in France it was always the centre-right, then the centre-left, then the centre-right and then the centre-left. Yet the problems remain.
So what do people do? They decide to kick the hornet's nest. They vote for the far right or the far left. It is a desperate attempt to challenge the status quo.
The Yellow vests, Trump, Brexit, they are all symptoms of deeper issues that mainstream politicians have failed to address within the last 30 years.
I would even argue that if the politicians had done their jobs correctly there would be no Trump, no Brexit and no yellow vests.
Yet instead of treating the underlying causes, we blame the people. The Trump voter is as smart as a bag of rocks, the yellow vest protester is a fascist and the Brexiters are idiots.
This thing, whatever it is is not going away. People are pissed.
This is part of it. It couldn't also be because that Nike shoes (Blue Ribbon before them) made a superior product that matched the needs of the market for years on end, could it? Are all sales and mega corporations only due to advertising and propaganda? Or could quality maybe have some part of it?
The US attempts to influence Russian elections all the time, but Slavs aren't easily influenced, due to their innate cynicism about, well, everything.
In our evolutionary environments that would be balanced out by "good fortune" - a old tree has just produced fruit perhaps, so we would get our optimism reinforced as much as our pessimism.
But good fortune today is basically baked into life for most of the western world - starvation is rare.
In short what used to be good news (hey I got to eat today) is just normality and so that leaves just downsides (perhaps an analogy of a roller coaster with half of it underwater - being above water is taken for granted and so there is only dips down and long slow climbs back to normal.)
In short, we need to get a sense of perspective back. Social media is not making people worse - we just happen to have sight of every moron and pub conversation that has always been there but not aggregated and delivered in front of us.
Democracy is under no more threat than before - we have always had to fight for it - from Tammany Hall to Jarrow Marches and we shall have to fight again.
This time however we have human instinct on our side - this is our democracy and you can't take it.
I think it comes down to income inequality. A lot of people don't share in benefits of a rising economy so they become cynical and detached. The promise is that a rising tide lifts all boats but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. And I don't like the argument that people should be happy with having something to eat and water while the top few percent increase their income every year. This slowly rips society apart.
now I would suggest our pessimism gets much more work out
However an interesting podcast (frwkonnomics) has someone last week saying their research showed that we are more pessimistic when stressed and more optimistic when less stressed (indicating that perhaps it is just the stress of the information overload leading to pessimism rather than the information content)
But when I looked at the sculpture, I saw strength. Good-natured defiance and tenacity. That even though it looked like bits of wood were about to fall off, the figure stood with fists up, straight posture, ready to fight. Appearing calm in the face of whatever challenge lay ahead.
As I thought all this to myself, the tour guide asked each of us (about a dozen in the tour group) what emotions we felt looking at it...
And I was shocked. One by one, everyone said how it reflected the worsening state of the world, the fall of the USA, the hopelessness of life...
Which was the exact opposite of what I saw. I saw a spirit of overcoming. That regardless of circumstances, even though one's body (or whatever the body is a metaphor for) is beat up and falling apart, you don't let it drag you into darkness. You stand up straight, you fight with all you've got, and never give up.
Inner strength, resilience, and an unquenchable spirit. Only giving attention to that which leads in the most positive direction availble in that moment.
I told everyone this when it was my turn, and nobody (including the tour guide) seemed to know how to respond. We just kept going on the tour.
I'm not sure what the lesson is here...
But that was about a decade ago. And in the time that's passed, I've created a immense amount of freedom, success and happiness for myself and my family.
And I think a huge factor in me creating that has been my ability to see the good in people and situations, even when no one else seems to... to hold my focus of attention on that, regardless of what others are talking about... and persistently act on the opportunities it lets me perceive. Doggedly keeping this mindset, even when it seems no one else around me does.
This is actually an important quality I try to look for when hiring. I've seen some very technically competent leads cause team productivity and morale to plummet due to their negativity and pessimistic outlook.
