I obviously have none, so I’d like to see if I can mooch off of you lol.
Please don’t leave any pessimistic top level comments. Or do, I’m not your mom 🤷♂️.
I don’t think Trump has the ability to organise a coup, I think an election will end Trump’s time and the next person will have an enormous job fixing stuff.
I think we’re safe from a fascist America
The hope for the climate crisis is that economic forces will transform The world to renewable energy and eventually green steel because it’s cheaper.
Electricity is already cheaper to make yourself than to buy, I hope it’ll be in time. Fuel is the biggest cost for shipping so they’re embracing wind power. Most national grids are solar during the day, it’s getting to the point where batteries are cheaper than night time grid power
We’re glad that we haven’t or will we discover any secret that leads to immortality. Sure, we may find ways to extend our lives, but we are all destined to die. That means, taking the horrible people as well.
All of this will pass. You won’t necessarily be able to control any of the variables outside of your own life, but living a virtuous life isn’t about becoming the leader of a country or amassing gigantic wealth. It’s about doing the right thing, for yourself and others, when it’s time to make decisions. I take solace in that. I may not always make the perfectly right decision, but as long as I’m generally guided by what’s right, especially when it’s a difficult path to take, I will have lived a good life.
Beautiful answer. Most of us don’t have the reach to make a difference on a global or national level, but we can make an impact on the those closest to us and set a good example.
It gives me hope when I see people doing altruistic things. I still see it in my community even though people seem more disconnected and pessimistic than before. You can find it here on the Fediverse too; users offering to help when someone makes a post about being in distress, lots of tech-savvy users who either work on projects for the common good or are willing to support those who do.
Reminds me of a quote from Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson.
Tap for spoiler
It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.
Alternative Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers quote.
Tap for spoiler
FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.
SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.\
FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?\
SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
Marcus Aurelius was the man.
I read Meditations and other Stoic texts pretty regularly. They have guided many of my beliefs.
🖤
Even: you are living a good life.
Cheers.
Ty
Renewables keep taking off like a massive rocketship, with batteries following the same trajectory. There’s no stopping them at this point.
I like this one! Trump’s admin is trying to slam the breaks, but they can only control federal money, imports and federal land. The market, from the big dogs on down, demands green energy. Forget global warming for a moment, there are perfectly selfish reasons the market wants cheap energy.
Look at little ol’ me. My power bill is hilariously low, probably $90 this month, but I still want at least some solar. Would have been damned nice the when the hurricane hit us dead on this month, no power for a week. They can cut the tax rebate, but they can’t stop me. Also, I’m in the county, no one will ever know if I put “porch power” in my backyard.
This always inspires me, even if admittedly the USA burned its chances of being a global leader in that space in the last 5 years or so.
Biden tried to make it a red state industry, and had a lot of buy-in from senators that wanted the jobs. But, they chose hatred-suicide with Trump. Others will take over, just sad America won’t really be a part of it.
The future was never easy. But as long as there’s a cup of coffee, a piece of nature and a bit of love left, it’s ok.
Please add some edibles, they pair nicely with coffee nature and love
Everything is edible if you’re brave enough.
Edibles pair nicely with everything if you eat enough
For me it just fucks up my thinking, but it seems lots of people do like it.
Also bad news about the nature… I winced when I saw this comment because it’s so naive, but this thread isn’t the place for me to mention the Brazilian election, or how BC is about to be clear cut, or…
I better go.
Don’t lose hope, that’s what I wanted to express with my original comment. The world and humanity are in a deep crisis, on oh so many fronts. You have a choice though: invest in the future, make a positive change. Dont just consume the (bad) news, engage yourself, vote, protest! And enjoy the small things in life; if we run out of coffee, damn replace it with tea. Call me naive…
I do appreciate your attitude, despite the wincing 😉
I’m not sure how to cut out bad news without cutting out all news completely.
Well, at least lula won in brazil
Yes! That was the best news I’ve seen in a while and a pleasant surprise : )
If you can’t be happy with a cup of coffee you can’t be happy with a yatch.
- Naval Ravikant
Privileged take
Generally speaking, the world just keeps getting better in ways that matter.
Despite all the wars going on, this is probably the most peaceful time in human history; we just see every single conflict thanks to modern telecommunication.
There has always been terrible stuff going on in the world. Very little of the terrible things in the modern day are really new, it’s just a new form. And usually the new form is a bit friendlier than the last one.
Frankly, how bad the past was makes it hard to be anything but optimistic about the future. Overall, the best time to be alive in all of history is right now. There’s no reason to think that trend won’t continue.
We’ll defeat diseases, and get more efficient at producing the things we need, and develop technologies to solve problems. Sure, a lot of that will be expensive for a while if capitalism persists, but going into debt for cancer treatment beats dying of cancer.
And it’s never been easier to coordinate with such a huge number of people. We have the tools at our disposal to actively make the future better. We have to use them, but we do have them. And it really seems like people are starting to get interested in using those tools, and they’re only getting easier to use, which means with a little elbow grease we could progress from “better, year over year” to “actually good”.
