The shit of the 21st century is demotivating me to do... pretty much anything

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

I find it interesting that William Morris (a Marxist), David Graeber (author of Bullshit Jobs), Ayn Rand (author of Atlas Shrugged and other works), and Douglas Adams (who in his Hitchhiker’s series refers to a planet that basically tricked all their middlemen - telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultant - to leave) all come from very different philosophies, and yet al seem to share a common theme - that there are large segments of modern society consisting of workers who perform little to no meaningful work, and yet are significantly (sometimes grotesquely) compensated for it.

As “real work” (which I would define and making, building, or running things that people actually need to live - ie food production, construction, health care, etc) gets automated, outsourced, or otherwise abstracted out of people’s day to day lives, it gets harder to find work that feels actually valuable. So people tend to look for work that is more lucrative. Even if the work is enjoyable, much of it isn’t vary useful. I mean how many “influencers” or digital designers does society really need?

I think maybe it also gets harder to justify such high levels of income inequality if so many people are making so much money doing bullshit work. Not like I’m some Marxist or anything, but you’re telling me society can’t afford proper health care because we need to play thousands of engineers who work in search engine tech, social media, and media streaming over $300k a year? Forget the engineers, as they actually make something. How about what they pay all their Agile Coaches, Vice Presidents of Inclusion, Customer Success Directors and whoever else they have working there?

Although maybe not so much these past few months.

But, people become emotionally vested in their careers, regardless of how dumb they might be. I was on a LinkedIn board the other day and a bunch of digital creative and marketing types were bemoaning how some coffee chain was cutting spending on creative marketing bullshit. I found it adorable that in the complex set of activities that has to take place to take a coffee bean from the jungles of equatorial wherever to get it to their stupid hipster drink in whatever chain coffee shop they frequent in whatever overpriced gentrified neighborhood they live in, from their perspective the most important thing was what logo appears on the cup.

122

You’re correct that they have been very rarely correct. For western civilization I’d suggest that the fall of the western Roman Empire was the most recent time the doom sayers were correct**. Unfortunately I think we may very well be at such a point, mostly due to the lack of willingness to do anything about global warming.

** Yes, I know that for other civilizations there have been more recent crises, such as what happened to Native Americans following Columbus’s journeys.

123

I’m not sure what counts as doom and gloom–saying the world is going to end? That hasn’t happened yet. But the following things were worthy of “doom and gloom,” I think (regardless of whether they were predicted or not):

• WWI
• Spanish flu pandemic
• The Great Depression
• WWII
• Vietnam War
• 9/11 and our ensuing wars of choice
• Economic collapse of 2007-2008
• Covid pandemic

And that’s just stuff involving/caused by the US. I’m not even getting into the awful things the commies did to themselves.

I’m actually probably less doom and gloom than most Liberals in that I think climate change is something that was inevitable due to our ignorance of what carbon emissions would cause (i.e., self-flagellation is meaningless), and we need to handle it once with technology and social change. Yes, it’s going to be painful, but I don’t think cataclysm is around the corner (i.e., human extinction), and I think we’ll have things sorted in the next 100 years.

I lurk on dailykos.com, but I don’t comment there because I’m not into the spirit of a lot of the comments (a lot are great, a lot are not). But I have literally seen people gather in the comments in palpable numbers (10 or so people) come together and discuss how they think climate change was going to kill off the human race in 5 or 10 years. One person doubted that she would make it to 2026.

I think climate change has become a substitute religion for a lot of people on the left, with the same sin and (potential) redemption arc we see in Christianity. We have sinned against Gaia, and we are being punished.

I’m curious how many people who have extreme takes on climate change are atheists. If one is an atheist, then one would have to recognize that the planet, universe, etc., has no opinion or intention concerning the proper temperature of the earth. We are alone here, and we are using and managing the planet and its contents for our benefit. If we believe that we should be “environmentally friendly/responsible,” then that’s just our own feeling, nothing more. If we believe that humans hurt the planet and should go extinct, that too is just an opinion, one that nothing outside ourselves (barring the discovery of ETs) could ever validate.

As a spiritual person, I do think there is a right and wrong in these matters, and we have in general been poor stewards of the planet over the past several hundred years. But I also think that the self-hating approach to dealing with climate change is unproductive. Let’s just do better.

124

By the way, I’m grateful that so many people have participated in this thread. Thank you!

