I’d never thought of this perspective and damn it hits. It’s difficult to motivate people through fear of existential dread it’s like too large for us to really comprehend but this spin is beautiful.
it can be really hard to return to that astonishment, but the truth is it's so improbable that we're here and that we get to live in the world that it's reason enough to try and do better. I just wish that people would exercise their imaginations and empathy without having to hit bottom first
Also this:
"a thing about men who walk round the streets of London doing what they say is psychogeographical research when actually it’s obvious they’re trying to displace personal problems"
makes me feel personally called out.
Honestly even in my worst moments I believe in people, not in general but in particular, and I think it’s a genuine tell for rightwing tendencies; they usually, in my experience, don’t trust or like people much by default. My default is (as much as possible) the opposite. Or at least I try.
It's the old debate about whether human nature is intrinsically good or evil. The right believes that we're born bad and only fear of God or State keeps us from descending into chaos.
Thanks for the reminder to read this. There is a small but growing trend in education I’m following, where teachers focus on positive news/stories/research, and apparently it’s having a great effect on kids - you have to give people hope, they’re more likely to take action that way too.
He's wrong, it's pretty certain there's intelligent life elsewhere and the reason we haven't heard from them is the apparently universal (literally) principal that before a civilization reaches the point where it could communicate with other worlds it blows itself up.
that is sort of the point, there couldn't be evidence - though statistically it seems really unlikely we're the only ones in the vastness of the universe and the filter makes sense if you just take where our own n of 1 is heading.
I’m just going off empirical evidence here. If any evidence of life on other planets shows up I will be the first to become very excited. Until then, it doesn’t exist, no matter what statistics say.
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Also this:
"a thing about men who walk round the streets of London doing what they say is psychogeographical research when actually it’s obvious they’re trying to displace personal problems"
makes me feel personally called out.
Although in this case it's much easier to imagine that our species is fundamentally tainted instead of just recognizing that rich people are bad