3 ms·

Do you consider that perhaps it's possible that maybe your judgement is a little biased towards an unjust pessimistic point of view?

bmitc 4y ago
What is unjust about it? What I listed are undeniable facts about humanity. They are not sentiments. So, what is unfair about facts? Regarding pessimism, I view my base stance as actually optimistic. The reason is that there is an acceptance of the state of humanity and room for improvement and change. The only way to make actual change is to address shortcomings, rather than continually deny them, and make deep adjustments to how we view our place in the world. I actually view a naive sentiment of “the good overwhelms the bad” as incredibly pessimistic, because it does not address reality and the state of things and how destructive humanity has been. If you think that the good overwhelms the bad and that we are improving, that seems to imply that we are, at a minimum, at a local “peak of humanity”. But that’s vastly pessimistic, especially considering the facts. What may be actually pessimistic is that I have little hope we can turn things around as a collective. In my local life I try to live by principles that try to address these things, and I am trying to understand how to broaden that circle. I believe my lack of hope is founded in reality though, because for every one person aware of our unsustainable and harmful effects on the world and even humanity itself, there are several people that are naive, ambivalent, unknowing, or just downright hawkish. Just re-read my first fact about starvation. It is true. Even with that alone, how can you view things as trending towards improvement? In just a few hundred years, we have introduced nearly a billion starving people, and that is just a snapshot of this moment in time. That isn’t even cumulative.

3 ms·

Do you consider that perhaps it's possible that maybe your judgement is a little biased towards an unjust pessimistic point of view?

by rmbyrro 4y ago

bmitc 4y ago
What is unjust about it? What I listed are undeniable facts about humanity. They are not sentiments. So, what is unfair about facts? Regarding pessimism, I view my base stance as actually optimistic. The reason is that there is an acceptance of the state of humanity and room for improvement and change. The only way to make actual change is to address shortcomings, rather than continually deny them, and make deep adjustments to how we view our place in the world. I actually view a naive sentiment of “the good overwhelms the bad” as incredibly pessimistic, because it does not address reality and the state of things and how destructive humanity has been. If you think that the good overwhelms the bad and that we are improving, that seems to imply that we are, at a minimum, at a local “peak of humanity”. But that’s vastly pessimistic, especially considering the facts. What may be actually pessimistic is that I have little hope we can turn things around as a collective. In my local life I try to live by principles that try to address these things, and I am trying to understand how to broaden that circle. I believe my lack of hope is founded in reality though, because for every one person aware of our unsustainable and harmful effects on the world and even humanity itself, there are several people that are naive, ambivalent, unknowing, or just downright hawkish. Just re-read my first fact about starvation. It is true. Even with that alone, how can you view things as trending towards improvement? In just a few hundred years, we have introduced nearly a billion starving people, and that is just a snapshot of this moment in time. That isn’t even cumulative.