47 ms·

The end is nigh and here's why

29 points by danorama 2y ago

MrMcCall 2y ago
I would count the "times" as terrible if we chose leaders with the following characteristics: - lovers of themselves - lovers of money - boastful - proud - abusive - ungrateful - without love - unforgiving - slanderous - without self-control - brutal - not lovers of the good - treacherous - rash - conceited - lovers of pleasure - hypocritical I think we should have nothing to do with such people. Certainly we should not be electing them to office. That would be a terrible idea, IMO.
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  Anybody with any sort of ambition will display those in some shape Edit: idk really, but toxic/fake positivity is not helpful in a competitve env, and to sales is just lying/over promising
  - trescenzi 2y ago
    See Douglas Adams’ quote about electing leaders: > anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. -- Winston Churchill
      - drewcoo 2y ago
        Churchill said "_it has been said that_ democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time," so Churchill himself acknowledged that the quote wasn't his.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    > Anybody with any sort of ambition will display those in some shape There's an important difference between ambition for selfish gain and ambition to better help others. > but toxic/fake positivity is not helpful in a competitve env That's why I counsel real positivity that comes from having tuned one's moral compass towards compassion, or at least trying to. As to competitive environs, we would be much less wasteful and destructive if we cooperated instead of competing. > sales is just lying/over promising Merlin explained in Excalibur that honesty is the most important virtue via, "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world."
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > As to competitive environs, we would be much less wasteful and destructive if we cooperated instead of competing. The communist countries have some of the most polluted areas on the planet. > There's an important difference between ambition for selfish gain and ambition to better help others. Everybody is selfish. The beauty of the free market is it enables selfish behavior to help others. All attempts at creating selfless societies have resulted in misery and poverty.
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        > The communist countries have some of the most polluted areas on the planet. They were not cooperating, my friend, they were manifesting a ruling class that was above the law and pillaged the land for personal gain and sometimes even for the state. > Everybody is selfish. We are only as selfish as we choose to be, likewise our sense of ethics is only as developed as the virtues we embrace. Yes, we begin life selfish and most of our cultures are selfishly oriented towards others, but these are all the result of the citizens' choices. And, yes, our beliefs are chosen as well, and are as adaptable as we like. > The beauty of the free market is it enables selfish behavior to help others. I would say, rather, that the free market is good at letting people act selfishly, for either good or ill. That's why I like my capitalism with fetters, plenty of fetters. But, yeah, capitalism that doesn't destroy the powerless is the best path forward. > All attempts at creating selfless societies have resulted in misery and poverty. No, most humans that say they're creating selfless societies are really just grifters who want to be the new royalty. Selfishness always results in misery on some level, for some person or persons. We can develop systems that reward those who innovate and improve our life on Earth, without jeopardizing our environment and the peace among people. We could choose that, my friend. The problem is that most people don't care enough about others to be generous. We could each choose to learn how to be virtuous and then dedicate ourselves to helping implement a compassionate, sensible, and sustainable world society. All that's holding us back is our unwillingness to admit we each have the ability to be a part of the solution, as opposed to our currently sadass status quo.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  "such people" are all of us.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    We all start that way, both 50% selfish and 50% selfless, but we are each capable of self-evolving our selfish vices into their corresponding compassionate virtues. I consider the greatest song of all time to be "Love is the Truth" by Jack White, whose chorus is: It's the right thing to do And you know it And it's inside of you So just show it Love is the truth And it's inside of you (bop ba ba ba ba) It's the right thing to do We each have the choice to embrace greater compassion for others in our lives. That thing inside us that tells us we can't, or that guy's a liar, or he's trying to convert you to his religion, or he's trying to get your money -- that thing is the liar. It is arguing against our human race's embracing love, and is brutally successful at convincing us to act out of our selfish ego, which is what it spurns and goads. It is pleading for its life, that selfish ego inside each of us. It knows that embracing the Path of Love, it will wither away and be utterly replaced by the joy of loving service to all those we come into contact with. That negative force presses upon our thoughts and feelings, and is our downfall should we not fight it and try to become virtuous. We must try with all our heart, my friend, and our only hope is to beseech the Creator of this magnificent and mysterious universe. "The Way goes in." --Rumi