The boomers are dying, the techbro bubble is almost ready to pop, the kids are organizing. I feel privileged to get to witness the next 50 years.
Every time I see someone saying something along the lines of “the world/country/city is becoming more dangerous” I want to scream. No it isn’t, you just didn’t see all that was happening back then, and now you do.
Plus AI inflated headlines and other fear mongering.
All of this push for global fascism and tightening of chains across the world is actually an extinction burst that’s happening precisely because the world is waking up. The oligarchs see one last chance to hold onto power before the common people flip the board.
Yeah, we only read about right-wing successes but let’s not forget that the lefts all over the world are getting stronger every day, every election.
So many elections show that the majority of people don’t want to be ruled by fascists.
I agree. There’s a dialectical link between the rising of the new and the violence of the old in resisting that.
Exactly, I wonder how hopeless people felt in 1940’s europe
At the end? Very hopeful. Communism was surging in popularity around the world, hence the string of revolutions, thanks to the Red Army’s success in defeating the Nazis. It took drastic measures to overturn this.
True, everything good in both countries I’m a national of is called “post-war” lol. I was thinking of before the war though, trying to make the point we’re at the same place in history.
I know what you were getting at, haha. Just wanted to point out how quickly attitudes changed.
God I hope this is true
I hope this is true! Tired of spending every election day waiting for the .2% of voters to decide if we’re gonna keep healthcare or perform a blood sacrifice of the poors.
Organising stuff! I’m pulling together a couple friends to a bar and holding a privacy workshop For anyone who feels like practicing privacy is boring and wants do it over a drink.
Getting together with other like-minded individuals and actually doing something with immediate results like this has been such a huge help for me personally.
Just achieving something, no matter how small, and doing it with others that have a similar vision of what a better future is I feel is such a great mood booster.
I got involved with wild animal rescue 2 years ago, and being around such cool people is awesome, and each life we save is undeniably making our local ecosystem healthier and stronger.
This is the way
There’s one thing that’s happened this year that inspired actual hope in me. (I am generally a cynic, having read too many history books.)
I made a video about Flock buying out their employees and, in researching it, learned that Flock (as of a month ago) had lost nearly 400 contracts in 36 states. An independent outfit is tracking it because, obviously, major media outlets don’t want to talk about the unpopularity of fascism.
Thing is, this accelerated last summer, which means a lot of people who are otherwise apolitical are learning about Flock, going to city council meetings and doing boring, pedestrian and effective political organizing for a good cause.
That is objectively a good thing.
Got invited to do Halloween with some folks, excited for that.
We’re getting to see how bad things get before people change their minds. And people are, it’s slow and there are holdouts as well as people that just do not want good things for anyone besides themselves/their tribe.
I think the global right is pulling all the cards they have to try and pull the world into war and chaos and even as bad as it is it’s not going their way. The more authoritarianism is pushed the more people wake up to their delusions.
In the states you have DSA members actually getting seats, you have people caring about flock and privacy that would have a few years ago brought the story that it’s for their own protection. You have Generals and officials resigning in droves because they refuse to be apart of another forever war. You have a whole generation being aware the the US/Israel colonialism and even things like police violence.
If we as a species are going to build a world that’s built for peaceful coexistence we have to wake up to what is not working. All of the bad things that are happening are cycles and patterns that have been going on for longer than any of us have been alive and I think there’s a good chance we will see old cycles finally break in our life time
Yes. Because they got greedy and tried to do the fast grab, they got the average person’s attention and we actually have a chance.
I just watched a Guardian short of Tel Aviv, where thousands (their number) are marching in the streets ahead of the Israeli elections, wanting Netanyahu out. What was most telling were the people they stopped to talk with, who all seem aware of just how involved Netanyahu was in the events of October 7 and keeping the war going: the people marching want peace in their region, and they recognize that Bibi is war. One guy was saying something like, “We’ve been through October 7th, and the fact that the government that is responsible for it are even running again is insane. They should have been gone like the day after.”
It’s a far cry from the nationalistic shit we get fed daily on the other side of the world, to say the least. People are waking up. And the more they do, the better chance we have.
I think a lot of what they are doing has been planned for decades but it does feel rushed. All of the war mongering factions are making moves like they won’t be able to do it if they don’t act now. Thankfully a lot of their structures are controlled by incompetent fools and nepo babies
They know the world is going to change a lot over the next few decades and they want to control that as much as possible. I sometimes wonder if they know something major is coming, like the gulf stream clasping or another major climate event.
When the people stand as one there won’t be much they can do. They are quite adept at keeping us fighting each other though
I don’t think they could’ve ever made it this far if they didn’t rush. There’s no logic to their endpoint, and many of their coalition members are motivated by urgency and immediate results. Anyone who was asked to slow down, or given a moment to think through the logic, would’ve turned against them.
