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"If you take climate change, which is a serious issue, it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario, rather than s

"If you take climate change, which is a serious issue, it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario, rather than saying that we need to restructure power and resources in a way that could make the world a better place. That would have been a really good way to deal with climate change. Instead, it got possessed by a dystopia which I think reflects that generation’s fear of mortality because they can’t see anything going on beyond their own death." Ultimately this is true, we preach dystopia because we cannot see beyond our lack of power (ability, influence), our fear of instability, fear of death. We cannot even begin to imagine what such restructuring would look like. All the while the dystopia is steadily becoming reality. And that's the hard part, and imagination, especially political imagination, and very especially progressive political imagination should be the antidote. Less static, and less managerial. Let's feedback management. I guess he is right that dystopianism and right-wing populism (racism and so on) are governed by (the same kind of) fear and anger. This interview certainly gave me things to think about.

davemp 8y ago
> “ ... it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario ... “ Similarly, this is how Christianity's public image was killed in the West.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  Can you explain what you mean by this? Priests raping kids did it for me with Catholiscm....and people like Blair and Bush murdering people en masse to serve their fairy overlord sealed the deal for protestantism. Not sure how this ties in?
  - davemp 8y ago
    It's certainly multifaceted. I could write a pretty substantial article on this topic. My comment was mostly alluding to the unsupported imagery of a fire and brimstone pit of eternal torment for all non-believers. There's also excessive pessimism about the implications of Christian values not being mandated by legislature (ex: abortion). For your concerns, I would attribute those to the collapse and corruption of internal governance systems. Without much exposition, churches do a pretty terrible job of ensuring their leaders are moral and capable of conveying responsible interpretations of doctrine. Again this is more or less due to fatalism. EG: "Humans are inherently sinful, therefore there's nothing we can do about awful leaders" If anyone is actually interested in a related article, send me an email. I'll assume that, if a few people spend the effort to send me an email, it will be worth the effort to synthesize a responsible article.
saltybytes 8y ago
This. I think if we, as a species, wanna survive the next two generations we need a more radical approach to fix climate change. It should be ranked as the #1 issue to resolve, quasi the "ultimate goal". And this, my fellow HNers, won't happen by pointing fingers or call out people. The political establishment as we know it has to go. We _ALL_ have to pull in the same direction and have to put common interests above individual wealth and greed. I'm not at all left but I can't tolerate that big corporations are getting a tax cut or even cheat the tax system while the little man has to pay their fair share. I have seen how much money goes down the drain every year with authorities (eg. Pentagon) don't even know what they are spending it on. All this has to stop. We need common sense here: take $ out of politics (make senators can only be elected for 2 terms max), stop fighting wars overseas, address climate change where people don't wanna see it (ie. Superbowl half time show, Sunday television, etc), change our perfectly trimmed backyards into mini farms, completely stop relying on fossil fuels, replace plastics wherever possible (eg. food industry could leverage technologies based on corn starch), and much more. And all begins with you! Unfortunately a Trump or even Sanders won't help us here either. We need to skip the forward thinking by at least 20 to 50 years or the planet will be in jeopardy. (Disclaimer: Granted, it's not always easy to hear the truth about what's wrong with the world. But the sooner we start rolling up our sleeves and cleaning up the mess the sooner we will be getting ROI, ie. clean water, clean air, progress in healthcare, just to name a few).
slededit 8y ago
> If you take climate change, which is a serious issue, it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario I hear this much more from millenials than baby-boomers. If anything baby-boomers are pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing which only feeds further into the millenial distrust.

davemp 8y ago

> “ ... it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario ... “ Similarly, this is how Christianity's public image was killed in the West.

rorykoehler 8y ago
Can you explain what you mean by this? Priests raping kids did it for me with Catholiscm....and people like Blair and Bush murdering people en masse to serve their fairy overlord sealed the deal for protestantism. Not sure how this ties in?
- davemp 8y ago
  It's certainly multifaceted. I could write a pretty substantial article on this topic. My comment was mostly alluding to the unsupported imagery of a fire and brimstone pit of eternal torment for all non-believers. There's also excessive pessimism about the implications of Christian values not being mandated by legislature (ex: abortion). For your concerns, I would attribute those to the collapse and corruption of internal governance systems. Without much exposition, churches do a pretty terrible job of ensuring their leaders are moral and capable of conveying responsible interpretations of doctrine. Again this is more or less due to fatalism. EG: "Humans are inherently sinful, therefore there's nothing we can do about awful leaders" If anyone is actually interested in a related article, send me an email. I'll assume that, if a few people spend the effort to send me an email, it will be worth the effort to synthesize a responsible article.

saltybytes 8y ago

This. I think if we, as a species, wanna survive the next two generations we need a more radical approach to fix climate change. It should be ranked as the #1 issue to resolve, quasi the "ultimate goal". And this, my fellow HNers, won't happen by pointing fingers or call out people. The political establishment as we know it has to go. We _ALL_ have to pull in the same direction and have to put common interests above individual wealth and greed. I'm not at all left but I can't tolerate that big corporations are getting a tax cut or even cheat the tax system while the little man has to pay their fair share. I have seen how much money goes down the drain every year with authorities (eg. Pentagon) don't even know what they are spending it on. All this has to stop. We need common sense here: take $ out of politics (make senators can only be elected for 2 terms max), stop fighting wars overseas, address climate change where people don't wanna see it (ie. Superbowl half time show, Sunday television, etc), change our perfectly trimmed backyards into mini farms, completely stop relying on fossil fuels, replace plastics wherever possible (eg. food industry could leverage technologies based on corn starch), and much more. And all begins with you! Unfortunately a Trump or even Sanders won't help us here either. We need to skip the forward thinking by at least 20 to 50 years or the planet will be in jeopardy. (Disclaimer: Granted, it's not always easy to hear the truth about what's wrong with the world. But the sooner we start rolling up our sleeves and cleaning up the mess the sooner we will be getting ROI, ie. clean water, clean air, progress in healthcare, just to name a few).

slededit 8y ago

> If you take climate change, which is a serious issue, it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario I hear this much more from millenials than baby-boomers. If anything baby-boomers are pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing which only feeds further into the millenial distrust.