The article summarizes the litany of crises that have led to denialism and tolerance of more and more instability as a shared cultural habit. It links to research on how denial comes to be accepted, including of course the 'shoot the messenger' approach in order to maintain 'cognitive tranquility'. The duty to know, and to speak up, are more important now than ever before.
There is a concerted propaganda effort to hide the ever higher levels of wealth concentration. In the US, the culture war stuff takes up air time from actual issues. For the UK, that was Brexit, for example.
Globally, there is a real issue with the lack of action on climate change and against neo-liberal austerity policies and the rise of the far right. But everywhere there are fake issues taking up airtime.
We've spent trillions on "climate change" for crying out loud. The only place "climate change" exists is in climate models. Download the source code and look for yourself...or just believe whatever the TV tells you.
Doing something about the problems also takes effort, and there are so many who feel entitled that they balk at having to make any sort of sustained sacrifices. The worshipping of selfishness and greed have been increasing for some time now.
I have decided to take on that duty in only a social way if it is news. No reason to be a Debbie Downer in social settings when I know there is very little I will be able to effect. I have never been an activist.
I have been a fatalist since my college days as a biology major and understand population dynamics. Many civilizations before this one have failed. Ours will be no different. If the fools cannot see what is occurring and if I tell them they react with denial, avoidance, blaming and persecution why should I bother? This was so obvious during the pandemic. This country acts in very dysfunctional ways to new stresses.
I have taken some personal steps to mitigate disasters that might occur to me but few people have the ability to keep flying around the planet as destruction comes their way. So I resolved to live out my life with personal knowledge and will discuss it with others when it is pertinent.
Our country is exceptionally divided as to the response to ecological issues and climate change but does make snails pace progress when galloping progress is needed. So I will post my thoughts here and not upset my friends or get labeled as a wacko.
>Many civilizations before this one have failed. Ours will be no different.
You really think modern society can compare? the education level is absolutely incomparable. The study of economics, of psychology... information technology... Even 2024 vs 1924 is incomparable.
Clearly education, even the unprecedented level of access to it in advanced economies, hasn't stopped us from getting to this situation.
Presuming he's a biology major he's familiar with how animal and insect populations collapse when they destroy their native habitat. The parallel situations in human civilizations are civilizations like the South American empires that collapsed before European contact from dumping ever-more-resources into elite projects, or from the way Europe was completely unable to avoid the Dark Ages as the later stages of the Roman Empire decayed and lost control of their colonia.
It's not a perfect model fit, but it's worth noting that many "civilizations" today do collapse without much fanfare; they just aren't in the inperial heartlands or aren't surfaced to our attention. Amazon indigenous tribes are in pretty much constant peril from Brazilian agricultural and forestry interests despite laws and treaties that protect them. There are several nations with active or slow-burning civil wars. The islander nations in Oceania are literally sinking beneath the waves and aren't expected to be habitable in a few decades.
Civilization collapse doesn't mean "everyone is dead." It means the structures that held that society together collapse, and everyone either dies, leaves, or tries to rebuild from scratch. Most industrial nations haven't had to do anything close to that since WWII or the Korean war era, and even then they had favorable subsidies from the superpowers invested in that rebuilding. I don't see any sign of that materializing anytime soon, do you?
And yet people now disparage education in an attempt to avoid facing the problems.
>The study of economics, of psychology... information technology...
But the masses only care about a little knowledge of these fields, often to simply support their delusions and argue against those who attempt to use such knowledge to educate others.
When you say 'people' it implies that it is the majority of society, which is not the case.
Id say you are arrogant to assume to understand how 'the masses', i.e. 7 billion people other people think and what delusions they have. Regardless, it is not the masses who are the key influencers that direct the future of society, key decisions come from those who wield power, and from personal experience the business and political leaders of our world are well educated about these topics.
I hope it's "peak" denial, but I've seen no evidence that these trend lines are plateauing.
We have significant state actors with a demonstrated and vested interest in dismantling the Enlightenment and using disinformation as a tool.
Our media is controlled by megacorps all using algorithms designed to promote disinformation and isolate consumers in bubbles of fake, reinforcing delusions to foster outrage engagement.
And there's no clear path for the systemic reform that would be necessary to actually fix any of this. Even if we had the political will and ability to implement such a plan.