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  That's narcissism. The thing with narcissists is that they're extremely confident. People love confident leaders, even if they're terrible in every other way. As the recent US election has shown, it's not what you say - but how you say it, that counts. Hell, you see this with startups, too. When a founder appears extremely passionate and enthusiastic, pitching something as if they're at the top of the world, investors are willing to suspend their disbelief. One can get away with lots of things, if you're just confident enough.
  - ElatedOwl 2y ago
    > As the recent US election has shown, it's not what you say - but how you say it, that counts. Are you implying that Biden spoke with more confidence than Trump, but Harris did not?
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    Confidence game, or "con game" as we call it in english, relies on the gullibility of the mark, the target of the swindle. We can only hone our perception of what people are really up to by sharpening our own moral compass and then acting virtuously as an act of volitional self-evolution. Once one begins learning how to be more virtuous and behaves appropriately, one gets better at recognizing the vices other people manifest, e.g.: greed, dishonesty, hate, enmity, jealousy/envy, ... But, yeah, they sure do take the rubes for a ride, don't they? Yes, narcissism is the apotheosis of selfishness. Compassion for others is the most important tool we have to combat its tendencies within our own hearts and minds. And, yes, we all have selfishness in us, and it is a long road to rid ourselves of it all, though I'm not speaking from even within sight of that glorious achievement.
- rsyring 2y ago
  I think you missed some of the most important bits at the end: > But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. (1 Tim 3, ESV) For good or for bad, Judeo Christian morality was always rooted in a fear of God. As the belief in God has warped and wained away from biblical moorings, we shouldn't be surprised that morality has gone with it. To such an extent that, seemingly, moral character has very little impact when evaluating leaders, as long as other ideological boxes are checked. On the other hand, given the context of this writing, it seems that these kinds of people are always present... in all times and all cultures. So maybe there isn't so much uniquely bad about our current times? I don't know, just wondering out loud.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    > Judeo Christian morality was always rooted in a fear of God The Great(est) Command(ment) is "To love God with all your being, and then love your neighbor as yourself." Society improves a little when someone chooses to not do bad because they're afraid to get punished. Society improves much more when someone chooses to do good by having evolved their sense of ethics and self-control. Our most important human ability, and the reason we have a {moral compass, mind, and free will} is our ability to self-evolve our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors out of the selfish and animalistic towards the compassionate and humanitarian. Our Creator loves us and prefers us to live in peace and prosperity, but we must choose to implement such a societal system that better rewards virtue and minimizes the harms caused from vice. And such a system must be our choice (i.e. democracy) because there must be no compulsion in religion (which pervades life as an ethos of compassionately positive contribution to the whole). > As the belief in God has warped and wained away from biblical moorings, we shouldn't be surprised that morality has gone with it. To such an extent that, seemingly, moral character has very little impact when evaluating leaders, as long as other ideological boxes are checked. Yes, that is indeed the case, but Christianity is no more or less guilty than most all of the other religions, their majorities taking the selfishly divisive road over the compassionately unifying road. > it seems that these kinds of people are always present... in all times and all cultures. As we live and breath, my friend. We are each those people, to more or less extent as per the predilections of our individual nature and those of the cultures we inhabit. The key is that we all(1) have the power both how to learn to be better as well as to choose to be better. [(1) There are the mentally ill and physically damaged and developmentally disabled folks that do not have the power to control themselves, but they are very rare.] The universe helps, though, in that the human-only Law of Karma determines our happiness or unhappiness by how we have treated others. It is the applied aspect of "You reap what you sow." It is our environment's feedback system to let us know if we've been naughty or nice, whether we are headed in the right direction or not. > So maybe there isn't so much uniquely bad about our current times? Not for individual human beings; vice is vice and virtue is virtue and we have many inertias against our becoming better. But our technological progress has facilitated greater destruction to the Earth via war and pollution. It drives a more efficient systematic greed that oppresses the poor more brutally, and the rich have used their power to hire attorneys to craft the laws that let them rise above other human beings like royalty. The codifying of the MBA ethos that changed the "personnel" department into "human resources" is quite the tell.
