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99.9999% of all living species have been wiped out by mother nature herself. You should find solitude in the fact that we might be the only species who actuall

by Throwaway197401 5y ago

99.9999% of all living species have been wiped out by mother nature herself. You should find solitude in the fact that we might be the only species who actually have a chance of not becoming part of that statistic which we do by making the planet much more hospitable for us than life used to be. We do this by creating new knowledge which we then use to turn useless materials into valuable resources which allow us to solve problems that have always been challenging us. So go on live your life, eat, travel, create, consume. Don't worry about the catastrophist rhetoric, don't worry about going vegan (unless you want to), don't worry about your CO2 footprint or any other things other people want you to care about for their own political ideologies. Be optimistic and worry about living a good life, with good people, doing good and meaningful things and if you have the skills maybe get into something valuable like coming up with how to create more powerful energy forms such as fusion.

te_chris 5y ago
This is horrific advice: Just be an uber-individual and hope someone else sorts it. Awful and delusion utopianism.
- Throwaway197401 5y ago
  Unless you are going to become a physicist or an engineer or related you aren't going to be solving anything with regards to "the climate". No amount of veganism, recycling or spartan living is going to change that. On the other hand, having a positive look at the future and participate in the economy is going to help pay for much of the research we need to help come up with more powerful forms of energy. We need wealth to create knowledge which helps create solutions to some of the issues that the climate has always been challenging us with just like we've done before. Having a positive look at the future is exactly what we need and have nothing to do with utopia, it's just a better framework to think about the world and lead to better results than thinking the world is going to go under.
vesinisa 5y ago
"Think about positive things and suppress negative feelings and thoughts." It might help with coping as an individual but does not solve our problems as a society.
- Throwaway197401 5y ago
  Neither does thinking the world is going to go under. In fact having a positive outlook of the future makes you an active participant in wealth creation which is exactly what we need to create new knowledge.
necrotic_comp 5y ago
I don't find this helpful. There's the idea of "well, we can't continue doing what we're doing if we want the Earth to continue to be hospitable" even if these predictions are false. While individually we can't do much, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for those who can to do as much as they can. In the United States, this means pushing back on things like drilling in the wilderness, voting in politicians who want to keep antiquated, polluting forms of energy generation in place, etc. If there is enough political will in the populace, the transformative effects can be powerful. We've seen it with the bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands, and we've seen it with social issues in the United States. So yes, we're polluting the earth and making it gross and we should stop that. Let's worry about living a good life, but let's define the good life at least partly about being a good steward of our only planet.
- Throwaway197401 5y ago
  You might not find it helpful right now, your current mode of thinking taken into account. I would however urge you to dig a little deeper into your beliefs and you might find that you've been thinking about this the wrong way. Why do you think we've done the things we've done? Why do you think we build houses, have conventional farming, create sewer systems, create water purification systems, drive cars, have electricity, heat our houses, fly, have heavy industry, run global supply chains, combustion engines, aqua farming, nuclear power plants, create hospitals, going into space, send up satellites, develop new medicin, use fossil fuels not just for energy but also for 99% of all out materials and material creation? Your phone, the internet, your computer, glasses, windows, airconditioning. If nature provided us with alle these facets naturally we wouldn't have to create them ourselves but as we both know it doesn't. We have to create these solutions our selves. We have to create our own resources by creating knowledge. And yes this process have negative externalities. Each problem we solve, create new problems we also need to solve. But the difference is that the problems we are facing today are better problems to have than those we used to have. Trying to come up with a way to make energy cleaner is a better problem than not having energy to begin with. Trying to deal with plastics in our oceans is a better problem to have than not having access to plastic materials. We have better problems to solve today than we used to and when we solve them they will create new problems that are again better problems to have. That should make you hopeful not pessimistic.

te_chris 5y ago

This is horrific advice: Just be an uber-individual and hope someone else sorts it. Awful and delusion utopianism.

Throwaway197401 5y ago
Unless you are going to become a physicist or an engineer or related you aren't going to be solving anything with regards to "the climate". No amount of veganism, recycling or spartan living is going to change that. On the other hand, having a positive look at the future and participate in the economy is going to help pay for much of the research we need to help come up with more powerful forms of energy. We need wealth to create knowledge which helps create solutions to some of the issues that the climate has always been challenging us with just like we've done before. Having a positive look at the future is exactly what we need and have nothing to do with utopia, it's just a better framework to think about the world and lead to better results than thinking the world is going to go under.

vesinisa 5y ago

"Think about positive things and suppress negative feelings and thoughts." It might help with coping as an individual but does not solve our problems as a society.

Throwaway197401 5y ago
Neither does thinking the world is going to go under. In fact having a positive outlook of the future makes you an active participant in wealth creation which is exactly what we need to create new knowledge.

necrotic_comp 5y ago

I don't find this helpful. There's the idea of "well, we can't continue doing what we're doing if we want the Earth to continue to be hospitable" even if these predictions are false. While individually we can't do much, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for those who can to do as much as they can. In the United States, this means pushing back on things like drilling in the wilderness, voting in politicians who want to keep antiquated, polluting forms of energy generation in place, etc. If there is enough political will in the populace, the transformative effects can be powerful. We've seen it with the bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands, and we've seen it with social issues in the United States. So yes, we're polluting the earth and making it gross and we should stop that. Let's worry about living a good life, but let's define the good life at least partly about being a good steward of our only planet.

Throwaway197401 5y ago
You might not find it helpful right now, your current mode of thinking taken into account. I would however urge you to dig a little deeper into your beliefs and you might find that you've been thinking about this the wrong way. Why do you think we've done the things we've done? Why do you think we build houses, have conventional farming, create sewer systems, create water purification systems, drive cars, have electricity, heat our houses, fly, have heavy industry, run global supply chains, combustion engines, aqua farming, nuclear power plants, create hospitals, going into space, send up satellites, develop new medicin, use fossil fuels not just for energy but also for 99% of all out materials and material creation? Your phone, the internet, your computer, glasses, windows, airconditioning. If nature provided us with alle these facets naturally we wouldn't have to create them ourselves but as we both know it doesn't. We have to create these solutions our selves. We have to create our own resources by creating knowledge. And yes this process have negative externalities. Each problem we solve, create new problems we also need to solve. But the difference is that the problems we are facing today are better problems to have than those we used to have. Trying to come up with a way to make energy cleaner is a better problem than not having energy to begin with. Trying to deal with plastics in our oceans is a better problem to have than not having access to plastic materials. We have better problems to solve today than we used to and when we solve them they will create new problems that are again better problems to have. That should make you hopeful not pessimistic.