painstream t1_j2t1yt1 wrote on January 3, 2023 at 7:30 PM

Reply to comment by monkeylogic42 in Look on the dark side | We must keep the flame of pessimism burning: it is a virtue for our deeply troubled times, when crude optimism is a vice by ADefiniteDescription

> we still have 'optimists' trying to run around and say everything is fine!

I hesitate to assume it's optimists saying that, but rather self-interested financial elites that are distinctly invested in pushing pessimism to avoid necessary changes.

monkeylogic42 t1_j2t2npi wrote on January 3, 2023 at 7:34 PM

It's optimists hijacked by their capitalist masters, yes. It's still the "wanting to believe without or against evidence" part that leaves optimists open for being taken advantage of. Like saying religion isn't bad, just extremists. The extremists wouldn't exist without the religion. Maybe they'd find something else to take to it's fullest extent, but it wouldn't be violent, morally questionable fairy tales.

DeFiDegen- t1_j2x9oqi wrote on January 4, 2023 at 4:23 PM

There’s really not a reason to be pessimistic about anything you posted. Realistically we both live in the best time to be alive, with basically all of our needs taken care of.

You could read the news all day and decide we are doomed to death via any of the dozens of doomsday scenarios they spin, but is any of that actually valuable in your life?

I also always find it puzzling what the pessimists are complaining about. Right now they all complain about the climate and things like religion and capitalism. These things are all unlikely to cause an extinction event, humans are resilient creatures.

What is, in my opinion, a much more oppressive and pessimistic issue, is the erosion of privacy and the lust for digital control. We are at a point as a species where people in control can build systems to lock us down as a species. Evil people with inhuman ambitions are already working towards it but nobody seems to care. Great thinkers and writers tried to warn us 100 years ago but people somehow don’t bother to listen. If these systems where locked in place, you’d be wishing for a climate catastrophe.