zombiwoof 2y ago
Explains MAGA
- dave4420 2y ago
  Not really. Why now? Why not thirty years ago, or thirty years hence?
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I knew someone who thought that Donald Trump is literally the anti-Christ and that we were in the end times. Sometime after Covid, hen turned atheist. Still has incredible anxiety though.
mfuzzey 2y ago
> lead people to believe that humans are getting nastier over time, even when they’re not Most people aren't nasty or getting nastier but nasty people are likely over represented in those with power and there seems to be a current swing to having more such people getting into positions of power. Added to that is that modern technology and weapons make it easier for a few "bad apples" in power to cause more grief to more people than before.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Their lawyers have recrafted the laws/regulations/courts that used to keep them in check. And now it's a combination of the callously indifferent and the belligerently selfish. Their willingness to ignore their conscience gives them serious business advantages, and their enormous profits have given them too much power. It's all "ends justify the means" fools.
- twiceaday 2y ago
  Its the media (or more generally group dynamics) too. One side exaggerates how nasty the other side is, which gets people outraged and engaged, then they act nasty to them because its 'justified.' It also creates a feedback loop where regardless of what the other side did originally they are now much more likely to be nasty to your side simply because you were nasty to them. Maximizing engagement like this necessarily destabilizes discourse. There is a huge monetary incentive to maximizing engagement, while there is only a mild philosophical one to stabilizing discourse, so guess which one loses.
  - beej71 2y ago
    IMHO this nails it. I finally caved to one of those "balanced news" sites because someone had a 50%-off sale. They have a feature where you can see news stories that are being ignored by either liberal or conservative outlets. It's damned fascinating, tempered by the fact that it's also damned terrifying that the populace as a whole is being controlled by it... and also that the future President of the US is trying to control it. But maybe that's just me falling into the trap TFA talks about. :)
- 2y ago
MrMcCall 2y ago
If Jesus does come back, he's gonna be pissed!
- OtomotO 2y ago
  And a Zombie
  - SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
    Lich fits better according to the stories. Zombies are mindless undead who eat the flesh of the living. Liches are kings sustained in unlife through magical means, and retain their minds.
nixosbestos 2y ago
> Nearly half of Christians in America believe that Jesus will “definitely” or “probably” return by 2050. lol, just lol.
- ralferoo 2y ago
  From the linked article in footnote [2] where that question is asked, the question above says that 2% of Christians answered "I don't believe in Jesus". Makes me wonder what they think a Christian is! But that specific question was restated wrongly. Again in footnote [2] and in the link itself, it says it was 14% of Christians who answered "definitely" or "probably" with another 37% saying "not sure". [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-fou...
  - jfengel 2y ago
    That 2% figure is under the Lizardman Constant of 4%, the number of people who will say just-plain-stupid stuff to a pollster. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant There are ways to justify that answer. One can believe in the moral tenets of Christianity, while also believing that its supposed leader was a fiction, or a conflation of real people. You can see the story as a myth, which is not the same as fiction. I don't know any such people, but it is a realistic version of Christian theology. But I suspect it's mostly just cranks lying to pollsters.
- block_dagger 2y ago
  I would laugh if I didn’t interpret this as a disturbing dearth of evidence-based critical thinking. Homo Sapiens has immense power over the world and other species and very little rationality to temper and guide that power.
- stvltvs 2y ago
  I was Christian in 2000 and we thought Jesus would come again definitely, probably then too. There have been soo many disappointed millenarians in the past 2000 years.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
