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Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically programmed to direct our attention to it. Whi
by seandoe 5y ago
Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically programmed to direct our attention to it. While the various media fuel this neverending stream of negativity, we have to realize that our primal selves yearn for it. Regardless of how likely any of these scenarios are, obsessing over them does not help our situation. How can we break this cycle of addiction? I guess the first step is recognition.
- elihu 5y agoI agree that the idea of collapse is something we're inclined to fixate on whether it's about to happen or not. But on the other hand, democracies can fail, ecosystems can collapse, economies can fall apart, and so on. These are real risks that I think should be taken seriously. (Especially climate change.) The important thing though is not how much we're focused on the problems, but what we're doing about it. Individually we don't have much influence, but we can participate in elections, we can donate to worthy organizations, we can (to some small degree) minimize our climate impact, we can constructively influence discussions about these problems. Regarding the tendency of people in general to want to believe in the end of the world, I once had an idea for a new randomly-moving holiday called "arbitrary apocalypse day", where you roll 3 D-10s to pick a number of days until the next arbitrary apocalypse day, and roll another die to decide what's going to destroy civilization this time (nuclear war, nanobots, a big meteor, etc..). You treat that day like the end of the world. If everything goes on as normal, then you roll the dice again the next day and select the next arbitrary apocalypse day.