I disagree on the last point. We know that education is the answer. Make public universities free in the US like they are in Europe and we'll be on the road to recovery.
That wouldn’t do any good if the 18-year olds going to those universities don’t know how to read or interpret information. We need to start earlier. We already have 12+ years of public school. Let’s make those better.
Those isn't at all mutually exclusive with what I proposed. However, there is evidence that simply knowing that a college education is financially attainable spurs better K-12 outcomes. Obviously that's contingent on sufficient food and financial security as well at those ages.
Practically the entire rest of the developed world does it just fine.
Arguing that Republican obstruction amounts to some sort of empirical physical law is absurd.
I get that the current political reality is bleak and could never pass such a bill.
I also am acutely aware that if every college student voted in the 2024 election, we could probably get it done next year. (100% turnout is impossible, but getting to the high 80% range that we saw in the 1800s is completely doable).
A big part of the reason why it's so hard to get reasonable college-aged voter turnout is this learned helplessness defeatist rhetoric. Which is exactly why that's the favorite propaganda angle of astroturfed voter suppression efforts... gosh, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the tone that your comment is striking! How 'bout that.
>Which is exactly why that's the favorite propaganda angle of astroturfed voter suppression efforts... gosh, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the tone that your comment is striking!
True, but it's not always purposeful by those who promulgate it. Despair is very real. It can arise from coordinated propaganda techniques, but also come of its own accord as a normal human reaction to the situation. Those who can explain why they despair are at least more self-aware than those who simply deny reality.
I disagree, university is clearly not the answer, we have soooo many peeps going to university and come out disillusioned with modern society and can’t make a living. The cost of housing and healthcare is far too high. Until peeps vote for individual politicians that want to represent the working class, things won’t change.
There are so many worthless 4 year degrees now, better off for most peeps to go to a Trade school and learn a useful skill instead of some fantasy degree that doesn’t have any use in the real world.
And yet those without any knowledge of actual liberal arts become little more than technicians. Without thinking for themselves, without critical thinking skills, they become easily manipulated. Not that such skills have to be taught in college, but liberal arts and history are not without worth.
Even if every single thing you read on the internet, saw on the news, or heard through the grapevine was absolutely true, it would still be the same. There is simply too much information to sift through and too many “conflicting truths”. We would need to make something bullshit in our minds to be able to handle it all and to keep our heads on straight. Humans never evolved to deal with such a wide net of facets as we have today.
While the complexity is undeniably way, way up, it's worth noting that many societies have mucg healthier information ecosystems where people running for school boards don't think "women's rights" means "drive LGBTQ kids to suicide so no trans person will use a women's bathroom." It's not impossible to depolarize and improve from here.
Agree. I look a littlesis.org and think the maps and associations are a product of the work of multiple people. Could be that’s not true. And while I recognize it as an effort, I’m not sure if it is the right potentially collective effort
I would limit the amount of social media you consume, it is designed to make you scared and fearful. It is unlikely anyone here can provide meaningful help, but it can be an echo chamber of impotent rage and a loser support group designed to demotivate you.
I would increase the time spent with family and friends, these are people who have a vested interest in your well being and the ones most likely to help and the ones most likely to need your help.
You want to be someone people can turn to in an emergency, which means getting your own house in order.
Big problems are never solved by one person, but there are problems that impact you more that you can address, and should focus on instead of throwing up your hands and waiting for the sky to fall.
The sky never falls. Life goes on, and the wonderful part is, you get to choose what you do with your time and energy.
Sold the COVID denial point but I’m a little disappointed that there was essentially no talk about post-COVID economics considering how extremely tangled the two topics are.
This never gets anywhere close to identifying any root cause of or solution to this problem.
It's not just happening on its own, a tiny minority of people are getting unbelievably rich off this fucked up status quo. The system is working as intended, not breaking down. THAT'S the reality we need to confront.
The article does a nice job on facing the problems. And explaining ways we choose not to know or remember things.
Short on path forward besides … we need to stop doing the wrong stuff and start doing the right stuff…
Kind of a magic wand solution.
This is just cherry picking the downside. There's lots of upside now too. For example green energy is now financially viable enough to overtake fossil fuels within the next decade. Oh and there are great strides against cancer almost every day. Just to name a couple.