The end times are nigh because the human fertility rate is plummeting and there won't be a rebound. Small children grow up in a society that favors low fertility, they internalize it as normal, and when mature they do not buck that trend. Human extinction looms.
- bittercynic 2y ago
  I see this sentiment expressed pretty frequently, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? Is it that stable/declining populations will cause political instability and all-out war? Something else? It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    >Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? In most of the western world, they dipped that high decades ago. Anything below 2.1 is sub-replacement. The US is below this (ignoring immigration, it is already shrinking). East Asia is way, way below it. China deliberately forced theirs to 1.0, but can't force it back the other direction. The Japanese population is already shrinking year-over-year. Europe's no better. Only central Africa is above replacement fertility, and they're trending downward sharply. >Is it that stable/declining populations will cause Declining populations cause something far worse than war. They cause fertility to drop further. It's a vicious downward spiral. >It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit. They decline in a very specific way, where there are far more older people than younger. So the young have to pay more into taxes to support a bunch of old geezers who can't work. Retirement age recedes into the distance faster than you can chase it. The economy falters, infrastructure can't be maintained (let alone built new).
    - bittercynic 2y ago
      I agree that there will be some challenges due to the population aging, but if our numbers are shrinking we won't need to build as much new housing and other infrastructure. Also, for all its faults, industrialized agriculture makes it possible to grow enough food for everyone with remarkably few workers. It seems like we currently have a glut of people looking for work, and having fewer working age people would make it much easier for people to negotiate better wages and working conditions.
tptacek 2y ago
Just a note that you can buy that "Visions of Daniel and John" apocalyptic timeline chart online from a bunch of places and, of course you should. What better way to greet guests?
mhog_hn 2y ago
The Matrix is a shared simulation in 1999, the ideal circumstances allegedly. In some aspects I would argue so as well - partially on the basis of our societies having a lower complexity amount back then. The last two decades we enabled high throughput information flows via real-time video streams, social media, news feeds, etc.. At what cost? Did we actually gain anything over the 1999s in exchange for all that complexity? The article talks about “good cup bad cup” and how negative news is much more impactful - again, at what cost did we enable all these information flows with potentially negative information? Will personalized AI agents allow us to reduce the complexity coming from these information flows?
vouaobrasil 2y ago
> If you have a vague feeling that your Bad Cup didn’t used to be so full, and then you conclude we’re slip-sliding toward catastrophe, you haven’t discovered anything. You’ve just taken your biases for a walk. Or maybe we are seeing unprecedented levels of CO2, cleared land, and population? I guess that's just bias too, then, right? An alternative explanation is that every time someone thought society was getting worse, it WAS, and here we are, at the worst point.
- dave4420 2y ago
  Just because we have a cognitive bias, it doesn’t mean that bias is leading us in the wrong direction on every topic. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It just means we have to be more careful when assessing evidence.
- lisper 2y ago
  > I guess that's just bias too, then, right? Yep. Compare to, say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages . > here we are, at the worst point Not even close. (But things are likely to change radically after Jan 20, so check back in a few months.)
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    None of that involves ecological damage, which is currently happening.
    - lisper 2y ago
      What difference does that make? Why does the mode of the catastrophe matter? The examples I cited actually killed half the population at the time. Nothing since has even come close.
      - vouaobrasil 2y ago
        Is that a bad thing? All other animals have population collapses from time to time and it redresses the balance. I don't see it as particularly catastrophic. Of course, now this reduces to how we define catastrophe, and we obviously have a difference. But I see a halving of the human population hardly a catastrophe at all, whereas the permanent extinction of species a much worse thing.
ndileas 2y ago
This is why its a wonderful thing, an act of rebellion and of bravery, to create something, to love someone, to laugh and smile at another human being. Yeah, the world feels terrible. Smile anyway!
aftbit 2y ago
I also believe that, as a broad trend, life gets harder, scarier, and more painful as you age, especially once you pass some critical threshold. Your personal experience of life colors your view of those around you, so you begin to think "the world is worse" when what you probably should think is "my life is worse".