Seems like being objective and calibrating your expectations appropriately based on the risks you can or can't accept, or the trade-offs you do or don't get to make and avoiding bias or emotional attachments is pretty awfully difficult for humans (even very bright, talented ones) to do.
When you realise that Live Aid was one of the earliest reactions to the climate disaster, and that it was OVER 30 YEARS AGO and no real progress has been made: CO2 emissions have continued to rise exponentially, almost unabated.
When you realise that, you realise there is no cause for optimism.
The Ethiopian famine, like most modern famines, was largely a failure of government, not a climate problem. People starved because food couldn't move due to strife, and much of that was intentional. Yes, there was a drought, but droughts happen all the time and all over the place, and in a functioning, non-warring country, it's not nearly as calamitous. Live Aid very probably made the situation worse by funding more conflict.
If you're worried about the zombie apocalypse, you start prepping, you don't start complaining about how rubbish the world is because the apocalypse is coming and no ones prepared for it.
We are facing a collective procrastination of sorts. Just like when you procrastinate, you know very well that you should be doing something else, and you can even be pessimistic about it. Yet you don't.
That's why the governments, people in charge, need to take action, at the very least, start talking about it openly. Then the rest will follow.
But those people, according to you have been worrying about climate change for over 30 years, so they should have made the decision not to fly to their holidays, to buy an electric luxury car.
If everyone is aware of this and spends time worrying about it then you shouldn't have to pressure other people, they would already be doing it.
The fact is, a large number of people don't believe / don't care (enough). That's why you need peer pressure.
Yes, at least in the interest of their own kids. But we are just humans and we fail for human reasons.
> The fact is, a large number of people don't believe / don't care (enough). That's why you need peer pressure.
The peer pressure works both ways. There is also peer pressure to have these fancy things.
Peer pressure is, in a way, a neutral thing. It can work against action or for action. However, without effort it will just pick a high-entropy state of inaction.
Yes, there are people, probably the author as well, who are resilient to actually seeing facts. Just as the joke about fat people and zombie apocalypses go: Be nice to them, they will save your life one day (by being crushed before you, thereby giving you a little more time to react).
Still I'm a little sad about the lost opportunity. It's also true that people who interact with reality usually are more pessimistic, but there should be ways to improve one's own outlook if one is smart enough to see reality and strong enough to not go crazy from it. This would be a worthy topic to study.
But now comes the strange part. From this higher understanding you can't gain any more happiness. In fact either of them might be more happy than you, because living in a bubble doesn't just contain fake truths, it also contains fake meaning, and the times in which they can believe in these fake meanings are the times where these people will be more happy than you.
Thus you have more ability but less happiness. That's quite strange, right? Shouldn't more ability lead to more happiness? And if not, then why bother about having more ability?
In absolute terms we are all on the same level of understanding as a homeless man ranting at the bus stop.
The idea that we are tragically bereft of meaning because we are somehow too perceptive unlike those other people is an absurd fantasy.
The resourceful ones live through. Do mind that being social is also an ability. As is being ruthless...
Notably, of course, the KIND of pessimism or the TARGET of pessimism varies per individual based on their natural concerns, life situation, and lots of other variables. For example, individuals who like to think ahead / intuitive mentalities tend to plan out possibilities, and if you try to plan for all cases of Murphy's Law, it's going to make you feel like there's no end to the madness.
Given that on average the people who most often discuss the state of being on social media and otherwise, are more likely to be in the second camp, it doesnt seem that surprising that the overarching sentiment is pessimism
That question about the number of children in 2100 really bothers me for some reason. Sure we can make some pretty reasonable projections, but they will be just that: projections. Even assuming no black swan events, the error bars 80 years from now have got to be enormous. The numbers could be wildly different depending on how bad climate change turns out, and what kinds of technologies we develop. If you're trying to prove that other people are overly pessimistic, it makes more sense to show that they are wrong about currently available data. Otherwise they can just say that your answer to the question is overly optimistic.
