Things have gotten better and progress has been made from times past, it just seems worse now because we have more access to information. We’ve come far, and have further to go!
Jesus Christ this thread. The technicalities aren’t the point. You are allowed to find happiness where you can in an imperfect world that contains suffering. It doesn’t mean you’ll be complacent to injustice. Fighting against injustice can be done without thinking the world is hopeless dogshit. There’s satisfaction that can be justifiably had, through means other than smug superiority at knowing all the depressing truths of the world, or the sympathy of others for your problems. We feed ourselves so much rage and sadness via the internet, can we not have a palate-cleanser like this without chewing it up and spitting it out, and then going back to gorging on more?
Be happy the silent generation won some serious gains that the boomers, X, and millennials are steadily eroding for profit?
No thanks. That’s called complacency.
Celebrating and taking pride in what has been achieved is part of what motivates people to defend it. Doomposting online does nothing to motivate people and merely depresses them.
Every inch of progress has been won through a combination of a rhetoric of hope for what could be achieved, and a recognition of the shortcomings of the current system. Having the former without the latter leads to complacency, but having the latter without the former leads to apathy and despair.
Considering that most progress in the last few hundred years has been fought for (sometimes violently), like weekends, the 8 hour day, etc. kinda proves you wrong.
The thingeis: the world is getting less free and inequality has been constantly rising in the last decades.
This Steven Pinker BS is advertising complacency, while we should agitate people to fight for a better world.
If you want to be optimistic, look around for the average kindness of everyday live inside communities. The FOSS community, unions, mutual aid in neighborhoods etc. This would lift you up and point in the direction where things could get better.
…someone read Pinker.
the last two are easily debunked. I hate shit like this because it reinforces an idea that time = progress. There are influential and powerful people alive today who would reverse any of these trends if it meant money in their pocket.
I don’t really care about any of that. All that matters is that I’m constantly having to fight to keep wfh, it’s impossible to get health issues diagnosed and I just keep wasting hundreds of dollars on trying, I’ve resigned myself to staying untreated for adhd and whatever else, I am sick of having to work a job where I need to interact with people, and all the foods I enjoy the most make me incredibly sick and I’m sure are gonna kill me one day. If I had a choice I wouldn’t have been born. I am very lucky, I have no money problems, didn’t have to buy my house, have a good long term stable relationship, not having to deal with having had kids, quiet neighborhood with no crime… but things should be a lot better than this. People can shove their head in the sand and pretend things are not going to end very badly for humankind and I personally don’t care. I live my life and enjoy what I like and either I’ll be dead or will witness the glorious end of humanity. I just hope my AC keeps up with climate change lol!
Conservatives are trying to roll it back, don’t worry.
And the climate change will help them. They are basically a team just that one of them doesn’t know about the partnership and the other didn’t choose it…
I think the point of this post is not to hide the problems we face. More that the struggle against them is not fruitless.
I don’t criticise the post, I like it a lot.
With students I like to use Gapminder as an example in statistics. And there sometimes I get the same reaction you see here in the comment section. Some people feel if you are showing the gains that means you want to stop improvement or that you don’t take the struggles of people seriously.
I have no idea about psychology, so I don’t know what’s the reason.
The opposite is true, also. If you don’t say something 100 % positive, people tend to assume you are in opposition. ;)
