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OwlFancier posted:I'd suggest that blind optimism is not necessarily more enlightened than apathetic pessimism. What is blindly optimistic about "a better tomorrow has to be dragged there kicking and screaming"? The world has been getting better by the blood sweat and tears of people tirelessly working towards it. I'll come out and say it, your pessimism is loving useless and self indulgent. Which honestly surprises me, I had you pegged as a leftist aware and willing to struggle against capitalism.
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Sep 8, 2018 21:50
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A big flaming stink posted:What is blindly optimistic about "a better tomorrow has to be dragged there kicking and screaming"? The world has been getting better by the blood sweat and tears of people tirelessly working towards it. As I said, thinking there is little hope doesn't have to be an obstacle to trying. But there can be plenty of dragging and kicking and screaming and you still get nowhere. But optimism is equally what gets you idiocy like the belief that the free market can solve problems, because doesn't the world naturally trend towards progress? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:00
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OwlFancier posted:As I said, thinking there is little hope doesn't have to be an obstacle to trying. Can you look back historically and name people that were instrumental in helping people or progressing people's rights or standards of living that had a "this is stupid and won't work" attitude about it? Like you can look back and name people like martin luther king that had optimistic attitudes that things can be fixed but who can you look back on that did the eyor thing and fought against the idea progress could be made?
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Sep 8, 2018 22:05
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I don't know that I would call Martin Luther King an optimist, I think he was very realistic, it's what makes a lot of what he wrote as compelling as it is. He gives the distinct impression of a man who really understands the world he lives in. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:07
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OwlFancier posted:I don't know that I would call Martin Luther King an optimist, I think he was very realistic, it's what makes a lot of what he wrote as compelling as it is. He was realistic because we can retroactively see he succeeded, at the time he was outlandishly hopeful for what he could succeed and obviously taking positions that an attitude like yours would have called childish and naive.
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Sep 8, 2018 22:12
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I wouldn't suggest he succeeded, either... When I read things he wrote I get the impression of someone who doesn't allow their hopes to obfuscate their actual concrete observation of reality. When he describes the conditions he sees he does so with great clarity and frankness, as he does when he describes his obstacles as well. Not behaviour I've come to expect from optimists. There's certainly a kind of duality there because obviously he was Christian and that clearly informs a lot of his views but at the same time there is obviously a man writing without any sort of rose tinted glasses about human nature or the state of the world. Someone who doesn't need to hide from what's in front of him, and obviously couldn't even if he wanted to. It's the realism by far that I find most compelling. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:21
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They make pills for what is wrong with you, you know that right? e: Like that's not so much a personal attack as it is the only reality I know how to respond to here. "Well obviously I see everything in the most miserable light, even when I actively have to re-frame reality to fit my downer worldview, but maybe the problem is everything else", said nobody without chemical problems, ever. At a certain point maybe you aren't pessimistic, maybe you are just broken. Mulva fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:25
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OwlFancier posted:When I read things he wrote I get the impression of someone who doesn't allow their hopes to obfuscate their actual concrete observation of reality. When he describes the conditions he sees he does so with great clarity and frankness, as he does when he describes his obstacles as well. Not behaviour I've come to expect from optimists. Again, it's really obvious you can praise his "clarity" only because it's years later and you know what succeeded. Do you really think if he was posting on 1960s somethingawful that you wouldn't be the guy calling him some stupid hopeful dreamer that doesn't understand the real world like you do and that you support his goals in theory but think he's being a silly billy thinking he might change anything.
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Sep 8, 2018 22:30
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Again, it's really obvious you can praise his "clarity" only because it's years later and you know what succeeded. I'm fairly sure I've never told anybody that.
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Sep 8, 2018 22:31
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Mulva posted:They make pills for what is wrong with you, you know that right? My apologies for, after years of trying to live the delusion, I can finally clearly see and, more importantly, accept the world as actually it is, not as the desperate try to lie to me and themselves about how they wish it was.