>In 1950 there were fewer than one billion children (aged 0-14) in the world. By 2000 there were almost two billion. How many do UN experts think there will be in 2100? 2bn 3bn or 4bn?
so it is asking about a present number.
That implies that if the present political trends continue, then as some point in the coming decades progress for the world as a whole will reverse.
The idea of there being an right and wrong direction to history is flawed at best.
The current rejection of liberal values didn't come out of nowhere either. Some people are unhappy and feel the system has failed them. This was the same reason that pushed liberal ideas to the forefront in the first place.
Even drugs are not legalized, up until recently homosexual marriage was not recognized. People toil about the same hours, though more often mentally than physically now.
You have no direct choice in how to pick candidates for Senate or presidency - you can only pick from choices presented to you, and even there tribalism of the masses beats any individual choice. (The best you can hope for is picking a governor.)
Where is liberal in that? Where is the liberal, when all rulers are ivy league educated?
The examples you've provided actually give a pretty good picture of it. A person who was liberal 20 years ago would look at what you've described and wonder what the heck happened. They might also look at the current topics of social reform and probably not recognize themselves in them.
Essentially, anyone who has a teleological view of history tends to get burned within their own lifetime as the world inevitably moves past them. You get "assigned" a set of topics and social struggles from the environment and historical you grow up in. Since the next generations grow up in a different soup, they don't follow the same lines of thought. The person who scoffs at their grandpa for being lukewarm about same-sex marriage becomes the grandpa lukewarm at their grandson's simulated AI life-partner.
>you can only pick from choices presented to you, and even there tribalism of the masses beats any individual choice.
Going off on a tangent here. You are part of the masses. You are not in traffic, you ARE the traffic.
Our pessimism is protected by our cynicism.
Blaming social media is trendy these days, but this is a poor argument when one reflects on history. "Traditional authorities" often encouraged extreme positions for its citizens, such as the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II. (Hitler Youth was a very popular "club!") And doomsday cults have been around forever. (Many are still waiting for The Rapture!)
I'm actually rather optimistic about social media. Proper use of social media makes it easier to understand viewpoints of the opposing side and find and share new information. It seems there is a pessimistic "negativity bias" around social media itself because it's easy to point out extreme examples and users.
And this is true on many levels. Like, it's easier to wreck a car than build a car. Generally easier for bad things to happen than good. For good things, (and to avoid bad things) takes work, and there is limited capacity for that.
Of course we seldom stop to consider the amazing luck and circumstances that put us here in the first place.
But why should we? It's only temporary and in the rear view mirror anyway. Going forward we have the future to worry about. And the future is full of pitfalls. At least some of which are bound to get us.
From our perspective I do believe reality has a pessimistic bias. But sometimes maybe we should remember this is only our perspective.
It's funny as "not better" is considered pessimistic.
When I think about the life I had in my early 20s-- looking forward to a middle class with cars, houses, food, etc. of the 80s-- things are so much better than they were then.
Time goes on. Everybody gets better stuff. Cell phones, health care, cheap and good food. The list goes on. There's never been a better time to be alive.
Totally agree!
- realistic
- optimistic (a.k.a. delusional)
Even the music.
Go ahead and listen to pop music from any previous area - there is a lot of happy music, and a lot of slower tempo, beautiful music.
'Beautiful' stopped being cool in the 1990's, since then everything has to be trounced in some kind of faux-noir or whatever.
Even sad songs by Simon and Garfunkel are beautiful, honest.
Even the slightly cheezy soft rock like Air Supply, Chicago ... it was relaxing in a way.
Even the music was upbeat was still positive: 'Jump' by Van Halen' - a ridiculously rubbish but positive song, almost child-like.
Even the unconentious pop music of today lacks a kind of naivte.
It's in lyrics, timbre, instrumentation, production, presentation - everything.
My all time favourite band - Radiohead - is kind of guilty of this. They just can't be happy, now matter what. They must be dour. Have you ever seen an interview or video with Thom Yorke just clowning around the the lads, laughing, enjoying himself, not really caring about much at all? It's 'not their brand'.
