This could go both ways so trigger warning to people with depression and if you’re religious we will not agree on this, but I find a great liberation and happiness from knowing that in the grand scheme of things, none of it really matters. Humans are not the end all be all species of the universe. Our solar system is one of theoretically infinite solar systems.
Make the world beautiful, or don’t. At the end of the day, or even a million years, it doesn’t really matter. Just do what makes you happy and live your life the way you want to live it, Hopefully you’ll let others live the way they want to, but again, it doesn’t really matter what you or anybody else does. Rocks in space won’t remember any of us.
Ah yes, the Morty Smith existential nihilism branch of philosophy.
Physics -> chemistry -> biology. The further you zoom in, the more you come to grips with the just staggering number of hugely improbable events that lead to us being here. I feel bad for people who need to invoke religion to explain this, as it really hides the beauty of it all.
Improbable? Maybe on the odds for one isolated event happening. But considering the vast amount of the universe there is, to me it seems more and more inevitable.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.” - evolution
Yeah, I was gonna specifically pick out biology. Feels like the more you know about it, the cooler it gets to just head outside and look at critters. Kind of like Pokémon, but real.
I feel bad for people who need to invoke religion to explain this
Rainbows after rainstorms make me feel like the world is gonna be ok although humans keep trying to destroy everything.
So like a reverse Last Week Tonight?
The author also had a few great TED talks on the subject:
Rage Against The Machine
This book is currently boosting my morale:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453652/not-the-end-of-the-world-by-ritchie-hannah/9781529931242
This one for me: https://plurality.net/
Discusses how to strengthen democracy using the very things that are currently weakening it
The world is in a bad place right now, but it was even worse of when we are right at the edge of global nuclear war in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before that the world was on the verge of falling in the early 1940s to fascist rule of Hitler and the Emperor of Japan with most of Europe occupied and concentration camps exterminating thousands of innocent people a day.
As bad as it is today, we’ve had worse, and we made it through it to better times. It won’t come without effort, but humanity will get through this too.
Nuclear was was always an apocalypse that might happen. Climate change is an apocalypse that is happening.
Hitler was bad, but he didn’t have anything like the arsenal and intelligence networks available to Trump. We have the consentration camps, and the death camps too, although those are outsourced in other countries.
Nuclear was was always an apocalypse that might happen.
I’m not sure if you know the history of how close we came to nuclear war in October 1962. It was the first time in history the USA ever went to Defcon 2. We had 25 nuclear bombers in the air with the rest of them on 15 minute standby.
Hitler was bad, but he didn’t have anything like the arsenal and intelligence networks available to Trump. We have the consentration camps, and the death camps too, although those are outsourced in other countries.
As bad as trump is, has he murdered 13 million innocent people yet? That’s Hitler’s number of murdered innocent people.
We have been at worse points in history than we are right now.
Wasn’t that the one where on a Soviet submarine, 2 out of the 3 required officers voted to launch their nukes, but the captain refused?
Also that happened. There was also an “accidental” incursion of ussr air space by the US (likely accidental as the plane ended up landing in Alaska with no fuel)
I do know our history, and in October 1962 the odds of nuclear war were less than the odds of a climate apocalypse today, because they weren’t 100%.
As bad as trump is, has he murdered 13 million innocent people yet?
Yet? No. But he is on course. The estimated number of deaths from his illegal USAID cuts is actually 14 million by 2030. That’s one policy. I expect that number will be dwarfed by the long term impacts of his environmental policy. Then we have the pending excitement in Iran to worry about. A nation of 93 million people can throw at least a few million more lives on the pyre before all is done.