Quite relevant to the topic and as yet not much discussed is this: the leadership failures extend to companies these days. Oh how they do:

• Elon Musk has become a right-wing simpleton. He’s destroying Twitter and doing major damage to Tesla as well, whose stock has majorly tanked.

• Poor Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook (“Meta,” smh) is a laughingstock, and its stock is in the tank as well. No vision, no future.

• Apple is a well run (in some sense), very rich company, but it’s going on 9 years since its last major product launch, the Apple Watch in 2014.

• Is Google even well run? It certainly doesn’t do a good job with YouTube.

• In my line of work, I see a lot of Japanese companies from the inside (such peeks as I get from doing translation and writing for them). I am a Toyota fan, though I would hardly call the company exciting these days. The rest of the big guys have no particular vision, even if they are in the black.

Silicon Valley has lost its luster, even as anything else has failed to appear as the Next Big Thing. Why is this? Because we have plucked the low-hanging fruit of technology, and its going to be incremental advances for the foreseeable future. (I think the next big discovery is going to be a source of energy that is essentially free with minimal environmental consequences, but as to when that happens is anybody’s guess. Probably in the next 100 years or so.)

125

As a non-spiritual person, I feel this way too.

But science does. The proper temperature of the earth, at least for the current human population is one that is sustainable and won’t melt the ice caps and flood the coastal cities. (and devastate agriculture, cause cataclysmic climate events, and further hasten the extinction of species.)

126

When I was a teenager more than 50 years ago I saw that we were destroying our planet and while a few discrete problems were addressed (ozone layer, acid rain, smog in some countries), the trajectory has always been toward worse and worse and ever worse. “Let’s just do better” is a joke. The odds are on irrevocable and devastating damage.

I’m a practicing Christian. I believe in free will, and I’m watching what free will is doing. I don’t believe that we’ll be all dead in ten years (although I may be), but the end times are probably quite close. There ain’t no redemption arc for Earth.

If you think people who see how bad things are going to get imminently are ‘self-hating atheists’, you are utterly delusional.

127

Science can tell us (we hope) what level of emissions will produce what temperature, etc. That’s an “is” without an “ought.” It’s up to humans to decide what is best for us and the planet.

I think the fact that climate change is anthropogenic distorts the issue. Let’s say we weren’t to blame at all and we knew that increased CO2 in the atmosphere was due to another cause. We would still be faced with the same choice as to what to do, since (as atheists should believe) nature has no intentions. We might decide to sequester carbon, etc., as an intervention against change that was happening naturally.

128

Welcome back!

Why is “just do better” a joke? I’m saying that we need to do better (a lot better, in fact) and beating ourselves up about it does no good. The planet didn’t come with an instruction manual telling us not to reproduce beyond a certain population or not to invent the internal combustion engine. That ain’t in the Bible, either.

There has indeed been irrevocable damage, such as the loss of species. As for “devastating,” I think it’s going to cause turmoil but not result in mass death of humans.

People want to say they believe in science, but most climate scientists don’t predict such an apocalypse.

You have taken bits and pieces of what I did say and created something wholly new!

129

That’s true to a point. But if we caused it, and we knew how we were causing it, then we might have a better idea how to stop causing it. I don’t have a sense that we’re “blaming” humans just for venting our anger. We’re trying to figure out why this is happening as a first step leading to stopping doing the things that cause it.

130

Are you kidding me? You really think we’re wondering what caused all this? Holy fucking shit. Words fail me.

131

No. We were having a hypothetical discussion based on this:

I’m firmly on board with “human activity is the cause of climate change.”

132

I think the fact that we know we’re causing sets up the “sin and redemption” template that isn’t helping us. A corollary of that template is that those who don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change are also to blame–Republicans are destroying the planet right now, and if only they believed, we could solve this!

It’s fine to be frustrated with those who don’t believe and get in the way. We should patiently and maturely counteract that. Instead, we on the left end up doing nothing while pissing and moaning about the belief systems of people on the right.

The ship is big and slow-moving, and counteracting climate change is going to take a concerted global effort spanning decades. That will be true even if the “bad people” stop being bad.

133

It will happen faster if bad people stop being bad.
And faster is necessary.
Ergo, bad people need to get on board.

134

Duuude, I politely request a bit of reading comprehension on your part. You are distorting and misunderstanding everything I say–and seem to be getting pretty worked up about it.

