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Originally Posted by OccultHawk
I don’t know if you ever listen to the Project Censored podcast but a recent episode was exploring the psychology of why even people who are very aware of the problems and in fact are very concerned are not changing their behavior even in light of the knowledge of the catastrophe.
My thoughts have been mostly along the “selfish gene” sociobiological perspective but these guys think more along mass cultural lines. Interesting but depressing. The answers to those kinds of questions are of course multilayered. Unfortunately, instead of dealing with it from every angle we’re hardly even taking a simple linear approach.
Not so much the movie but the book The Road I think gets into this in the subtext. The end of humanity as a whole isn’t really anymore devastating to an individual than the certain death we all face.
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That's a bleak view, OH, though I can't really contradict it. I suppose the end of humanity robs us of the solace we often take in individual death.
Before we die many people think, "Well, people will remember that song I wrote" "I will live on in the memory of my children" etc. And people grieving a death talk about spirits living on and souls looking down from above. It's standard fare at a funeral: "X would be proud to see so many people..." But with the end of humanity you can't really kid yourself: it really has all been a waste of time.
The Road, I discovered, is a novel by Cormac McCarthy. It gets good reviews on Amazon, but I have a vague recollection of being very disappointed with C McC. Mind you, it's equally possible that I'm mixing him up with somebody else and doing him a complete injustice