this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
607 points (97.5% liked)

Comic Strips

12550 readers
3783 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You could quit doom scrolling and learn that the vast majority of everything is and WILL be fixed given a long enough timeline. Humanity has proven over and over that the vast majority of us are good people just wanting to live our lives happily. There are always great people doing great things behind the scenes that never generate as many clicks as OMG KILLINGS OMG THREATEN NUKES OMG OTHERS!

Lets start you off with the easy recommendation. Kurzgesagt Overpopulation and how it's bullshit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMo3nZHVrZ4

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree that you should believe everything will be fixed given enough time. I don't believe doomerism is the correct response either, but I fear that believing things will just work out makes it easy to ignore problems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hard disagree. Being an optimistic doesn't mean rejecting reality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree with you on that but believing everything will magically work out is rejecting reality to me. Clearly had things happen. Just because they get fixed doesn't mean they're weren't still bad. Wars and genocides kill so many people. Just because the "good guys" might win eventually doesn't mean nothing bad happened. It doesn't mean we should just relax about shit.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It sounds like you're just needlessly fearful to me. What you're saying has nothing to do with optimism and trust in the innate good nature of humanity to plod along despite all the shit it throws at itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think my top comment in this chain was pretty clear. I'm saying that the belief that everything will work itself out leads to personal inaction. I believe it leads to complacency and that leads to more bad things happening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't even need to believe it's the opposite, it's scientifically sound.

Optimism does FAR MORE than doomerism. Doomerism leads to complacency, and there's been numerous studies that back up Learned Helplessness. You believe doomerism begets action, when it's the opposite.

Learned helplessness is literally a political propaganda tactic used by large nations against the west specifically due to it's innate properties. The more likely you are to believe something is inevitable, the less likely someone does something about it. This isn't the Bystander Effect lmfao.

Learned Optimism has significant health, familial, and societal benefits. Conscious gratitude, thankfulness, and other similar positive coping mechanisms that were borne from CBT are being used in every profession where you see the worst of humanity on a daily basis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/73/4/40/1017439/Between-complacency-and-panicHow-the-rhetoric-of

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-climate-change-doomerism-is-even-taking-over-scientists

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/misinformation-is-eroding-the-publics-confidence-in-democracy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not advocating for doomerism, sorry if that was unclear! I agree with you on that! Doomerism is awful as well, and like you said, much worse than optimism! All I'm saying is that it's dangerous to believe things will work out without your involvement. I think it can be like a bystander effect on a global scale, you know?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I do get what you're saying, but the Bystander Effect doesn't even work at those scales of economy. Not only that but the Bystander Effect is a very learned cultural phenomena. It even mentions as much in the article you linked. Sorry if you didn't catch my edits ex posto facto since I was sourcing after but I did end up mentioning it in anticipation of that rebuttal when editing lol.

The root difference here isn't the finer details though. It's probably going to end up in an agree to disagree sentiment.

I firmly and vehemently deny that trusting in the goodness of humanity to work on and solve issues that many people don't even think about isn't rejecting reality.

You believe it is. It's literally just the difference between a jaded cynic and a hopeful optimist. Behind every jaded cynic there usually was the later. I just hope you get there again and do see the beauty in the world around you and have faith in your fellows while knowing ALMOST EVERYONE is doing their small part. Some much larger than others.

Generally the people who don't help were never going to anyway. I believe that's a fools errand that requires far more effort than any benefit gained from it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol, I'm a Science+Tech nerd. I also watch Kurzgesagt and some other science and math related channels, like Sciencephile AI, Vsauce, Veritasium, 3brown1blue, Science Click and so on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Glad to hear it. I can't wait for the pendulum swing for Doomerism to stop and start going the other direction. It is easy content though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

You cannot be hated, if you don't interact with people 😎

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Not just cat videos, but cat memes as well!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I can only relate to the 4th pane 😻

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty sure only monsters don’t like cat videos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Indeed!

Which is how we get the first rule of predicting technology adoption and lifespan - how much cat-related media is this technology facilitating?

Most critically, never ever bet against a solution that happens to be popular for sharing pictures of cats.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Based on my feed, I'm gonna say panel 4.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

its the panel where someone realizes reddit sucks so they check lemmy realize lemmy is only linuxbros and they go outside ending the cycle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used social media to destroy social media