And this just feels like cherrypicking on the upsides. How does "I don't think the situation is that bad because some of these external issues are better than before" help the issues addressed?
It's like if the situation is a large factory, and lots of the lines are breaking down at an alarming rate, and nobody really knows how to fix them or keep them from falling apart.
Then someone goes "yeah but some of the lines are working better than before, and there's some promising research on the parts of that one line."
What does that matter? If the malfunctioning assembly lines aren't fixed, the factory is fucked.
This comment just highlights what the article is talking about. "It's really not that bad, don't need to worry that much" is almost as bad as "nothing's wrong, stop worrying."
What good is that supposed to do? Go ahead, build your solar energy panels and watch the idiots tear them down for being "woke." Publish your cure for cancer so the idiots can go around proclaiming cancer to be God's blessing.
It doesn't matter how much progress you make when a big chunk of your society does not want any progress at all. It doesn't matter how much science you invest in when half of us still believe in demons. For every improvement we make to society, we have denial for it. Flat Earth, raw milk, vaccine denial, fluoride denial, disease denial, education denial, the list goes on forever.
People walk among us every day hoping today is the day when the prophecy of the great sky goblin comes to pass and the world is purged in hellfire. They don't just want to watch the world burn; they want to be sure everybody dies in the fire. They know what they are doing. They know the facts. But they can just say "fuck your facts."
If the human race survives at all, it will only be because we segregated society like H.G. Wells' Morlocks and Eloi. One of those will have to be sequestered; either give the science deniers a fenced reservation and let them return to the Stone Age, or else the minority science believers have to build their own space ark and hope the planet will be habitable after the idiots are done torching it.
This feels like the kind of doomerism that peaked a few years ago, and it was a lot more convincing when hospitals were using buses as morgues. People like the author seem to think humanity never faced serious problems until a decade ago. I mean, swine flu? C’mon. Pick any year in history and you’ll find a dozen events that were objectively worse.
Did you not read the article? “Truth be told, things were bananas even before the pandemic: just think of the Great Recession, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and Brexit”. Crisis and turmoil are perennial. It’s highlighting a pattern of denialism and how it manifests in the current age.
Kind of my thoughts, the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't that long ago.
Aids epidemic not that long ago.
Even the last major Pandemic of 1917 wasn't that long ago historically.
You had the Great Depression followed by two World Wars a brief happy period of reconstruction if you were able bodied and white.
Followed by the fuel crisis of the 70's, Cold War in the 80's, a growing hole in the ozone. 90's were a brief time of seeming positivity including the birth of the internet. Then 9'11 followed by two disastrous Middle East wars, a near 2nd Great Depression that was just averted with the banking crisis and that pretty much brings us up to current events.
Meanwhile Mass Shootings may be at a four year high, but crime overall, including shootings and murder are down in 2023 and 2024.
According to CPI wages are outpacing inflation. Record high employment for a record number of months with very low unemployment.
The only real denialism that gets to me is the short term political denialism of Trump and it's continuing affects on American life and the potential threat it poses with a 2nd term and the long term denialism around Climate Change which for most people is so abstract and the change in life required to combat it would be so destructive Americans would never stand for it. We couldn't handle a mask, a shot, and social distancing there is no way Americans would be able to withstand the requirements to combat climate change, but unfortunately their kids or grandkids will have to.
Does the author actually think there's nothing more going on that some "possible starvation" without being in denial? Article was three paragraphs long for me and ends with "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 24,000 people have died of COVID so far in 2024."
Sorta weird the author doesn't mention Ukraine fighting for its life right now, too. If you're going to mention Gaza and Sudan, why not the other huge conflict that's been going on for even longer? Like, if you're just looking for more "bad news" that seems like an easy data point to cherry pick there. It's exclusion seems really questionable.
Yea, I’m gonna call bullshit on this article. It’s more evidence that people believe history began at their birth than these are somehow particularly cataclysmic times.
Like it or not, our democracy is based on collective decision making. It's terrible, but less terrible than alternatives. Neither the progressives or conservatives, the doves or the hawks, the spenders of savers, are always right. We just muddle along, squabbling and finger pointing, but I think that's realistically the best we can ever do. In the long run, we're all dead anyway.