Spend a day listening to music any time before the 1990's, especially the slower tempo stuff (of any genre, big band classical), and it changes your demeanour.
Was this coincidentally around the time when your adventure through puberty came to an end?
There has been plenty of 'happy music' in the past two and a half decades. It's likely you just view as cheesy saccharine garbage because you didn't listen to it during a formative time of your life.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100
Hot 100 1980:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_sin...
They still make good music, it doesn't go on the radio and can't compete on billboard, which is beyond rigged.
There are also technical issues such as audio levels, creeping volume etc. - Simon & Garfunkel doesn't use enough of the spectrum to be played, it's too quiet, it would be 'filled up' were a producer to touch it today, whereby the nuance is lost.
Related, compare the amount of 'energy' in the sounds - the hot 100 today is almost all verging on aggressive, it's like a caffeine jolt.
Even the slower tempo songs are 'in your face' musically, and usually lyrically as well.
There is the very subjective issue of overall quality. I don't think there is a single track on the Hot100 today that will be played in any number of years wherein people will really 'remember that jam', in any way other than to a very few select few fans.
While it's not a fair comparison because the 1980 list I linked to was a 'year end list' and not a 'current list' - many people would instantly recognize a whole host of songs on that list. If not by name, by sound.
'Radio' and distribution channels were a rough collusion between artists and industry, now it's almost entirely industry.
I really don't think there is anything relaxing about any of the Hot 100 songs: they are heavily produced, 'loud', assertive, repetitive, low-risk products.
Maybe if we take it back further than 1980 for example, before rock and roll, almost all (non colloquial) music was fairly authentic and beautiful, being orchestral in nature. The soundtrack of every film was 'pretty'.
It's just not possible for a civilization to make progress if everyone believes that the future will be worse and it's not possible to avoid it.
Climate change is a relatively straightforward problem with a somewhat-less-straightforward set of solutions. Whatever solution we choose, it will involve a group effort. Few people want to take on the costs of it while everyone else benefits. And it just so happens that one set of people, among the very largest polluters, deny that it's even happening -- in a variety of mutually contradictory ways. Their failure is obvious and overwhelming, and they are a minority of the world, but it's sufficient to derail progress worldwide.
That's why I'm pessimistic. I used to believe that anybody that far out of touch with reality must surely be booted out of power sooner or later. I've been proven wrong: they gain more power by the day. And that one belief comes with a constellation of similar false beliefs, mutually reinforced, and each participant goading the other to proclaim the falsehoods more loudly.
I'm sorry that means I'm contributing to the problem you're citing, but I've only seen it get worse in my lifetime. The upward progress of the world had so much momentum that it took a long time to turn around, but the exponential increase in insanity means I just can't see any way that it doesn't do so.
I try, nonetheless, to behave as if I were optimistic. I do make my own small contributions to progress. But I expect to see them all wiped away or made irrelevant.
I think you're going to be amazed at the changes that are coming, and how relatively painless they will be.
If we were more pessimistic, we would take preventative measures seriously.
“Everyone believes the future will be worse and it’s not possible to avoid it” is a strawman, I think.
Last year ABC news gave more air time to the new royal baby in a single week than they gave to climate collapse in a year. You may feel inundated with pessimism, but that is far from universal. (Source: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/21/ABC-News-spent-...)
I think optimism/pessimism is the wrong axis for this. It should be complacency/activism. I think MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is more apt than ever.
But I think you're right that complacency/activism is a good lense to view things through. The people that accept climate change is happening remain fairly complacent. Whether this is due to insufficient pessimism or complacency, the result is the same.
Net result - the hordes are still being idiots, and the rest of the world is blundering on thinking things ain't that bad/action isn't that urgent.
I think a lot of people have given up.
Granted, the polls don’t measure apathy, but this doesn’t strike me as a society that is convinced climate change is a pressing problem. We’re more mildly concerned, and mildly supportive of policies aimed addressing it, even in a very limited way.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4811385/ottawas-unpublished-inter...