I know that there are good people everywhere who will keep trying. It will take some time, but the pendulum will swing back the other way. People will always keep trying.
There’s a quote from HBO’s Chernobyl series:
To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants, it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?
All these fucking guys who’ve made monsters of themselves to pretend they’re our masters - they’ll all fail. Their lies are a patchwork of tapestries meant to hide from reality. The bigger it gets, the more it wants to fall. Pull a thread, watch it unravel.
What is the cost of lies?
About 3.6 Roentgen
The quote is read out in this 2 minute clip. Some more besides.
Long term statistics show that humanity is and will keep progressing. Remember this thing called the black plague or the fall of the largest empire in history leading to the dark ages? Did humanity go back to being apes in caves? The planet might be going through some scary changes, but humanity will survive this rough patch too.
It is also increasingly peaceful compared to the past. Yes, we have constant wars but some regions that used to be continuously at war have spent the better part of a century at peace and even set up lasting treaties. There is still a long ways to go of course, but overall it is still getting better.
Imagine explaining to someone 200-years ago that Europe is now one huge political block. Mind. Blown.
“What, and ze English too?”
“Err, well, they were for a little while, but then decided to pull out”
“Eh! I tell you, you can depend on ze English to do something stupid. Perhaps one day they will come to their senses!”
Nothing you just named can come anywhere near climate change in terms of severity. Humanity (and the majority of complex organisms) won’t survive climate change, but the planet will. In a million years it will be like we were never here, and life can start over. That’s the kind of pragmatic optimism that I find comforting.
I was expecting someone saying this haha but I agree my statement still feels positive. But I don’t agree that humanity is going to be wiped off to planet because of climate change. Our numbers will dwindle but we will come out of this.
I feel like nuclear bombs were as severe. I also think that even the worst case realistic scenarios for climate change are not nearly bad enough to cause the scenario you described.
Funny, I’m done being the one always having to take it on the chin for “the greater good”. Let’s have OTHER era’s step up.
humanity is and will keep progressing.
This doesn’t bring me optimism, personally. Why is that a good or relevant thing at all?
So would your rather we not have modern medicine, electricity, democracy over serfdom? What about cultural values where people are treated equal? Living past 40? I mean c’mon man I don’t know what kind of day your having and I’m sorry if it’s been rough for you lately. But you most definitely live a better life because of human progress.
The presupposition is that the existence and spread of humans is itself something good. I don’t agree with that and find no positivity therein. The people who cried “never again” are ignoring, enabling, or even participating in genocides and the repression of others. There’s an environmental disaster going on lead by governments and oligarchs. Inequality in the countries I’ve lived in has gotten worse in my life, not better. Human rights in many parts of the world continue to be stripped and cultural genocide happens. That’s not progress. “Maybe in a couple thousand years, if the species doesn’t destroy itself, things might mostly be equal and good and healthy” does nothing to bring positivity to my life, particularly when there is no indication of that happening.
But why rain on people’s parade? we are all having a rough life right now and doing our best to get through it. Everyone should find solice in what helps be happy in life.
That’s kinda the whole point of living. Being happy and finding meaning.
If this perspective doesn’t help you, that’s fine. But to hound people for theirs positivity because it doesn’t align with your thinking is just part of the problem.
We shouldn’t be treating each other shitty, we should all be trying to pull each other up. Dont let these oligarchs you talk about win by doing their bidding.
But why rain on people’s parade?
That wasn’t my intent. I was hoping for an answer to the question I posed that might change my mind. If people get solace from that, it’s fine; I don’t think my disagreement should or would change that.
But to hound people
In what way was I doing that?
Literally everything you’re describing was way worse a lifetime ago, not my lifetime, but my grandparent’s.
My grandfather was a 10yo jew in occupied france, and my grandmother grew up in a barn with no running water or power with a dozen siblings during the US gilded age. Shit was so much worse back then.
Anthony Scaramoochi (or however he spells his name… yes, that guy) said it best. To paraphrase:
“Young people. The boomer generation (my generation), and all the losers associated with it wasted all their power and political capital in ruinous ways, and only emboldened the next generations in their political convictions and you already see a lot of them pointing correctly at where the faults lie, and how the geritocracy serves nobody”
Of all people to give an interesting interview lately, I really did not expect it to be him. You can find it pretty easily on youtube. It was called “38 minutes with…” or something like that. Maybe it was 28 minutes.
In other words, below a certain age, there is overwhelming support in working together for a better future for everyone. The current political class will die out with no heritage beyond everyone knowing how badly they fucked up.
EDIT: Found the interview. Also, it’s Scaramucci.
They basically have already…
But the corpse of James Carville will always stumble on.
But they lost the DNC, and progressives pretty much swept the primaries.
Even if you think the current DNC is just lying and the same as any neoliberal , he ran Minnesota for a decade. If his political goal is stop progress, he’s comically inept at it.
Either way, it’s a progressive wave and a 2028 presidential primary a progressive can easily win.
