This image implies the level of darkness in the world is constant, making all attempts at improvement pointless.
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· 2 years ago
Yes and no. The point is to accept the over-all pointlessness and not loosing yourself and your loved ones over that. As it has always been, there's just less orientation nowadays.
It’s debatable. Certainly improvements in availability of information coupled with age/experience tend to reveal things to us that were there all along but we never noticed. This can make people feel like things are “getting worse.” Through much of history those of the ages the “veil starts to lift” have been known to skew towards cynicism or angst or such; and mature adults have foretold of impending doom and gloom. The hippies moan it was all down hill after the 60’s. The swingers moan the 70’s was the end of the good times. The yuppies Miss the 80’s and the far conservatives Miss the 1950’s or such. I’ve even heard people say they miss the 90’s and the 2000’s were worse which…. Usually tells me they weren’t old enough to have worked in the 90’s… lol.
But the “end of the world” or whatever often means the end of the world we are comfortable in or thrive in and the beginning of one we can’t picture or makes us uncomfortable.
Some things get worse and other things get better. In the USA 10 years ago things were a lot worse for living gays wanting to have a federally recognized marriage for example. It’s easy to look at everything that is “wrong” in the world or at a chaotic world full of instability and unknowns and say things are dark or falling apart- but in so many areas from science, technology, standards of living, social issues, human rights… so many things are better than pretty much ever for so many. We have stumbles and steps back along the way, sometimes the pendulum swings back because it loses momentum. That said- ignoring those temporary things that happen and might stick around a few years or a decade or so- things tend to be good and bad. Focusing on only what is wrong is just as delusional as only focusing on the “good” things. Wether things are getting darker or not is really down to the individuals life and tend to come and go in cycles mostly.
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· 2 years ago
Gay marriages? Hooray. What about Florida though? Who believes it's going to stop there? What about TX and OK? Sorta bad news for women, huh? You people get eaten alive by the Zeitgeist monster in very slow motion and the rest of the western world is going to follow y'all while Russia and China are happening. Anyone optimistic just hasn't paid close enough attention to what's going on.
Over 10,000 years of human conflict. There’s always a big bad enemy around the corner or wrongs that need righted.
The work never stops because as to your question about Florida and Texas and such- newton lines that up for us well, things don’t tend to stop all on their own when they have momentum behind them. That’s as true in politics as it is in physics. So there is still work to do, the world is far from paradise in most peoples eyes.
All these different aspects of seeing the good or bad- cynicism, pessimism, optimism, pragmatism- each is like a single color and to view a picture with only one or even two is to not see what the picture really looks likes. Everything has its goods and bads. You win the lottery jackpot- now you have taxes, people bothering you or trying to rob you for money, phony friends coming up and even a billion dollars doesn’t stop the fact that Russia and China are still there doing what they do. So what then? Stop living and wait to die?
Or should we be so focused on the fights and the work we still have left that we never enjoy or Acknowledge anything we’ve gained?
Since the work never ends if you only want to look at a success as when everything is all tidy and perfect then you and every other human who ever lived and likely ever will live already failed the moment you were born.
There are always problems. Todays solutions will create the problems tomorrow or a hundred years from now.
Such is life. It’s on each of us to choose how we want to live our lives, but hope can be a sedative or a stimulant. If we hope and don’t act or if we act on our hopes. Anger lingers after the problem is gone and usually creates the next problem. Despair is seldom if ever anything but an excuse to not to act, the alcohol of the self induced failure.
So I dunnoh- to each their own I suppose.
But the “end of the world” or whatever often means the end of the world we are comfortable in or thrive in and the beginning of one we can’t picture or makes us uncomfortable.
The work never stops because as to your question about Florida and Texas and such- newton lines that up for us well, things don’t tend to stop all on their own when they have momentum behind them. That’s as true in politics as it is in physics. So there is still work to do, the world is far from paradise in most peoples eyes.
All these different aspects of seeing the good or bad- cynicism, pessimism, optimism, pragmatism- each is like a single color and to view a picture with only one or even two is to not see what the picture really looks likes. Everything has its goods and bads. You win the lottery jackpot- now you have taxes, people bothering you or trying to rob you for money, phony friends coming up and even a billion dollars doesn’t stop the fact that Russia and China are still there doing what they do. So what then? Stop living and wait to die?
Since the work never ends if you only want to look at a success as when everything is all tidy and perfect then you and every other human who ever lived and likely ever will live already failed the moment you were born.
There are always problems. Todays solutions will create the problems tomorrow or a hundred years from now.
Such is life. It’s on each of us to choose how we want to live our lives, but hope can be a sedative or a stimulant. If we hope and don’t act or if we act on our hopes. Anger lingers after the problem is gone and usually creates the next problem. Despair is seldom if ever anything but an excuse to not to act, the alcohol of the self induced failure.
So I dunnoh- to each their own I suppose.