[OP] veluna | 1 year, 5 months ago
The article summarizes the litany of crises that have led to denialism and tolerance of more and more instability as a shared cultural habit. It links to research on how denial comes to be accepted, including of course the 'shoot the messenger' approach in order to maintain 'cognitive tranquility'. The duty to know, and to speak up, are more important now than ever before.
Sands43 | 1 year, 5 months ago
There is a concerted propaganda effort to hide the ever higher levels of wealth concentration. In the US, the culture war stuff takes up air time from actual issues. For the UK, that was Brexit, for example.
Globally, there is a real issue with the lack of action on climate change and against neo-liberal austerity policies and the rise of the far right. But everywhere there are fake issues taking up airtime.
SftwEngr | 1 year, 5 months ago
> the lack of action on climate change
We've spent trillions on "climate change" for crying out loud. The only place "climate change" exists is in climate models. Download the source code and look for yourself...or just believe whatever the TV tells you.
RichardsLeftNipple | 1 year, 5 months ago
The main reason I'm guessing that denialism is popularised. Is because, doing anything about these problems will cost a certain group of people money.
For those rich people who have money to lose, supporting delusions is much cheaper than paying for it.
DriestBum | 1 year, 5 months ago
To sum up humanity's entire problem in a single word: greed.
Whatdoyouseek | 1 year, 5 months ago
Doing something about the problems also takes effort, and there are so many who feel entitled that they balk at having to make any sort of sustained sacrifices. The worshipping of selfishness and greed have been increasing for some time now.
21plankton | 1 year, 5 months ago
Whether it is a duty or a fools errand is debatable.
SmbdysDad | 1 year, 5 months ago
If it's a duty, that distinction doesn't matter
21plankton | 1 year, 5 months ago
I have decided to take on that duty in only a social way if it is news. No reason to be a Debbie Downer in social settings when I know there is very little I will be able to effect. I have never been an activist.
I have been a fatalist since my college days as a biology major and understand population dynamics. Many civilizations before this one have failed. Ours will be no different. If the fools cannot see what is occurring and if I tell them they react with denial, avoidance, blaming and persecution why should I bother? This was so obvious during the pandemic. This country acts in very dysfunctional ways to new stresses.
I have taken some personal steps to mitigate disasters that might occur to me but few people have the ability to keep flying around the planet as destruction comes their way. So I resolved to live out my life with personal knowledge and will discuss it with others when it is pertinent.
Our country is exceptionally divided as to the response to ecological issues and climate change but does make snails pace progress when galloping progress is needed. So I will post my thoughts here and not upset my friends or get labeled as a wacko.
jeezfrk | 1 year, 5 months ago
fatalism has already borne fruit: mass fatalities.
rgtong | 1 year, 5 months ago
>Many civilizations before this one have failed. Ours will be no different.
You really think modern society can compare? the education level is absolutely incomparable. The study of economics, of psychology... information technology... Even 2024 vs 1924 is incomparable.
kylco | 1 year, 5 months ago
Clearly education, even the unprecedented level of access to it in advanced economies, hasn't stopped us from getting to this situation.
Presuming he's a biology major he's familiar with how animal and insect populations collapse when they destroy their native habitat. The parallel situations in human civilizations are civilizations like the South American empires that collapsed before European contact from dumping ever-more-resources into elite projects, or from the way Europe was completely unable to avoid the Dark Ages as the later stages of the Roman Empire decayed and lost control of their colonia.
It's not a perfect model fit, but it's worth noting that many "civilizations" today do collapse without much fanfare; they just aren't in the inperial heartlands or aren't surfaced to our attention. Amazon indigenous tribes are in pretty much constant peril from Brazilian agricultural and forestry interests despite laws and treaties that protect them. There are several nations with active or slow-burning civil wars. The islander nations in Oceania are literally sinking beneath the waves and aren't expected to be habitable in a few decades.
Civilization collapse doesn't mean "everyone is dead." It means the structures that held that society together collapse, and everyone either dies, leaves, or tries to rebuild from scratch. Most industrial nations haven't had to do anything close to that since WWII or the Korean war era, and even then they had favorable subsidies from the superpowers invested in that rebuilding. I don't see any sign of that materializing anytime soon, do you?
Whatdoyouseek | 1 year, 5 months ago
>the education level is absolutely incomparable.
And yet people now disparage education in an attempt to avoid facing the problems.
>The study of economics, of psychology... information technology...