29 points by danorama 2y ago

I would count the "times" as terrible if we chose leaders with the following characteristics: - lovers of themselves - lovers of money - boastful - proud - abusive - ungrateful - without love - unforgiving - slanderous - without self-control - brutal - not lovers of the good - treacherous - rash - conceited - lovers of pleasure - hypocritical I think we should have nothing to do with such people. Certainly we should not be electing them to office. That would be a terrible idea, IMO.

ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
Anybody with any sort of ambition will display those in some shape Edit: idk really, but toxic/fake positivity is not helpful in a competitve env, and to sales is just lying/over promising
- trescenzi 2y ago
  See Douglas Adams’ quote about electing leaders: > anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. -- Winston Churchill
    - drewcoo 2y ago
      Churchill said "_it has been said that_ democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time," so Churchill himself acknowledged that the quote wasn't his.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  > Anybody with any sort of ambition will display those in some shape There's an important difference between ambition for selfish gain and ambition to better help others. > but toxic/fake positivity is not helpful in a competitve env That's why I counsel real positivity that comes from having tuned one's moral compass towards compassion, or at least trying to. As to competitive environs, we would be much less wasteful and destructive if we cooperated instead of competing. > sales is just lying/over promising Merlin explained in Excalibur that honesty is the most important virtue via, "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world."
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > As to competitive environs, we would be much less wasteful and destructive if we cooperated instead of competing. The communist countries have some of the most polluted areas on the planet. > There's an important difference between ambition for selfish gain and ambition to better help others. Everybody is selfish. The beauty of the free market is it enables selfish behavior to help others. All attempts at creating selfless societies have resulted in misery and poverty.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      > The communist countries have some of the most polluted areas on the planet. They were not cooperating, my friend, they were manifesting a ruling class that was above the law and pillaged the land for personal gain and sometimes even for the state. > Everybody is selfish. We are only as selfish as we choose to be, likewise our sense of ethics is only as developed as the virtues we embrace. Yes, we begin life selfish and most of our cultures are selfishly oriented towards others, but these are all the result of the citizens' choices. And, yes, our beliefs are chosen as well, and are as adaptable as we like. > The beauty of the free market is it enables selfish behavior to help others. I would say, rather, that the free market is good at letting people act selfishly, for either good or ill. That's why I like my capitalism with fetters, plenty of fetters. But, yeah, capitalism that doesn't destroy the powerless is the best path forward. > All attempts at creating selfless societies have resulted in misery and poverty. No, most humans that say they're creating selfless societies are really just grifters who want to be the new royalty. Selfishness always results in misery on some level, for some person or persons. We can develop systems that reward those who innovate and improve our life on Earth, without jeopardizing our environment and the peace among people. We could choose that, my friend. The problem is that most people don't care enough about others to be generous. We could each choose to learn how to be virtuous and then dedicate ourselves to helping implement a compassionate, sensible, and sustainable world society. All that's holding us back is our unwillingness to admit we each have the ability to be a part of the solution, as opposed to our currently sadass status quo.
WalterBright 2y ago
"such people" are all of us.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  We all start that way, both 50% selfish and 50% selfless, but we are each capable of self-evolving our selfish vices into their corresponding compassionate virtues. I consider the greatest song of all time to be "Love is the Truth" by Jack White, whose chorus is: It's the right thing to do And you know it And it's inside of you So just show it Love is the truth And it's inside of you (bop ba ba ba ba) It's the right thing to do We each have the choice to embrace greater compassion for others in our lives. That thing inside us that tells us we can't, or that guy's a liar, or he's trying to convert you to his religion, or he's trying to get your money -- that thing is the liar. It is arguing against our human race's embracing love, and is brutally successful at convincing us to act out of our selfish ego, which is what it spurns and goads. It is pleading for its life, that selfish ego inside each of us. It knows that embracing the Path of Love, it will wither away and be utterly replaced by the joy of loving service to all those we come into contact with. That negative force presses upon our thoughts and feelings, and is our downfall should we not fight it and try to become virtuous. We must try with all our heart, my friend, and our only hope is to beseech the Creator of this magnificent and mysterious universe. "The Way goes in." --Rumi
