Comment by firstplacelast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by firstplacelast | Hacker News Reader

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That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think.

I'm an introvert, I remember craving friendly interaction 6-months in and then being worried about my extrovert friends. If I am feeling crazy about the lack of human interaction, I KNEW some friends that must be having a hard time. I made it a point to call those people to catch up.

I do agree about the weird "hero/essential workers", the same "salt of the earth" BS that has been spouted for decades. Essential people that we want to pay like crap to keep our society running. They should all stop, be willing to die, until they are paid enough to buy a crappy home. Essential means they have big negotiating power, organize/unionize and stick the screws to society. Think like a CEO.

Also saw all the crazy bad actors, the insane takes on social media (on both sides- though more so on one side), the insanity, the lack of nuance, the shit throwing...I lost a lot of respect for humanity.

As a person that was working in biotech in an R&D department at the time, something in my brain broke. Could not care anymore about making the world better, helping people live longer, contributing to coffers of multi-millionaires bc I was "making the world better". Just done with it.

There's no global moral compass, otherwise you would jump off a bridge, just a local one, as far as I'm concerned.

> That is a lot and while I agree somewhat it is lacking empathy, I think.

Don't get me wrong here, I am a very (sometimes overly) empathic person, I am the guy people run to for advice when they want to know how to talk to other people, because I can put myself into other people's shoes.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I like what I see when I put myself into thoes shoes. So if my post sounds unempathic, it does so because it is the pure distilled cycism of someone who really has it up to here with a certain unempathic, egomanic type of person — call it a enritled, vocal, screaming minority if you will.

I understand how horrible the whole thing felt to them. To a certain degree I even subscribe to Schopenhauer's notion of: "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", so I am not even sure they can be blamed that they felt that way.

But because I understand a feeling doesn't mean I have to approve with the actions and words they derived from those feelings. That doesn't mean that in my view we gave those people way to much area on the stage of the pandemic as opposed to all the pressing social issues that actually emerged.

It seems like its important to you to act correctly at every moment of every day and remove obstacles which may impede this perfection. I think the problem that others may see is that we have competing interests and even behaving in concert can yield dangerous non-linear outcomes in society. You seem very very confident in your views but that does not make them correct.

The problem is with people behaving like children. I mean it was/is a fucking pandemic, and people where acting like wearing a mask would be the end of the world, or that trying a lockdown and don't leave your bloody home after 8p.m. for a few weeks will get you a totalitarian regime. What the actual fuck? Really, just say, "Ok let's try it for a few weeks, if it's not working and the government doen't have good arguments to extend it, then I see what I can do about it.".

But all this childish behaviour that still goes on in this world is really something else. With climate change slamming the doors currently people will soon see that the pandemic was just the start, then they can stand outside screaming at the weather how unfair everything is.

Come on baby just try a lockdown if you don't like it we can stop. Don't you like trying new things?

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