But the masses only care about a little knowledge of these fields, often to simply support their delusions and argue against those who attempt to use such knowledge to educate others.
rgtong | 1 year, 5 months ago
>yet people now disparage education
When you say 'people' it implies that it is the majority of society, which is not the case.
Id say you are arrogant to assume to understand how 'the masses', i.e. 7 billion people other people think and what delusions they have. Regardless, it is not the masses who are the key influencers that direct the future of society, key decisions come from those who wield power, and from personal experience the business and political leaders of our world are well educated about these topics.
Beautiful_Welcome_33 | 1 year, 5 months ago
It's the Kantian Paladin of Faith's duty and super necessary to achieve sublimity within his one's mortal limitations then.
Just call it something else, guy.
hamlet9000 | 1 year, 5 months ago
I hope it's "peak" denial, but I've seen no evidence that these trend lines are plateauing.
We have significant state actors with a demonstrated and vested interest in dismantling the Enlightenment and using disinformation as a tool.
Our media is controlled by megacorps all using algorithms designed to promote disinformation and isolate consumers in bubbles of fake, reinforcing delusions to foster outrage engagement.
And there's no clear path for the systemic reform that would be necessary to actually fix any of this. Even if we had the political will and ability to implement such a plan.
Ularsing | 1 year, 5 months ago
I disagree on the last point. We know that education is the answer. Make public universities free in the US like they are in Europe and we'll be on the road to recovery.
OkTerm8316 | 1 year, 5 months ago
That wouldn’t do any good if the 18-year olds going to those universities don’t know how to read or interpret information. We need to start earlier. We already have 12+ years of public school. Let’s make those better.
Ularsing | 1 year, 5 months ago
Those isn't at all mutually exclusive with what I proposed. However, there is evidence that simply knowing that a college education is financially attainable spurs better K-12 outcomes. Obviously that's contingent on sufficient food and financial security as well at those ages.
simpleisideal | 1 year, 5 months ago
Also remove the capital driven propaganda campaigns coming from the top:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent
FuckTripleH | 1 year, 5 months ago
> Make public universities free
Oh is that all? Bro we can't even get congress to agree to give 9/11 first responders free cancer treatments.
Ularsing | 1 year, 5 months ago
Practically the entire rest of the developed world does it just fine.
Arguing that Republican obstruction amounts to some sort of empirical physical law is absurd.
I get that the current political reality is bleak and could never pass such a bill.
I also am acutely aware that if every college student voted in the 2024 election, we could probably get it done next year. (100% turnout is impossible, but getting to the high 80% range that we saw in the 1800s is completely doable).
A big part of the reason why it's so hard to get reasonable college-aged voter turnout is this learned helplessness defeatist rhetoric. Which is exactly why that's the favorite propaganda angle of astroturfed voter suppression efforts... gosh, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the tone that your comment is striking! How 'bout that.
Whatdoyouseek | 1 year, 5 months ago
>Which is exactly why that's the favorite propaganda angle of astroturfed voter suppression efforts... gosh, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the tone that your comment is striking!
True, but it's not always purposeful by those who promulgate it. Despair is very real. It can arise from coordinated propaganda techniques, but also come of its own accord as a normal human reaction to the situation. Those who can explain why they despair are at least more self-aware than those who simply deny reality.
3rdWaveHarmonic | 1 year, 5 months ago
I disagree, university is clearly not the answer, we have soooo many peeps going to university and come out disillusioned with modern society and can’t make a living. The cost of housing and healthcare is far too high. Until peeps vote for individual politicians that want to represent the working class, things won’t change.
Ularsing | 1 year, 5 months ago
How in the fuck would free college education not be "representing the working class"?
3rdWaveHarmonic | 1 year, 5 months ago
There are so many worthless 4 year degrees now, better off for most peeps to go to a Trade school and learn a useful skill instead of some fantasy degree that doesn’t have any use in the real world.
