How we survive in the Age of the Internet

August 28, 2016 1:40 PM

Hope, Fear, and Exhaustion in a Changing World - Yonatan Zunger The world really is in trouble, and to top it off we’re more aware of it than ever before. We’ve acquired a powerful prosthetic conscience, and we’re trying to learn how to live with the damned thing. Sometimes we do well as a result, and sometimes we do badly, so overwhelmed by it that we just want to tell everyone else to go die in a fire and not care about their problems, no matter how genuine they might be.
And yet: we are slowly learning to live with it.
posted by CrystalDave (13 comments total)

Climate change has been the major problem of our world for over 40 years, but we are only just starting to pay attention to it. It's basically too late to do anything about any of it, and we continue to ignore it. I'm glad I don't have children, because any kids alive today are going to have challenges to their existence I am happy I won't be around to witness.

We can slowly learn how to live with all the whatever bullshit there is on this planet, but climate change trumps it all.
posted by hippybear at 1:55 PM on August 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

I love the idea of journalism being our "prosthetic conscience." It really is exhausting to have an over-active conscience. It's a miserable way to live, actually, because no one is perfect, and an over-active conscience doesn't change that, it juat makes you feel worse about the mistakes you still make, the bad stuff you still do. And it also makes you feel bad about situations that aren't your fault at all, if you do anything less than bankrupt yourself trying to help. See for instance the "do-gooder" in this previous Metafilter FPP.

And now we're imposing that kind of conscience on everyone. And making everyone miserable? I guess that explains some of the backlash against "social justice warriors." And yet who would want to live in a society without a conscience?
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:00 PM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Climate change has been the major problem of our world for over 40 years

Don't worry, the leaders of the future are for it so it'll be fine.
posted by effbot at 3:36 PM on August 28, 2016

I have a fundamental disagreement with the thesis that the world is going to shit. As a whole, compared to 50 years ago, the world is less violent, fewer people die in combat, extreme poverty is way down, infant and mother mortality is dramatically improving, and literacy is on the rise. Yes, it's true, in America there is a growing income gap that enriches a tiny fraction of the population while leaving everyone else to suffer. But, contrary to popular belief, America is not the world.
posted by xyzzy at 3:44 PM on August 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

Strange, I could swear we're living longer lives than ever before with child mortality being a fraction of it once was and previously fatal and debilitating diseases being regularly being thwarted during the longest period of comparative peace in recorded history with more of the world being governed under democratic systems that at any other time. Oh, and with virtually instantaneous access to all the worlds recorded knowledge and the ability to talk to our loved ones instantly anywhere of the planet for at a trivial cost. If you're poor in the first world, you are literally the richest poor person in history. For most people the world is the greatest its ever been. Ever. When were these halcyon days we've departed from?
posted by Damienmce at 3:44 PM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Averages don't always meaningfully reflect lived reality. All those statistics on how much better off the world is could very easily be based on deliberately skewed and cherry picked metrics, promulgated by the positive thinking brigade, which has an outsize influence on most of our larger media outlets and the culture generally, and there's no shortage of counterpoints and statistics that say otherwise. And global warming really is making the world worse, potentially uninhabitable for humans within a few decades. How is that better?
posted by saulgoodman at 3:51 PM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have a fundamental disagreement with the thesis that the world is going to shit.

Everything you say is absolutely true. But all those things are about people. The actual world is going to shit. Deforestation, Plastics in the Ocean, overfishing, pretty much any animal we don't farm is endangered... all this in a matter of decades really. I read somewhere we've killed something like 50% of biodiversity in 40 years. That's some serious destruction right there.

That's leaving out the one big thing that will affect every single one of us, probably sooner than we would like. Climate change.

The world is most certainly going to shit.
posted by twistedonion at 3:58 PM on August 28, 2016

When were these halcyon days we've departed from?

When white men could exert their authority without being challenged.

Have you noticed that the people who are the most Hopless Doom and Gloom about Global Climate Change overwhelmingly tend to be white men? Makes me think all the "it's too late"rhetoric is sublimated anxiety about other change.
posted by happyroach at 4:10 PM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's leaving out the one big thing that will affect every single one of us, probably sooner than we would like. Climate change.

If the article were primarily about climate change, I could definitely have that conversation and I would probably be mostly on your side. But this article is primarily about the perceived reality mentioned up thread, and I stand by my conviction that feelings aren't facts. If the author had stuck with the section about perceived reality and avoided the ridiculous claim that "the world" is going to shit followed mostly by arguments about relative economic prosperity, I would be more inclined to agree with you and the author.
posted by xyzzy at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Kardashians. What about the Kardashians? /sarcasm

(prosthetic conscience, indeed)
posted by Artful Codger at 4:14 PM on August 28, 2016

All those statistics on how much better off the world is could very easily be based on deliberately skewed and cherry picked metrics, promulgated by the positive thinking brigade, which has an outsize influence on most of our larger media outlets and the culture generally, and there's no shortage of counterpoints and statistics that say otherwise.

The "positive thinking brigade" has an outsize influence on our media? What media are you watching? When I turn on the news, it's wall-to-wall doom and gloom.
posted by armadillo1224 at 4:15 PM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

happyroach

Have you noticed that the people who are the most Hopless Doom and Gloom about Global Climate Change overwhelmingly tend to be white men?

I might have noticed that, but then the last book I read on the topic was by Naomi Klein who appears not to be a white man. She also appears fairly gloom and doom herself.

Then I heard about someone's project documenting the response to the Paris talks in the Maldives, with President Mohamed Nasheed and Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon commenting. They appear to not be white men, or even both men. I believe they give their children 50% chance of having a country to live in.

And the last newspaper article I read about it referenced a Sioux protest about a proposed pipeline across their land. They appear not to be white men.

Way to twist a complex global issue, involving people from the first world to the third world in both consequences and responses, into a version of campus politics
posted by C.A.S. at 4:30 PM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Have you noticed that the people who are the most Hopless Doom and Gloom about Global Climate Change overwhelmingly tend to be white men?

And here I thought it was the polar bears.

always something to learn here on metafilter
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:33 PM on August 28, 2016