TrackerFF 2y ago
That's narcissism. The thing with narcissists is that they're extremely confident. People love confident leaders, even if they're terrible in every other way. As the recent US election has shown, it's not what you say - but how you say it, that counts. Hell, you see this with startups, too. When a founder appears extremely passionate and enthusiastic, pitching something as if they're at the top of the world, investors are willing to suspend their disbelief. One can get away with lots of things, if you're just confident enough.
- ElatedOwl 2y ago
  > As the recent US election has shown, it's not what you say - but how you say it, that counts. Are you implying that Biden spoke with more confidence than Trump, but Harris did not?
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Confidence game, or "con game" as we call it in english, relies on the gullibility of the mark, the target of the swindle. We can only hone our perception of what people are really up to by sharpening our own moral compass and then acting virtuously as an act of volitional self-evolution. Once one begins learning how to be more virtuous and behaves appropriately, one gets better at recognizing the vices other people manifest, e.g.: greed, dishonesty, hate, enmity, jealousy/envy, ... But, yeah, they sure do take the rubes for a ride, don't they? Yes, narcissism is the apotheosis of selfishness. Compassion for others is the most important tool we have to combat its tendencies within our own hearts and minds. And, yes, we all have selfishness in us, and it is a long road to rid ourselves of it all, though I'm not speaking from even within sight of that glorious achievement.
rsyring 2y ago
I think you missed some of the most important bits at the end: > But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. (1 Tim 3, ESV) For good or for bad, Judeo Christian morality was always rooted in a fear of God. As the belief in God has warped and wained away from biblical moorings, we shouldn't be surprised that morality has gone with it. To such an extent that, seemingly, moral character has very little impact when evaluating leaders, as long as other ideological boxes are checked. On the other hand, given the context of this writing, it seems that these kinds of people are always present... in all times and all cultures. So maybe there isn't so much uniquely bad about our current times? I don't know, just wondering out loud.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  > Judeo Christian morality was always rooted in a fear of God The Great(est) Command(ment) is "To love God with all your being, and then love your neighbor as yourself." Society improves a little when someone chooses to not do bad because they're afraid to get punished. Society improves much more when someone chooses to do good by having evolved their sense of ethics and self-control. Our most important human ability, and the reason we have a {moral compass, mind, and free will} is our ability to self-evolve our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors out of the selfish and animalistic towards the compassionate and humanitarian. Our Creator loves us and prefers us to live in peace and prosperity, but we must choose to implement such a societal system that better rewards virtue and minimizes the harms caused from vice. And such a system must be our choice (i.e. democracy) because there must be no compulsion in religion (which pervades life as an ethos of compassionately positive contribution to the whole). > As the belief in God has warped and wained away from biblical moorings, we shouldn't be surprised that morality has gone with it. To such an extent that, seemingly, moral character has very little impact when evaluating leaders, as long as other ideological boxes are checked. Yes, that is indeed the case, but Christianity is no more or less guilty than most all of the other religions, their majorities taking the selfishly divisive road over the compassionately unifying road. > it seems that these kinds of people are always present... in all times and all cultures. As we live and breath, my friend. We are each those people, to more or less extent as per the predilections of our individual nature and those of the cultures we inhabit. The key is that we all(1) have the power both how to learn to be better as well as to choose to be better. [(1) There are the mentally ill and physically damaged and developmentally disabled folks that do not have the power to control themselves, but they are very rare.] The universe helps, though, in that the human-only Law of Karma determines our happiness or unhappiness by how we have treated others. It is the applied aspect of "You reap what you sow." It is our environment's feedback system to let us know if we've been naughty or nice, whether we are headed in the right direction or not. > So maybe there isn't so much uniquely bad about our current times? Not for individual human beings; vice is vice and virtue is virtue and we have many inertias against our becoming better. But our technological progress has facilitated greater destruction to the Earth via war and pollution. It drives a more efficient systematic greed that oppresses the poor more brutally, and the rich have used their power to hire attorneys to craft the laws that let them rise above other human beings like royalty. The codifying of the MBA ethos that changed the "personnel" department into "human resources" is quite the tell.