Whatdoyouseek | 1 year, 5 months ago
And yet those without any knowledge of actual liberal arts become little more than technicians. Without thinking for themselves, without critical thinking skills, they become easily manipulated. Not that such skills have to be taught in college, but liberal arts and history are not without worth.
aeric67 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Even if every single thing you read on the internet, saw on the news, or heard through the grapevine was absolutely true, it would still be the same. There is simply too much information to sift through and too many “conflicting truths”. We would need to make something bullshit in our minds to be able to handle it all and to keep our heads on straight. Humans never evolved to deal with such a wide net of facets as we have today.
kylco | 1 year, 5 months ago
While the complexity is undeniably way, way up, it's worth noting that many societies have mucg healthier information ecosystems where people running for school boards don't think "women's rights" means "drive LGBTQ kids to suicide so no trans person will use a women's bathroom." It's not impossible to depolarize and improve from here.
hamlet9000 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Editing does not require delusion.
paul_h | 1 year, 5 months ago
The call to action is a bit soft at the end
SoMuchMoreEagle | 1 year, 5 months ago
Because there isn't much that can be done, especially at the individual level.
paul_h | 1 year, 5 months ago
Agree. I look a littlesis.org and think the maps and associations are a product of the work of multiple people. Could be that’s not true. And while I recognize it as an effort, I’m not sure if it is the right potentially collective effort
SoMuchMoreEagle | 1 year, 5 months ago
That's another issue: there is no consensus about the right course of action concerning basically anything, even among people on the same side.
colirado | 1 year, 5 months ago
We also can’t agree an the problem or the priority of our problems
paul_h | 1 year, 5 months ago
Try many collective actions, see which ones stick? A vague we collectively I mean rather than one person
Fuck_You_Downvote | 1 year, 5 months ago
Well not with that negative attitude
SoMuchMoreEagle | 1 year, 5 months ago
I'm open to suggestions.
Fuck_You_Downvote | 1 year, 5 months ago
I would limit the amount of social media you consume, it is designed to make you scared and fearful. It is unlikely anyone here can provide meaningful help, but it can be an echo chamber of impotent rage and a loser support group designed to demotivate you.
I would increase the time spent with family and friends, these are people who have a vested interest in your well being and the ones most likely to help and the ones most likely to need your help.
You want to be someone people can turn to in an emergency, which means getting your own house in order.
Big problems are never solved by one person, but there are problems that impact you more that you can address, and should focus on instead of throwing up your hands and waiting for the sky to fall.
The sky never falls. Life goes on, and the wonderful part is, you get to choose what you do with your time and energy.
Beautiful_Welcome_33 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Unionize your workplace
TheDeadFlagBluez | 1 year, 5 months ago
Sold the COVID denial point but I’m a little disappointed that there was essentially no talk about post-COVID economics considering how extremely tangled the two topics are.
sllewgh | 1 year, 5 months ago
This never gets anywhere close to identifying any root cause of or solution to this problem.
It's not just happening on its own, a tiny minority of people are getting unbelievably rich off this fucked up status quo. The system is working as intended, not breaking down. THAT'S the reality we need to confront.
Odd_Tiger_2278 | 1 year, 5 months ago
The article does a nice job on facing the problems. And explaining ways we choose not to know or remember things. Short on path forward besides … we need to stop doing the wrong stuff and start doing the right stuff… Kind of a magic wand solution.
KyotoGaijin | 1 year, 5 months ago
This is fine^tm
throwaway9gk0k4k569 | 1 year, 5 months ago
denying peak denialism
denialception
captain_pablo | 1 year, 5 months ago
This is just cherry picking the downside. There's lots of upside now too. For example green energy is now financially viable enough to overtake fossil fuels within the next decade. Oh and there are great strides against cancer almost every day. Just to name a couple.
kosmokomeno | 1 year, 5 months ago
None of those are appropriate reactions to what's wrong with society
cxmmxc | 1 year, 5 months ago
And this just feels like cherrypicking on the upsides. How does "I don't think the situation is that bad because some of these external issues are better than before" help the issues addressed?
It's like if the situation is a large factory, and lots of the lines are breaking down at an alarming rate, and nobody really knows how to fix them or keep them from falling apart.
Then someone goes "yeah but some of the lines are working better than before, and there's some promising research on the parts of that one line."
What does that matter? If the malfunctioning assembly lines aren't fixed, the factory is fucked.
This comment just highlights what the article is talking about. "It's really not that bad, don't need to worry that much" is almost as bad as "nothing's wrong, stop worrying."
Penguin-Pete | 1 year, 5 months ago
What good is that supposed to do? Go ahead, build your solar energy panels and watch the idiots tear them down for being "woke." Publish your cure for cancer so the idiots can go around proclaiming cancer to be God's blessing.
