In the US things and people are not “more crazy” now, and the world in general is not more dangerous now. i.e. “I used to walk to the store but people are crazy now.” “We used to go door-to-door for trick-or-treat but people are crazy now, it’s too dangerous!”
And I mean in broad-strokes across the decades/generations. Yeah, there might be some more dangerous places, but in general, in most of the US that is, things are not “crazy” or “more dangerous” now. But, it seems like everybody thinks so.
It is natural for the internet, not just SDMB, for a question like this to quickly devolve to cases of ‘the truth’ that are inherently matters of belief or opinion.
And I’m not sure I agree there’s a simple symmetry between religious and non/anti-religious about the ‘truth’ of religion. On the non/anti-religious side there is largely by definition (organized atheist lobbying groups have relatively few members compared to the total ranks of non-believers) no organized view of whether religions are positively false, or there’s no way to know, or they just aren’t true enough for there to be value in participating. OTOH on religious side there are organized views, but not necessarily (or even generally AFAIK) that the truth of the religion is comparable to say the truth that the worlds isn’t flat or that looks can matter whether or not they should. So I think the generalization is questionable on either side.
And Christianity not religion in general is usually the target of web based ‘religion’ bashing, and ‘born again’ Protestants are right at the center of the bulls eye. As a Catholic I don’t know (all) their (various) doctrines in detail. I know we do not place religious belief in the same category as knowing the world is round, or that ‘looks don’t count’ can be euphemistic at least in certain contexts, or that people’s memories are often more fallible than they assume. I don’t think a lot of Protestants actually do either though.
Yeah, I knew it was a mistake to include the religion example. I almost took it out. My wording wasn’t the best, but my point was that we all look at things from our own particular perspective, and have a really hard time understanding people who don’t see it that way, because it’s so obvious to us.
I guess what I was trying to say was that most people believe that everyone approaches the world with the same set of basic assumptions (their assumptions) and draws different conclusions from them, when in fact everyone approaches the world with different assumptions, and therefore their conclusions make perfect sense to them, even when they look bizarre to someone else.
I find it strange that even the most bad, evil, etc., etc., of humans think that they are above every life form and are intrinsically worth more and will be always chosen by all as worth more so no matter what they do, the animal or other life form is worth less and is to be sacrificed instead of them.
That we are a byproduct of natural selection in an amoral universe, and there is no benevolent creator watching out for our well being. Pain, misery and suffering are not bugs, they are ingrained features of the system evolution created.
Of course that is just the US. I think in the US only 10% of people believe in evolution by natural selection. I think 50% are creationists and 40% believe in intelligent design.
It’s actually the opposite. People now (in the US at least) are safer, more educated and smarter than they’ve ever been.
I have no idea if we are more sane though. I’d assume we are due to a mix of things like removal of toxins in our environment that affect our brains like lead and mercury, better mental health care, better nutrition, lower stigma than in the past against mental health which means more treatment, etc. But that is speculation. I’m speculating we have more names for mental illnesses now and more diagnosis, but people are probably less crazy overall than in the past.
At least when we’re young we don’t accept this. I think the majority of 20-somethings don’t believe it. That one day they will be the old, hobbling, white haired senior struggling with a walker.
I still remember the look on my kid’s face when I explained a few things about his grandpa. I remember his response too. “He shot down HOW many Zeroes?” He found it difficult to see the old man puttering in the garden as the youngster he was in the 1940’s.
That the world is not fair. Everyone acknowledges this but few truly accept it, because it makes you feel better about your innate selfishness if you delude yourself into thinking that the reason you are better off than others is because you all had the same chances but you worked harder or some other dumb bullshit.
That humanity is doomed. We won’t be saving the planet. And it’s most likely we will kill ourselves off much more quickly than any of the “lesser” species ever did.
Intelligence is a bug, NOT a feature. At least with respect to the prosperity of the human race.
Look at the literature of every society on the planet. The typical patterns are that the character(s) who pursue power, wealth, glory, personal fulfillment, et cetera at the expense of other people, communities, institutions, et cetera are antagonists – they are evil and we associate negative terms like selfish, egotistical, greedy…
The same literature portrays the protagonist – the hero – as the character whose actions in opposition to the antagonist are rooted in what philosophy scholars call pro-social behavior: self-sacrifice (even to the point of martyrdom), altruism, generosity.
This is the literature we use to raise our children, in the form of fairy tales and timeless legends and fables. This is the literature that we find in young adult and adult novels, movies, TV shows, and even music. This, as Heracles fittingly notes, is the meat of mythology and religion – that the faithful are good and will eventually overcome the infidels.
I’ll leave aside Obi-Wan’s advice about Truth and perspective.
I think people strive to deny the fact that our modern world is not a fair, not just, not even balanced. It’s a plutocracy – government of the people by the rich for the rich who are pursuing power, wealth, glory, personal fulfillment, et cetera, at the expense of everyone else and, by shaping the way the issues are perceived and interpreted, those in power are able to convince everyone else that the rewards and benefits of society deservedly belong to them. In other words, Evil is not just winning; Evil is convincing everyone that it is Good so that its wins are applauded, encouraged, and repeated.
That the odds don’t apply to them. Sure, many folks understand on a cognitive level that their odds of winning the lottery are one in 100 million. But they fancy *themselves *that lucky one.
I’m pretty sure the attraction goes both ways. Witness the incredible number of female teachers who’ve been busted recently for having sex with their students, students who typically range in age from 14 to 17 while the ages of the teachers seem mostly to be in the twenties with some in their thirties or forties. These women know damn good and well that if caught they’re throwing away at least four years of college, their career almost certainly for life, their marriages most likely, and that they may well go to prison. And yet they can’t suppress the urge.
I myself was hit upon quite a lot at around the age of 15/16 by a few of the women who worked for my father. This was in the mid-sixties and the women’s age ranged in age from 19 to 33. One who was about 23 flat-out asked me to screw her. And in those very words. But I wasn’t attracted to her and begged off with an excuse about being in love with another girl. The 19-year-old eventually scored however, although she was 20 at the time and I was 16. She’d have scored sooner if not for these damned conservative proclivities of mine :smack:, which caused me to treat her with more respect than she really wanted. I when I think of her to this very day.
That parental fears about kidnapping are wildly out of sync with the actual risks. The way most parents carry on you’d think a child being abducted by a stranger was a common place occurrence happening in every town across the country, not something that happens 100 times a year.
I had a friend who smoked, and insisted that the statistics only applied to groups, not to individuals. “Yeah, thirty per cent of all smokers will get lung disease, but that doesn’t mean that I’m at any increased risk.”
I invited him to go to Las Vegas with that attitude.
That our senses don’t give us a reliable picture of reality.
In fact, not only do our senses give an incredibly narrow slice of the physical universe, but they (being made of soggy meat) are fairly crappy even within their spectrum, and furthermore they actively lie to us.
We have all kinds of sayings like “I’ll believe it when I see it” that somehow assume our senses work. But our eyes only give us a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, and already that is just an indirect, 2-dimensional shadow of the world. There is a veritable sea of EM radiation surrounding us, and all we get is the stuff that can fit through two few-millimeter holes, and then only a tiny fraction of that.
Never mind all the stuff we have no access to at all, like nuclear radiation or neutrinos or even just the ability to sense things at different timescales, whether nanoseconds or gigaseconds.
Our senses give us the comforting lie that we can accurately perceive the universe. They do work a little better than nothing, but only just.
when I think of her to this very day.