"We are here because we cooperated."
December 15, 2019 5:00 PM   Subscribe

 
So am I reading this wrong or is the second one basically: accept your fate, repent of your sins, and the real treasure will be the friends you make (not) surviving the gigadeaths?
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:39 PM on December 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


That's not really what I took from it at all. What did you expect from a scientist who's been studying these issues for 30+ years, some pollyanna candy coating? 'It's going to be fine'? I don't think anyone thinks it's going to be fine, and this is a realistic discussion of the emotional ramifications of that reality.

It's interesting to me because she touches on a lot of topical issues of philosophy etc.

What's interesting is that I've come to understand uncertainty as a necessary condition for hope. If you're perfectly certain that “It’s going to be fine” or “It’s going to be hell,” you don’t need hope, because you know exactly what’s going to happen.

And what people like Trump and other radical right-wingers in particular promise is a kind of certainty: “America is going to be great again, it’s going to be purely white, and we’re going to have great economy and we’re the best.” That’s all a form of certainty.


Remarkable that not only is Trumpism a form of manufactured hope, but a lot of people who probably consider themselves 'leftists', and those folks who take a stance with science in opposition to Trump, also frequently tend to seem VERY uncomfortable with uncertainty. I'm thinking in particular of attitudes towards free will for example, people who subscribe to the perspective of scientism tend to be averse to saying "we just don't know".
posted by viborg at 9:17 PM on December 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


I've been a climate pessimist for a long time, and have been visualizing the literal end of humanity within the next generation or two.
Recently though I read an apocalyptic "Shower Thought", and it turned my thinking 180 degrees.
On its surface, it sounds horrible "If WW3 (or climate catastrophe) killed one million people every day, it would still take 21 years to wipe out the human race."
And then I realized something "positive". The very worst case scenario is billions of people that will soon perish by mass flooding, drought, sea level rising, temperature change and the global wars for resources that all these disasters will foster. Everything will change, infrastructures will be destroyed, and - this phase will surely start in our very own lifetime. The upcoming holocaust will decimate nearly all that we know & love today.
But eventually, "Some" people will survive, maybe 100 million or less, maybe 2 billion or more, but some will surely live. Their lives may be as different from ours, as ours are different from the Romans or the Greeks. But with much less people, the world will again become much more manageable. Civilizations may center around the poles, there may not be any bio-diversity or jungles left, etc. But the humans will continue, one way or another. Thus thinking about the future now does not depress me any more.
It will be interesting to speculate what lessons will the citizens of 2100 gain from that.
(And I also think that the most valuable skill young people today should acquire is learning to survive in such environment.)
posted by growabrain at 4:59 AM on December 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


Yep, humans will survive until they can't. Like all animals. We won't be here in a few hundred thousand years and we know that, even if many deny it. Let's make those years as kind as we can, let's make the suffering as small as we can.
posted by agregoli at 7:57 AM on December 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm thinking in particular of attitudes towards free will for example, people who subscribe to the perspective of scientism tend to be averse to saying "we just don't know".

Bothsidesism, in context - admittedly this can result in, say, Stalin or the Khmer Rouge, but in the present US, and as the parent of two Jewish children, I'm fairly confident it isn't going to produce actual Nazis, as it obviously is on the right.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:24 PM on December 16, 2019


I'm at that terrible midpoint where I feel nothing will stop unfathomable amounts of the poorest people dying but still have feelings like horror and rage about it. I'm not hopeful but I'm not numb either. It's the worst.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 8:05 AM on December 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm thinking in particular of attitudes towards free will for example, people who subscribe to the perspective of scientism tend to be averse to saying "we just don't know".

People tend to be averse to saying "we just don't know", period. After watching people struggle with Zen & Buddhism for the last 20-odd years, one could suggest that the main benefit (and main struggle) is learning to be ok with "I just don't know".
posted by sneebler at 8:45 AM on December 20, 2019


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