Comment by carlgreene | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlgreene | Hacker News Reader

I’m here for the intelligent, relatively anonymous discussion.

Many people on here have similar life experiences and interests to me so it’s nice to be around those folks without the vanity of normal social media.

Re: your loss of hope, I completely disagree. Quality of life has never been better and there are many incredibly smart people trying to solve very hard problems to make it even better. There is and always has been suffering. And there is and always have been people trying to fix it.

I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse. I only see things on the internet that makes it look like the world is falling apart. But my reality, and my community’s reality doesn’t even get close to matching that.

I think the bit about "social fabric at risk of collapse" is, to some degree, always true/possible. A community is only as strong as its constituents, and if everyone thinks the end is near that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I agree with your general sentiment that quality of life has arguably never been better (for everyone, no just techies from developed nations), but it sounds like OP is coming to terms with the inherent tension of pluralism rather than despairing their day to day comfort. I suspect they may have grown up in a relatively homogeneous cultural environment and are now realizing that different folks have vastly different priorities in life; often irreconcilably different.

The best advice I can muster is "be the change you wish to see in the world". Giving up hope is just passing the buck. You'll never have the whole world on your side, but you also don't need it to be.

I'd say that's a pretty good analysis with my only discrepancy being:

> relatively homogeneous cultural environment

Though, I'm sure this is subjective and can be argued, so I'd rather not go into details.

and the anonymous, relatively intelligent discussions too.

>I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse.

Social fabric is something that needs to collapse every generation or two and get rebuilt. Imagine living in the social fabric of 1940s. No thanks.

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