uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
Uspol gets a lot easier to deal with once you stop rooting for humanity, and I think I genuinely have.
Honestly, I don't think we're going to be exterminated, even by extreme climate change, not unless the planet goes Full Venusian-- and I haven't seen a lot of predictions that say we're going that far.
But I'm increasingly worried that humans have some unfixable cognitive glitches and we might be better off letting nature try sapience again from scratch.
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
The one thing humanity can still do to win back my faith and loyalty is put some SERIOUS work into cognitive science, and find a software patch for our catastrophic neurological security holes that people will actually adopt.
But I'm not hopeful, since we already kinda *had* something like that. It was called Zen, and it got eaten by the exact same hierarchical thinking and dogma everything else on this shitty planet does. *shrug*
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@zebratron2084 if there’s a silver lining to how shitty things have become, it’s easier to believe in humanity, for me. Our elites are working to persecute people, neglect other people, and ignore huge environmental issues so their cronies can make bank, and people largely HATE it. There are horrible flaws in how things work but “everyone actively likes this” doesn’t seem to be one.
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@Leucrotta Again, I mean... I've been reading up on Hitler's rise to power, and while his 80-90% support figures obviously aren't trustworthy since they were probably coerced, well... Trump can't *even* coerce a good rating out of this country. And that pension fuck-up is showing Putin's got weaknesses of his own, which pleasingly mirror the same weaknesses of the Late Soviet Empire. We still MIGHT get through this particular threat.
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@Leucrotta I just look at the huge, huge gauntlet of OTHER things we'd have to fix just to get a decent society at this point-- or an acceptably healthy planet-- and that's where I really start to think we might just wanna start training up the raccoons and coyotes. >_>;;
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@Leucrotta There is definitely a hope within me that if we lose the elections, ESPECIALLY if we can prove any malfeasance from the GOP afterwards, the real fun will just be starting.
I mean, not even the actual dictatorships in actual Orwell had good fundamentals. I would be surprised if, in that alternate universe, O'Brien wasn't hanging from a lamppost ten years later, because The Party could no longer even feed its own soldiers. But what comes next?
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@Leucrotta (ntm, and thanks for putting up with this rambling, I keep getting this nagging feeling that I've seen every damn one of the Trumpists' tactics before... in the form of the anti-furry trolls who used to give us so much shit. They lost, good and hard, because all their trickery just couldn't stifle us. And because we were nicer and smarter and cuter. :) so maybe, just *maybe*, Trump's supporters will grow up, give up, and go away too :p )
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@zebratron2084 I figure the hope is, it’ll be like a lot of other dark bits of history. Like how nobody mentions that was the Jewish part of town before 1936, or how of COURSE your teachers and neighbors wanted Black people integrated back in the 60s. With luck it won’t all get whitewashed like Reagan or Bush II.
re: uspol; cynicism bordering on nihilism
@Leucrotta I'm actually kinda with you on that. As cynical as I've gotten, I still think America has had a fairly decent immune reaction to proto-fascism, by historical comparison. I still hold out some hope that Trump is gonna turn out to be bad-like-cowpox (still bad, still potentially lethal), but not bad-like-smallpox, and if we survive this, our civil society might actually be more robust to these threats than it was before...