zombiwoof 2y ago

Explains MAGA

dave4420 2y ago
Not really. Why now? Why not thirty years ago, or thirty years hence?
readthenotes1 2y ago
I knew someone who thought that Donald Trump is literally the anti-Christ and that we were in the end times. Sometime after Covid, hen turned atheist. Still has incredible anxiety though.

mfuzzey 2y ago

> lead people to believe that humans are getting nastier over time, even when they’re not Most people aren't nasty or getting nastier but nasty people are likely over represented in those with power and there seems to be a current swing to having more such people getting into positions of power. Added to that is that modern technology and weapons make it easier for a few "bad apples" in power to cause more grief to more people than before.

MrMcCall 2y ago
Their lawyers have recrafted the laws/regulations/courts that used to keep them in check. And now it's a combination of the callously indifferent and the belligerently selfish. Their willingness to ignore their conscience gives them serious business advantages, and their enormous profits have given them too much power. It's all "ends justify the means" fools.
twiceaday 2y ago
Its the media (or more generally group dynamics) too. One side exaggerates how nasty the other side is, which gets people outraged and engaged, then they act nasty to them because its 'justified.' It also creates a feedback loop where regardless of what the other side did originally they are now much more likely to be nasty to your side simply because you were nasty to them. Maximizing engagement like this necessarily destabilizes discourse. There is a huge monetary incentive to maximizing engagement, while there is only a mild philosophical one to stabilizing discourse, so guess which one loses.
- beej71 2y ago
  IMHO this nails it. I finally caved to one of those "balanced news" sites because someone had a 50%-off sale. They have a feature where you can see news stories that are being ignored by either liberal or conservative outlets. It's damned fascinating, tempered by the fact that it's also damned terrifying that the populace as a whole is being controlled by it... and also that the future President of the US is trying to control it. But maybe that's just me falling into the trap TFA talks about. :)
2y ago

MrMcCall 2y ago

If Jesus does come back, he's gonna be pissed!

OtomotO 2y ago
And a Zombie
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  Lich fits better according to the stories. Zombies are mindless undead who eat the flesh of the living. Liches are kings sustained in unlife through magical means, and retain their minds.

nixosbestos 2y ago

> Nearly half of Christians in America believe that Jesus will “definitely” or “probably” return by 2050. lol, just lol.

ralferoo 2y ago
From the linked article in footnote [2] where that question is asked, the question above says that 2% of Christians answered "I don't believe in Jesus". Makes me wonder what they think a Christian is! But that specific question was restated wrongly. Again in footnote [2] and in the link itself, it says it was 14% of Christians who answered "definitely" or "probably" with another 37% saying "not sure". [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-fou...
- jfengel 2y ago
  That 2% figure is under the Lizardman Constant of 4%, the number of people who will say just-plain-stupid stuff to a pollster. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant There are ways to justify that answer. One can believe in the moral tenets of Christianity, while also believing that its supposed leader was a fiction, or a conflation of real people. You can see the story as a myth, which is not the same as fiction. I don't know any such people, but it is a realistic version of Christian theology. But I suspect it's mostly just cranks lying to pollsters.
block_dagger 2y ago
I would laugh if I didn’t interpret this as a disturbing dearth of evidence-based critical thinking. Homo Sapiens has immense power over the world and other species and very little rationality to temper and guide that power.
stvltvs 2y ago
I was Christian in 2000 and we thought Jesus would come again definitely, probably then too. There have been soo many disappointed millenarians in the past 2000 years.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

The end times are nigh because the human fertility rate is plummeting and there won't be a rebound. Small children grow up in a society that favors low fertility, they internalize it as normal, and when mature they do not buck that trend. Human extinction looms.