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Sep 8, 2018 22:45
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Kerning Chameleon posted:My apologies for, after years of trying to live the delusion, I can finally clearly see and, more importantly, accept the world as actually it is, not as the desperate try to lie to me and themselves about how they wish it was. Is the world as it actually is the most peaceful and prosperous age in all of human history where the largest percentage of people live free from hunger and disease that has ever existed?
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Sep 8, 2018 22:58
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If you confine "the world as it is" to "within the last century except for the really big blips" and make a studious point of ignoring the looming massive problems on the horizon. Which kind of narrows the statement to more like "I'm fine right now ergo the world is great"
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Sep 8, 2018 23:12
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OwlFancier posted:If you confine "the world as it is" to "within the last century except for the really big blips" and make a studious point of ignoring the looming massive problems on the horizon. Unless you are blessed with the gift of prophesy you shouldn't allow your world view to be controlled by unquantifiable risks of future harm. You could walk out your front door the next day, and be killed by a drunk driver. Or Trump could start a nuclear war. Alternatively neither thing may happen. Up to a certain point we have just accept that we live with many swords hanging over our heads. But hey you never know, maybe the strings will hold, or if they do fall they'll miss, and eventually we may even be able to take a few down.
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Sep 8, 2018 23:42
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OwlFancier posted:If you confine "the world as it is" to "within the last century except for the really big blips" and make a studious point of ignoring the looming massive problems on the horizon. how about "all of history" it's not like war, childhood mortality and infectious disease risk was super low before the invention of the steam engine
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Sep 9, 2018 00:03
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Again, it's really obvious you can praise his "clarity" only because it's years later and you know what succeeded. I'm not really seeing anything remotely wrong with what OwlFancier is saying. He isn't saying that it's not still worthwhile to push for positive change (since even if the ideal goal can't be accomplished, some people can still be helped); just that there's very good reason to think that it's doubtful that most optimistic goals will actually be achieved. Like, to use King as an example (since he was mentioned earlier), it's simultaneously true that his work (and that of others like him) was worthwhile and had an impact, and that the fundamental issues of racism and racial inequality not only aren't close to being fixed, but aren't even really on that trajectory (see: widening wealth gap between black and white Americans, or de facto segregation being even higher than decades in the past). "We should try and improve conditions" is not mutually exclusive with "but realistically speaking it's doubtful that things like poverty, bigotry, etc will ever be wholly, or even mostly, addressed."
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Sep 9, 2018 00:09
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Squalid posted:Unless you are blessed with the gift of prophesy you shouldn't allow your world view to be controlled by unquantifiable risks of future harm. You could walk out your front door the next day, and be killed by a drunk driver. Or Trump could start a nuclear war. Alternatively neither thing may happen. Up to a certain point we have just accept that we live with many swords hanging over our heads. But hey you never know, maybe the strings will hold, or if they do fall they'll miss, and eventually we may even be able to take a few down. There is a difference between suggesting that it may be helpful to the individual to avoid dwelling on things they cannot control, and suggesting that because that is unpleasant to contemplate that it actually doesn't exist and there is no probability of it being relevant in the future. "The world is good because I don't want to think about the possibility that it isn't" is not a good argument. It's precisely what I'm arguing against, optimism that colours your ability to observe the world is not a welcome thing.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:11
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The counter-point is that nothing you are saying is useful or productive to a society or a person. So....why care about your viewpoint? Like lets say everyone thought like you, what would you imagine is step two of this process?
