What depresses me most about the state of the world at present is that we've stopped caring to live up to the spirit of our ideals.
When we fail them and are pressed, we can rationalize our terrible actions based on technicalities - and large swaths of our culture have normalized doing this very thing.
It is my most sincere hope that we can walk our way back from this. I see some signs of this, but would prefer to see many more.
@TechConnectify@jalcine
I just finished an engrossing biography of Nero, and left with the impression that it’s either always been thus or that things like this are somewhat cyclical.
@TechConnectify
It's hard to reply with substance without making a more specific guess about what you're talking about. But as actual dialog with a famous person is improbable, it won't matter. "[T]errible actions" are generally to be minimized.
@TechConnectify people often demonize any progress that is not perfect enough, missing the point that it's still progress. In turn nothing gets done and it's sad. People should strive to be better in general. "Peopleofwalmart" comes to mind. We stopped caring about the basic necessity of being decent when stepping out of our domiciles. SMH
@TechConnectify Yesterday I spoke to a man who has voluntarily quartered his income with the explicit goal of not enriching people who do harm. That’s just the start of that story.
Many corrupt and nihilistic people enjoy saying everyone is just as corrupt as they are. Billions in funding are available to amplify those messages.
And yet, small communities of people live their values out of bravery and love every day. Their actions may not be trending and viral, but they are real. Keep looking for the good in others.
@TechConnectify This is true in the same way old music is better than new music. Only the good stuff makes it through time, but in the present you have to contend with the good as well as the bad.
At any time period, lots of people fight for lots of ideals. And lots of things can pass for ideals, even selfishness ("rugged individualism"). But a few decades later you only remember the ideals that won out, and the people that stood for them, and you think, man, those people had moral character.
@TechConnectify I've been on this Earth for almost 56 years and it certainly seems that way, but I wonder how much it is just the powerful being less able to hide their lack of morals and the rest of us realizing what chumps we've been and some of us starting to behave like we see the powerful do while the rest of us are stunned at the changes.
@TechConnectify but do it with kindness y'all. It's damn easy to be swayed when you're as ground down as the world is these days. I know that part of my past all too well. Thank gods the only one I ever hurt was myself.
Don't hate the sinner, embrace the redemption and all that.
@TechConnectify It's a cascading cycle of cynicism. I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the first time last week. It's a good movie to foster the virtue of hope.
@TechConnectify
I think its a form of normalcy bias, a denial that certain things can be happening, that what we face is intolerable...but it can't be, that's simply not allowed.
and some who commit atrocities, that capitalise on this bias.
@TechConnectify Perhaps at least some of that can be traced to the "relative truth / reality" of postmodernism. When everything is a matter of perspective, it's easier to create one, in which you don't look terrible.
@TechConnectify My impression is that we are improving. I don’t recall a period of human history when so many people made personal choices based on a global view of humankind needs as it’s done today. Vegetarianism is on the high, people thinking of their carbon footprints, an evolved view of social justice and affirmative action, colonialism reconciliation. We still have a long way to go but I’m generally hopeful we’re moving in the right direction long term.
@TechConnectify There's a lot of people today who think we don't have much of a future, and there seems to be no political enthusiasm to change that from the people with power.
Millennials are jaded by what's happened to the economy in that past 25 years.
Gen Z had to experience some of the formative years in Covid lockdowns, watching a useful political class flail around and fail to deal with it.
And Gen Alpha are likely going to having to deal with oncoming climate change effects.
This is the teevee's influence. People really did possess a mental toughness before it that seems almost extinct today.
Teevee teaches you to act. It teaches a kid to sell a lie. The boomers were the first generation raised on the flickering screen and they never needed to develop any coping mechanism other than lying to get out of trouble. Before that, people could and did call bullshit on obvious and obnoxious lies.
Silents/Greatest Gen. would be appalled by ghosting.
@TechConnectify Doing this requires the conviction of real character, which implies the strength of will that can only come from discipline. If we refuse to risk offending each other with the hard truth, then we have nothing but rationalizations to offer in response to these failings.
The polite saying is “if you have nothing good to say then say nothing”, which sounds like (but isn’t) a great way to avoid conflict in the same way that “men don’t cry” sounds like (but isn’t) a great way to avoid negative emotions. Bottled up emotions don’t evaporate, and conflict delayed is conflict amplified.
It’s not a fun or easy thing to do, but neither is the alternative.
@TechConnectify When I read a Hot Take™ like this, I feel like it says more about the mental state of the speaker than it does about the world. When did people live up to their ideals? Pick a decade, then look at the history for that decade through a "were they hypocrites" lens and you will feel just as bad about then as you do now. Is there an actual fact pattern that you are reacting to, or do you just feel generally bad and hopeless and attempting to pattern-match a reason for it?
But second, the reasons these thoughts are intensifying for me come from many places. An acute one right now is what media is popular and how much of it doesn't seem to have any spirit behind it.
Watching older television (I'm on a Perry Mason kick atm) and being able to see that there were overt principles being demonstrated and the writers were true to their morals makes it feel like we once had a healthier understanding of our duties of care.
@TechConnectify@glyph This is just what happens when the world no longer lives in the good feeling illusion of rectitude. It was what the British Empire was about and the early American Empire after WWII. For all their horrors they did have some virtues they expressed even if they were not applied universally. Things like the UN came out of that.
The 1960s and 1970s shattered it. And the internet reminded us that everyone everywhere has a point of view. That is reality now.
@franktaber@glyph The trouble, as I see it, is that two things were shattered: the illusion of our moral superiority (a good thing to have shattered) and the idea that we need to care for one another (the terrible thing I'm lamenting).
There's some combination of fatalism, nihilism, and narcissism which seems disturbing popular at the moment. If I have a guiding light, it's that things can change and we can learn from each other. I hope my work speaks clearly enough to that.
@TechConnectify@glyph I agree. The trouble is that the two were tied together in the old cultural mythology. They had the same roots in god and country. Everything and everyone was part of the hierarchy and had their place. Those on top had noblesse oblige.
We in the Anglosphere are very much in nihilism now or at least extreme relativism.
We need a new set of cultural virtues that do not require the hierarchy of old.
@TechConnectify Sorry that my comment was unhelpful, I appreciate your reply nonetheless. I do think you're on to something with popular media being more reluctant to clearly take a stand on right & wrong; although there are counterexamples from both time periods, listing them in a litany would be even less helpful; so instead I'll share my favorite video about the systemic forces which create "no politics" media (where "caring about right & wrong" is shown as naïve) https://www.polygon.com/videos/23059933/call-of-duty-military-entertainment
@TechConnectify@glyph It’s a thought exercise, but I always frame it as could Kennedy issue his “we will go to the moon” speech today, and would we have the will to actually do it.
Obviously the tech now exists, but sort of that level of aspiration. We’ve neglected (and even outright denied) scientific advancements and education, and what little is being done is privatized for corporate profits. We have little to show for our decades of advancements.
@TechConnectify In this specific case, no cynicism involved.
Humans always talked nice. And usually did the convenient thing.
Greenwashing might be a relative new thing, but “-washing” stuff to the current fad is ancient.
Not joking, as a teenager in school, I did Chemistry Olympiad training, and one of the funnier episodes was when my teacher tested for her curiosity, what ugly stuff had replaced the bad phosphates in the detergents. Was the green fad at that moment.