Ask Lemmy

Three Thoughts:

1. In the long run, things have steadily improved for the majority of the world’s population. That doesn’t mean there can’t be setbacks along the way in the form of dictatorship and mass murder… but viewed over the long term, we’ve all become wealthier, healthier, and lived longer. Of course, this isn’t a sure thing, but it gives us hope that things will eventually be even better than they are now.
2. Billionaires aren’t superhumans, even if they think they are. The fact is, capital doesn’t create anything. WE create value through the work of our hands and minds. Without us, these people are nothing, and even with the stochastic parrot currently being hailed as “AI,” they’re just fooling themselves. It follows that even the biggest narcissists don’t stand a chance when we work together… and if there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s that.
3. People are much better than their reputation. If someone falls in a pedestrian zone, someone helps them up. If a traffic jam forms on the road, a rescue lane opens up. If you ask a stranger for help, you’re usually not let down. Far too many people believe that humans are “just animals with a thin veneer of civilization,” yet the vast majority are clearly more social and altruistic than is generally assumed. The narrative that “all people are bad” is, in my opinion, merely a self-serving narrative propagated by the ruling egoists to justify their own authority, and it’s passed on based on the assumption that we’re all just as selfish as our leaders.

Are these points open to criticism? Sure. Still, there’s at least a spark of truth in them, and that gives me hope.

Developments in green technology.

The most obvious is, of course, solar power (it ABSOLUTELY ROCKS) and new, eco-friendly batteries, but there's so much more:

• Organisms that eat plastic
• Novel recyclable materials
• Reusing industrial waste to produce tons of useful products (personally working on that!)
• Novel eco-friendly fertilizers
• Actually nutritious plant meat and milk substitutes

And so, so much more!

Also, there are a lot of organizational changes that help:

• Recycling is getting more widespread
• FOSS and hacky folks allow electronic devices to live way longer than they otherwise would
• Bans on petroleum-based plastics in many applications propel cleaner alternatives (including clean, renewable plastics like PLA)
• And more again!

We have all it takes to build a sustainable, almost solarpunk world. With enough political will, we can make it happen. It's not "futurism" anymore - it's a reality we can forge here and now.

Trump is old and sick. Putin is old and sick. Xi is at least old. Most troublemakers are way beyond. It's just a question of waiting them out.

In France, high-schoolers are launching a revolution, new generation rocks!!

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street There are plenty of street cats where I live

Even the broken clock that is Jordan Peterson can be right every once in a blue moon

Global warming cannot cause humanity to go extinct. Nuclear war cannot cause humanity to go extinct. Population decline cannot cause humanity to go extinct.

If you think any of these are possible, you do not know enough about global warming, nuclear war, or population decline.

In short, things may get very, very, very bad. But hope springs eternal. And there are very, very few scenarios that won't leave many millions of people alive to pick up the pieces.

This is a bit trite, but there are a lot of delicious foods to eat, and so many cats to give scritches to. Concerts to hear. Songs to sing.

I was at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix and they had a violin made out of literal trash. It's a testament to people's resilience and yearning to create. There are so many wonderfully creative people out there, I'll never have the time to consume the every good bit, especially when I feel well enough to create stuff of my own. I love seeing the things people, especially people I care about, create.

Someday I'll be dead, and therefore not suffering.

There's one thing that's happened this year that inspired actual hope in me. (I am generally a cynic, having read too many history books.)

I made a video about Flock buying out their employees and, in researching it, learned that Flock (as of a month ago) had lost nearly 400 contracts in 36 states. An independent outfit is tracking it because, obviously, major media outlets don't want to talk about the unpopularity of fascism.

Thing is, this accelerated last summer, which means a lot of people who are otherwise apolitical are learning about Flock, going to city council meetings and doing boring, pedestrian and effective political organizing for a good cause.

That is objectively a good thing.

An optimist and pessimist are in a horrible situation. The pessimist says, “this can’t possibly get any worse”. And the optimist replies, “oh yes it can!”

Generally speaking, the world just keeps getting better in ways that matter.

Despite all the wars going on, this is probably the most peaceful time in human history; we just see every single conflict thanks to modern telecommunication.

There has always been terrible stuff going on in the world. Very little of the terrible things in the modern day are really new, it's just a new form. And usually the new form is a bit friendlier than the last one.

Frankly, how bad the past was makes it hard to be anything but optimistic about the future. Overall, the best time to be alive in all of history is right now. There's no reason to think that trend won't continue.