bittercynic 2y ago
I see this sentiment expressed pretty frequently, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? Is it that stable/declining populations will cause political instability and all-out war? Something else? It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >Are fertility rates expected to dip so low that humans will simply die out? In most of the western world, they dipped that high decades ago. Anything below 2.1 is sub-replacement. The US is below this (ignoring immigration, it is already shrinking). East Asia is way, way below it. China deliberately forced theirs to 1.0, but can't force it back the other direction. The Japanese population is already shrinking year-over-year. Europe's no better. Only central Africa is above replacement fertility, and they're trending downward sharply. >Is it that stable/declining populations will cause Declining populations cause something far worse than war. They cause fertility to drop further. It's a vicious downward spiral. >It seems to me some of our worst problems would ease up if populations declined a bit. They decline in a very specific way, where there are far more older people than younger. So the young have to pay more into taxes to support a bunch of old geezers who can't work. Retirement age recedes into the distance faster than you can chase it. The economy falters, infrastructure can't be maintained (let alone built new).
  - bittercynic 2y ago
    I agree that there will be some challenges due to the population aging, but if our numbers are shrinking we won't need to build as much new housing and other infrastructure. Also, for all its faults, industrialized agriculture makes it possible to grow enough food for everyone with remarkably few workers. It seems like we currently have a glut of people looking for work, and having fewer working age people would make it much easier for people to negotiate better wages and working conditions.

tptacek 2y ago

Just a note that you can buy that "Visions of Daniel and John" apocalyptic timeline chart online from a bunch of places and, of course you should. What better way to greet guests?

mhog_hn 2y ago

The Matrix is a shared simulation in 1999, the ideal circumstances allegedly. In some aspects I would argue so as well - partially on the basis of our societies having a lower complexity amount back then. The last two decades we enabled high throughput information flows via real-time video streams, social media, news feeds, etc.. At what cost? Did we actually gain anything over the 1999s in exchange for all that complexity? The article talks about “good cup bad cup” and how negative news is much more impactful - again, at what cost did we enable all these information flows with potentially negative information? Will personalized AI agents allow us to reduce the complexity coming from these information flows?

vouaobrasil 2y ago

> If you have a vague feeling that your Bad Cup didn’t used to be so full, and then you conclude we’re slip-sliding toward catastrophe, you haven’t discovered anything. You’ve just taken your biases for a walk. Or maybe we are seeing unprecedented levels of CO2, cleared land, and population? I guess that's just bias too, then, right? An alternative explanation is that every time someone thought society was getting worse, it WAS, and here we are, at the worst point.

dave4420 2y ago
Just because we have a cognitive bias, it doesn’t mean that bias is leading us in the wrong direction on every topic. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It just means we have to be more careful when assessing evidence.
lisper 2y ago
> I guess that's just bias too, then, right? Yep. Compare to, say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages . > here we are, at the worst point Not even close. (But things are likely to change radically after Jan 20, so check back in a few months.)
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  None of that involves ecological damage, which is currently happening.
  - lisper 2y ago
    What difference does that make? Why does the mode of the catastrophe matter? The examples I cited actually killed half the population at the time. Nothing since has even come close.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Is that a bad thing? All other animals have population collapses from time to time and it redresses the balance. I don't see it as particularly catastrophic. Of course, now this reduces to how we define catastrophe, and we obviously have a difference. But I see a halving of the human population hardly a catastrophe at all, whereas the permanent extinction of species a much worse thing.

ndileas 2y ago

This is why its a wonderful thing, an act of rebellion and of bravery, to create something, to love someone, to laugh and smile at another human being. Yeah, the world feels terrible. Smile anyway!

aftbit 2y ago

I also believe that, as a broad trend, life gets harder, scarier, and more painful as you age, especially once you pass some critical threshold. Your personal experience of life colors your view of those around you, so you begin to think "the world is worse" when what you probably should think is "my life is worse".