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Sep 9, 2018 00:16
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The death of the notion of automatic progress, that bad things generally won't happen, that it'll all come right in the end, that there's any justice but what people make for themselves. The desire to think the world is generally good is what leads to just world stupidity and all its associated damage to society. Similarly the persistent desire to believe your own life is OK, that it's not so bad on the whole even if right now it sucks, that serves excellently to keep people plodding on doing things they hate rather than being driven to change. Optimism inspires people to make do with what they have rather than demanding what they're owed, because god forbid people be rightly unhappy with their lot. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 00:19
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Mulva posted:The counter-point is that nothing you are saying is useful or productive to a society or a person. So....why care about your viewpoint? I mean, my personal step 2 is "stop throwing your short life and limited resources away on lost causes and focus on living your own life best you can". Which in my case is just refocusing my efforts on projects to better myself and my immediate family's security and comfort but would provide little if any benefit to other people beyond that.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:24
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The most recent ~10,000 years of human history brought about the existence of this thread. There may be only four pages now, but I'm optimistic that it'll make it to at least six.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:27
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OwlFancier posted:If you confine "the world as it is" to "within the last century except for the really big blips" and make a studious point of ignoring the looming massive problems on the horizon. There has literally always been problems dozens or hundreds of years from whatever year you are in. The thing that changed is we are now smart enough to 1) know about them in advance, 2) think of solutions. Even if you jerk off about the degenerate state of mankind and how you know for sure no one will lift a finger to solve anything we are still strictly better off by the fact we are able to anticipate these things now instead of running into them by surprise. Like maybe global warming will be exactly as bad as the toba event and humans will drop down to 3000 individuals for a second time, but the fact we know it 70 years in advance makes us strictly in a better position than ugg the caveman
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Sep 9, 2018 00:40
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OwlFancier posted:The desire to think the world is generally good is what leads to just world stupidity and all its associated damage to society. Who gives a gently caress about society when the actual damage to the world is a bunch of narcissists...how to put this...ah yes quote:demanding what they're owed to the detriment of everything around them. Society is a transitory thing that is destroyed on a fairly regular basis. We aren't the Pilgrim fathers, who weren't the general British public, who weren't the same as the Angles, and on and on. Society is a fashion trend. The world is fairly objective, and so is the damage to it. And the largest cause of that damage is people that reject the idea of anything outside their own personal morality, which is usually some variation of "gently caress you, got mine". Nothing you've said has a counter to that, which makes it fairly useless. If everyone thought like you they might do things different, but plenty of people that think like that do things worse than they should, so how is it an improvement in general? Kerning Chameleon posted:I mean, my personal step 2 is "stop throwing your short life and limited resources away on lost causes and focus on living your own life best you can". Which in my case is just refocusing my efforts on projects to better myself and my immediate family's security and comfort but would provide little if any benefit to other people beyond that. Which is ultimately self defeating in a real crisis situation because you are powerless and irrelevant on your own, and if the larger group decides to destroy you you are done. As I said, it's a viewpoint that doesn't serve the individual or the society. What you propose is giving up and hoping things just sort of wash over you which.....come to think of it, sounds a lot like optimism.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:41
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Mulva posted:Who gives a gently caress about society when the actual damage to the world is a bunch of narcissists...how to put this...ah yes There's a difference between what you're owed and what you can take at whim. The FYGM crowd don't demand, they take, or already have, by virtue of their individual power or fortune.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:48
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OwlFancier posted:The death of the notion of automatic progress, that bad things generally won't happen, that it'll all come right in the end, that there's any justice but what people make for themselves. Yeah but the world actually has gotten significantly better by many important metrics. And no one but you seems to be stuck on some idea it happened "automatically" instead of being a thing people worked at. So you appear to be fighting an issue that doesn't actually exist using a tool that wouldn't help anyway.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:50
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OwlFancier posted:There's a difference between what you're owed and what you can take at whim. Nothing you've said delineates that or provides the tool to measure it, but it's absolutely the viewpoint of people that don't care about the distinction in the first place. quote:The FYGM crowd don't demand, they take, or already have, by virtue of their individual power or fortune. So what you are saying is that the people that think like you and try to be productive are less effective than the people that think like you and are selfish? I mean combine that with the only other person in this thread that champions a viewpoint somewhat like you just actively admitting to giving up on change and I stand by my original statement: There's nothing useful for society in that viewpoint.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:56