We'll defeat diseases, and get more efficient at producing the things we need, and develop technologies to solve problems. Sure, a lot of that will be expensive for a while if capitalism persists, but going into debt for cancer treatment beats dying of cancer.

And it's never been easier to coordinate with such a huge number of people. We have the tools at our disposal to actively make the future better. We have to use them, but we do have them. And it really seems like people are starting to get interested in using those tools, and they're only getting easier to use, which means with a little elbow grease we could progress from "better, year over year" to "actually good".

The boomers are dying, the techbro bubble is almost ready to pop, the kids are organizing. I feel privileged to get to witness the next 50 years.

Getting some historical perspective is amazing. We live in one of the best times on earth, possibly the best ever. Most people just don't realise it because we don't have the lifespan to experience the difference ourselves.

There's a Bluesky thread (yes I know) going where people are contributing things that have gotten better in their lifetimes, and there really are a lot of things there. Things are still improving, there will always be setbacks and things left to fight for, but it isn't impossible, things aren't hopeless.

two things

1. one day he'll die
2. one day I'll die

that's about it.

The bullshit with Putin and Ukraine as well as Trump and Iran is heavily incentivizing the adoption of EVs.

I am surprisingly hard to destroy.

I'm not sure if optimist is the best term to describe be but at least I don't go out of my way to find the worst possible intreptretation for everything just so that I can then go around complaining all the time and acting as if all the bad things in my life are someone else's fault and outside of my influence.

I hope it's quick and painless.

The idea that the people wrecking the world are playing 5d chess and only pretending to be delusional idiots becomes less believable by the day. Things may get worse, but their plans are going to blow up in their faces, because they don't contend with reality and that makes for bad plans.

I know that there are good people everywhere who will keep trying. It will take some time, but the pendulum will swing back the other way. People will always keep trying.

One thing is way fewer people dying of climate-related causes and natural disasters than ever before.

All of this will pass. You won't necessarily be able to control any of the variables outside of your own life, but living a virtuous life isn't about becoming the leader of a country or amassing gigantic wealth. It's about doing the right thing, for yourself and others, when it's time to make decisions. I take solace in that. I may not always make the perfectly right decision, but as long as I'm generally guided by what's right, especially when it's a difficult path to take, I will have lived a good life.

We're getting to see how bad things get before people change their minds. And people are, it's slow and there are holdouts as well as people that just do not want good things for anyone besides themselves/their tribe.

I think the global right is pulling all the cards they have to try and pull the world into war and chaos and even as bad as it is it's not going their way. The more authoritarianism is pushed the more people wake up to their delusions.

In the states you have DSA members actually getting seats, you have people caring about flock and privacy that would have a few years ago brought the story that it's for their own protection. You have Generals and officials resigning in droves because they refuse to be apart of another forever war. You have a whole generation being aware the the US/Israel colonialism and even things like police violence.

If we as a species are going to build a world that's built for peaceful coexistence we have to wake up to what is not working. All of the bad things that are happening are cycles and patterns that have been going on for longer than any of us have been alive and I think there's a good chance we will see old cycles finally break in our life time

Renewables keep taking off like a massive rocketship, with batteries following the same trajectory. There's no stopping them at this point.

Humans will inevitably do the right thing when they have exhausted all the wrong things to do.

Kids are nicer now.

I am more listened to at work (as a woman) than in the past.

We did clean up Tampa Bay, and at least the clean energy tech is growing so fast.

So, so so much less violent here than when I was a kid

The future was never easy. But as long as there’s a cup of coffee, a piece of nature and a bit of love left, it’s ok.

History gives me hope. It's funny/not-funny seeing people on Western social media freak out like this is the end of all things. Human history is cyclic, and America in particular is on a monster downswing. Consider Europe in 1940 vs. 1960 vs. 1990 vs. 2020. Pretty radical changes for the better! China's up to bat to run the 21st century. Let's see how that plays.

Global warming is the only new thing in the room. But humans are the AR-15s of the animal world. Not the best at anything, but multi-purpose and wildly adaptable for whatever use case is required. Humans now live in places where even insects can't hang! We'll be fine. Eventually.

There's a quote from HBO's Chernobyl series:

To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants, it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?

All these fucking guys who've made monsters of themselves to pretend they're our masters - they'll all fail. Their lies are a patchwork of tapestries meant to hide from reality. The bigger it gets, the more it wants to fall. Pull a thread, watch it unravel.

Organising stuff! I'm pulling together a couple friends to a bar and holding a privacy workshop For anyone who feels like practicing privacy is boring and wants do it over a drink.

Trump will die soon.