135

The difference between global warming and those other events you mentioned is that global warming has the potential to significantly worsen the lifestyle of the vast majority of humans on the entire planet for multiple generations. Even WWI (IMHO the worst of the events on the list you mention) is a nothing-burger compared to the possibility that every coastal city on the entire planet will be inundated, necessitating the migration of billions of people. Then there’s the additional loss of fertile land around that will make starvation worse. And many other effects which will likely worsen the lifestyle of humanity as a whole, not just for a year or even a decade, but likely for centuries to come. That’s why I listed the collapse of the western Roman Empire as the closest comparable situation.

As for what the planet itself thinks about it, obviously the answer is that it doesn’t. It’ll just keep obeying the laws of nature, and whatever happens to the human species happens. The Earth is just a ball of rock, it doesn’t have any sort of sentience to care about us.

136

Just as god intended. :wink:

137

I agree that we need to get control of carbon emissions and everything we put into the environment.

I made the list in response to the assertion that “doom and gloomers are usually wrong.”

I guess you could say I’m a mild doom and gloomer about climate change: I think it’s going to be a huge pain in the ass (it seems that it already is). I’m just less so than many on the left.

138

Humanity has no capacity to stop being bad collectively. Just like the poor, the selfish, the shortsighted, the stupid, or the immoral will always be with us. So we need solutions that work despite the existence of those folks. And despite their active resistance.

Said another way, we don’t get the humanity we deserve. We get the humanity we have.

As to “fixing” AGW, my own take is the rich countries are too complacent and too comfy to take meaningful action soon enough big enough to avoid calamity. While the poor countries simply lack the resources and influence to do much of anything even if they had the will.

The Earth, and its ecosystems will spin on no matter what. Humanity itself will survive; it’s what we do.

But just like living in Europe sucked during the Hundred Year’s War and during the bubonic plague, and living in much of central Asia sucked when Gengis Khan was alive, quite likely humans from e.g. the years 2300 to 23000 will hate us for the sucky, difficult life we bequeathed to them. All sacrificed in the service of one century of raging consumerism, comfort, and hubris.

139

Nah. I like to think future humans will experience a sort of new Renaissance and look at the past couple of centuries of industrialization, warfare, overpopulation, and technologically facilitated idiocy the way we view the Middle Ages.

This thread is starting to sound like a spin-off of the “Longtermism” thread. The reality is that the world isn’t going to end tomorrow. Probably not within our lifetimes. So as a practical matter, I can’t simply just stop going to work, paying my bills or raising my children.

140

When I come across threads like these I generally ignore them because, well, I don’t understand them. Yeah, Trump sucks. Yeah, he represents a potential sea change in how things operate.

And this is constant throughout history, even American history. So what’s the diff?

And I date, a lot. And I don’t date “women”, I date “people” who happen to be women. Every one of them an individual, every one of them with their own personal tale to tell, every one of them just as likely or not to become a friend of mine as any random guy I would meet in the same way, so what is the stress? And none of them deserve to be compared and contrasted to the other as “women” because that isn’t fair to any of them, nor is it fair to the gender as a whole. It’s just me applying bias to a group I myself selected based upon differing criteria also important to me. “You’re good looking let’s meet!”… we meet… “Oh, you like going to church more than I do. Women! They get so religious!” :roll_eyes:

Again I don’t understand this: Lots of guys I know like going to church more than I do. Men!

And there’s the other thing: when I hear guys talk about what women want, and they enumerate them, I’m like… well, yeah? Is it that hard to have a functioning car, a profession, the time/desire to spend time with her, and an engaging personality which doesn’t veer into anger every 34 minutes?

Like I said, I just don’t understand.

Anyway, to the question, I’m feeling rather fucking great about my future, more so than at any point in five, ten years. Maybe more. And even in the ‘down years’, I was always trying something new just because I’m a try-hard. New business, new podcast, new projects, from DIY shit at home to organizing a bunch of Dopers to write articles about a 25yr Wired Magazine article to starting a business.

And, as always, dating. 10:3:1. Ten contacts, three meets, 1 relationship which extends for a period (a wild weekend, a few weeks, a couple of months, all with varying intensity). And the relationships follow the same pattern, 10:3:1 - 10 relationships, three really compatible ones, one true lifetime relationship. And I get this is a lot of dating, but I don’t know what to say - but you have to put the work in.

And lord knows I’ve enjoyed putting the work in. :wink:

And so despite the shit I’ve been relatively happy because I’ve been busy which has kept me productive. And meeting new people constantly. Including “women”. Because my life and my response to it is in my control, even if the rest of it isn’t.