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Mulva posted:There's nothing useful for society in that viewpoint. I think his claim is he's got some double secret gambit where he thinks the future will be better if he says it will be worse because he will enlighten people and steer them to the correct path.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:58
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Mulva posted:Nothing you've said delineates that or provides the tool to measure it, but it's absolutely the viewpoint of people that don't care about the distinction in the first place. I didn't say that abandoning blind optimism alone would solve the world's problems, I said it is contrary to a number of detrimental cognitive positions, you require an alternative framework to replace the ones that pessimism/realism/materialism forces you to abandon. Or conversely, that adopting what I would call a good framework for looking at the world, necessitates abandoning optimism to a great degree.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:02
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From a neurological perspective humans need to keep doing better and better things to remain happy, because they eventually get bored from whatever they are doing currently and need more. For example after Michael Phelps won 8 golds at the 2008 Olympics he said he got so depressed that he considered suicide, because normal life was nothing compared to the high he got at the Olympics. So to make everyone happy the goal should be to make sure everyone's condition is improving, even if by a little bit.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:06
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Mulva posted:Nothing you've said delineates that or provides the tool to measure it, but it's absolutely the viewpoint of people that don't care about the distinction in the first place. I'd rather be correct and die miserable and impotent, than to live on believing in and laboring under the lie of false hope. I consider knowing and accepting the truth more important than anything, even mutual survival or happiness, no matter how painful or despair-inducing it may be. To do otherwise would go against everything I believe in. If that kind of thinking is what ultimately results in the self-destruction of human society, then so be it.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:15
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Kerning Chameleon posted:I'd rather be correct and die miserable and impotent, than to live on believing in and laboring under the lie of false hope. I consider knowing and accepting the truth more important than anything, even mutual survival or happiness, no matter how painful or despair-inducing it may be. To do otherwise would go against everything I believe in. As I said, they make pills for that. OwlFancier posted:I didn't say that abandoning blind optimism alone would solve the world's problems, I said it is contrary to a number of detrimental cognitive positions, you require an alternative framework to replace the ones that pessimism/realism/materialism forces you to abandon. Or conversely, that adopting what I would call a good framework for looking at the world, necessitates abandoning optimism to a great degree. And I said move on to step two, show why it would in any way improve anything. And you didn't. Now we are caught up! I didn't think it was a long enough thread or that you had said anything so long and complicated we needed a recap episode, but here we are again. So I might as well repeat myself: Move on to the step where you show why doing what you want makes anything better. As a bonus, you can not respond to me and respond to Kerning. Because that is the most meaningful thing you could do to prove your point, take someone that advances the half step of rejecting blind optimism and then doing gently caress all....and try to get them to buy into positive change anyway.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:24
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Kerning appears to subscribe to some variety of knowledge being its own reward which I don't. I just think it's an important tool, but there is a commonality between our positions, which is that self and societal deception is not a good idea.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:30
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Kerning Chameleon posted:I'd rather be correct and die miserable and impotent, than to live on believing in and laboring under the lie of false hope. I consider knowing and accepting the truth more important than anything, even mutual survival or happiness, no matter how painful or despair-inducing it may be. To do otherwise would go against everything I believe in. Was Rorschach your childhood hero? 
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Sep 9, 2018 02:28
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Kerning Chameleon posted:I'd rather be correct and die miserable and impotent, than to live on believing in and laboring under the lie of false hope. I consider knowing and accepting the truth more important than anything, even mutual survival or happiness, no matter how painful or despair-inducing it may be. To do otherwise would go against everything I believe in. What "truth"? You just made something up and decided you were right. That isn't any sort of deep truth.
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Sep 9, 2018 02:28
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Kerning Chameleon posted:I'd rather be correct and die miserable and impotent, than to live on believing in and laboring under the lie of false hope. I consider knowing and accepting the truth more important than anything, even mutual survival or happiness, no matter how painful or despair-inducing it may be. To do otherwise would go against everything I believe in. You don't have some special insight to the true nature of existence, all you have is a belief that is very convenient for what you feel inclined to do.
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Sep 10, 2018 06:56
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