This is actually touching on a real new approach to mental healthcare, which is just accepting that “life is shit” and you’re kinda on your own to find meaning in it, or get to the next high-point that makes it worth living.
We have to stop expecting things to be stable, normal and comfortable. We had a good, smooth run, things are going back to normal now.
Humanity having enough power that their mistakes can destroy the world isn’t normal. Our failure tolerances were calibrated in a world where the damage we did to nature was temporary. That’s not true anymore; we either get our act together now or go extinct.
Humanity having enough power that their mistakes can destroy the world isn’t normal.
As someone born in the cold war, I can’t relate. It’s always been this way as long as I’ve been alive, so if something has been a way as long as anyone can remember, I think it’s pretty safe to call it “normal” at least for our species. This is what we do, this is how we operate.
I really believe if we accepted that our human nature gives us a lot of very bad baggage and our entire conscious experience is often an illusion assembled by millions of years of evolution, and that we may never rise above our instincts, we actually might start making progress towards a more equitable future.
Kinda like when you’re an alcoholic or other kind of addict, if you finally accept that you have a problem, you learn eventually that you can’t trust yourself so you make measures ahead of time like hiding your wallet, disabling your credit card, etc. It’s wild that a lot of people consider very successful tactics like this to be a “cop out” and live in this delusion that we “should be better” and can somehow rise above our own natures. Like telling a fish it can fly if it really, really tries hard enough. It’s setting you up for failures and frustrations.
We ain’t going “extinct” and people quite frankly need to realize that “extinction” is an incredibly low bar to clear. Billions will die and millennia of suffering lay before us, but the human species will be a-ok, especially if our industrial civilizations collapse. It’s a fire that’ll burn itself out, and thus history will continue.
The human species isn’t people, but a term to describe our shared code; code that isn’t you or the people you love. We are more than just our long term machinery. If we only focus on the forest, we miss the well being of the trees. I’d rather all our bloodlines end and us live lives focused on ourselves, than have an eternity of worshipping constructs that force us to live for them.
The Earth maintains homeostasis. Past 2 degrees warming, the current homeostasis systems break down. We don’t know where the next homeostasis point is. It’s probably a lot worse. It’ll keep getting worse past the point we stop making it worse. Most of the species on earth will go extinct.
When life first boomed enough to trigger a multi million year long ice age, it bounced back and established a new homeostasis. The life that caused it did not go “extinct,” instead evolving to not be the architects of its own demise. When homeostasis is broken, evolution uses mass death and heavy handed selection pressures to reestablish it.
Unless basically all large multicellular life goes extinct, humanity will continue. Industrial civilization will tear itself apart from environmentally triggered human conflict before it could ensure that.
ur a goof. Like i said, you’re missing the trees focused on the forest. It literally doesn’t matter if humans live or not bc your foolish behind is dead either way
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Excellent psychological advice in the form of prayer. The fact that life is shit is one of things ypu cannot change. The wisdom to know the difference is the real skill.
This is actually touching on a real new approach to mental healthcare, which is just accepting that “life is shit” and you’re kinda on your own to find meaning in it, or get to the next high-point that makes it worth living.
We have to stop expecting things to be stable, normal and comfortable. We had a good, smooth run, things are going back to normal now.
Humanity having enough power that their mistakes can destroy the world isn’t normal. Our failure tolerances were calibrated in a world where the damage we did to nature was temporary. That’s not true anymore; we either get our act together now or go extinct.
As someone born in the cold war, I can’t relate. It’s always been this way as long as I’ve been alive, so if something has been a way as long as anyone can remember, I think it’s pretty safe to call it “normal” at least for our species. This is what we do, this is how we operate.
I really believe if we accepted that our human nature gives us a lot of very bad baggage and our entire conscious experience is often an illusion assembled by millions of years of evolution, and that we may never rise above our instincts, we actually might start making progress towards a more equitable future.
Kinda like when you’re an alcoholic or other kind of addict, if you finally accept that you have a problem, you learn eventually that you can’t trust yourself so you make measures ahead of time like hiding your wallet, disabling your credit card, etc. It’s wild that a lot of people consider very successful tactics like this to be a “cop out” and live in this delusion that we “should be better” and can somehow rise above our own natures. Like telling a fish it can fly if it really, really tries hard enough. It’s setting you up for failures and frustrations.
We ain’t going “extinct” and people quite frankly need to realize that “extinction” is an incredibly low bar to clear. Billions will die and millennia of suffering lay before us, but the human species will be a-ok, especially if our industrial civilizations collapse. It’s a fire that’ll burn itself out, and thus history will continue.
The human species isn’t people, but a term to describe our shared code; code that isn’t you or the people you love. We are more than just our long term machinery. If we only focus on the forest, we miss the well being of the trees. I’d rather all our bloodlines end and us live lives focused on ourselves, than have an eternity of worshipping constructs that force us to live for them.
The Earth maintains homeostasis. Past 2 degrees warming, the current homeostasis systems break down. We don’t know where the next homeostasis point is. It’s probably a lot worse. It’ll keep getting worse past the point we stop making it worse. Most of the species on earth will go extinct.
FTFY
When life first boomed enough to trigger a multi million year long ice age, it bounced back and established a new homeostasis. The life that caused it did not go “extinct,” instead evolving to not be the architects of its own demise. When homeostasis is broken, evolution uses mass death and heavy handed selection pressures to reestablish it.
Unless basically all large multicellular life goes extinct, humanity will continue. Industrial civilization will tear itself apart from environmentally triggered human conflict before it could ensure that.
There’s no guarantee mammals will fill the new niches. Personally, I think we’re going to have dinosaurs again. They like hot weather.
ur a goof. Like i said, you’re missing the trees focused on the forest. It literally doesn’t matter if humans live or not bc your foolish behind is dead either way
Putting it this way kind of makes it sound like modern therapy has reinvented Buddhism.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Excellent psychological advice in the form of prayer. The fact that life is shit is one of things ypu cannot change. The wisdom to know the difference is the real skill.
Shit man. This hits home way too hard.