It doesn't matter how much progress you make when a big chunk of your society does not want any progress at all. It doesn't matter how much science you invest in when half of us still believe in demons. For every improvement we make to society, we have denial for it. Flat Earth, raw milk, vaccine denial, fluoride denial, disease denial, education denial, the list goes on forever.
People walk among us every day hoping today is the day when the prophecy of the great sky goblin comes to pass and the world is purged in hellfire. They don't just want to watch the world burn; they want to be sure everybody dies in the fire. They know what they are doing. They know the facts. But they can just say "fuck your facts."
If the human race survives at all, it will only be because we segregated society like H.G. Wells' Morlocks and Eloi. One of those will have to be sequestered; either give the science deniers a fenced reservation and let them return to the Stone Age, or else the minority science believers have to build their own space ark and hope the planet will be habitable after the idiots are done torching it.
CaptainApathy419 | 1 year, 5 months ago
This feels like the kind of doomerism that peaked a few years ago, and it was a lot more convincing when hospitals were using buses as morgues. People like the author seem to think humanity never faced serious problems until a decade ago. I mean, swine flu? C’mon. Pick any year in history and you’ll find a dozen events that were objectively worse.
thaliaaa0 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Did you not read the article? “Truth be told, things were bananas even before the pandemic: just think of the Great Recession, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and Brexit”. Crisis and turmoil are perennial. It’s highlighting a pattern of denialism and how it manifests in the current age.
FlashMcSuave | 1 year, 5 months ago
Username on point.
k1dsmoke | 1 year, 5 months ago
Kind of my thoughts, the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't that long ago.
Aids epidemic not that long ago.
Even the last major Pandemic of 1917 wasn't that long ago historically.
You had the Great Depression followed by two World Wars a brief happy period of reconstruction if you were able bodied and white.
Followed by the fuel crisis of the 70's, Cold War in the 80's, a growing hole in the ozone. 90's were a brief time of seeming positivity including the birth of the internet. Then 9'11 followed by two disastrous Middle East wars, a near 2nd Great Depression that was just averted with the banking crisis and that pretty much brings us up to current events.
Meanwhile Mass Shootings may be at a four year high, but crime overall, including shootings and murder are down in 2023 and 2024.
According to CPI wages are outpacing inflation. Record high employment for a record number of months with very low unemployment.
The only real denialism that gets to me is the short term political denialism of Trump and it's continuing affects on American life and the potential threat it poses with a 2nd term and the long term denialism around Climate Change which for most people is so abstract and the change in life required to combat it would be so destructive Americans would never stand for it. We couldn't handle a mask, a shot, and social distancing there is no way Americans would be able to withstand the requirements to combat climate change, but unfortunately their kids or grandkids will have to.
Visstah | 1 year, 5 months ago
"Objectively speaking, we are living through a dumpster fire of a historical moment. "
I have a hard time caring about the opinions someone who doesn't even know what objectively means.
strathmeyer | 1 year, 5 months ago
Does the author actually think there's nothing more going on that some "possible starvation" without being in denial? Article was three paragraphs long for me and ends with "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 24,000 people have died of COVID so far in 2024."
Rats_In_Boxes | 1 year, 5 months ago
Sorta weird the author doesn't mention Ukraine fighting for its life right now, too. If you're going to mention Gaza and Sudan, why not the other huge conflict that's been going on for even longer? Like, if you're just looking for more "bad news" that seems like an easy data point to cherry pick there. It's exclusion seems really questionable.
CltAltAcctDel | 1 year, 5 months ago
Yea, I’m gonna call bullshit on this article. It’s more evidence that people believe history began at their birth than these are somehow particularly cataclysmic times.
anonanon1313 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Like it or not, our democracy is based on collective decision making. It's terrible, but less terrible than alternatives. Neither the progressives or conservatives, the doves or the hawks, the spenders of savers, are always right. We just muddle along, squabbling and finger pointing, but I think that's realistically the best we can ever do. In the long run, we're all dead anyway.
gregcm1 | 1 year, 5 months ago
You think the US is a democracy? Our votes are worthless, this is an oligarchy or maybe even a kleptocracy
Tribbs_4434 | 1 year, 5 months ago
Dr Who really needs some new writers it seems. -s