MicShazam

No. I'm not saying it isn't complete ****. I'm not saying that all sorts of vile things aren't for real happening. Things that, when you realize just what it all really means, hit you hard, deep inside your soul. The world is complete **** - in many ways. The trick is to realize that it isnt' a zero sum game. No matter how terrible the world is, there' still going to be these silver linings. These moments of grace, that you can latch on to and be inspired by. I really do see the world as a scary and hopeless place in many ways, but I also manage to remind myself of ways in which life is this mazing miracle. All these things that I should be highly appreciative of, instead of succumbing to the trap of becoming a cynic who sees the world as nothing but suffering. It's a duality, and that means there's two sides.

The Batlord

The world isn't a joyless place with nothing to love about it, but this is still a world ruled by people who elect people like Trump and Hitler and stand by and do nothing during the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, and countless other massacres, not because they don't know about them, but because we are such a provincial race that the idea that we could honestly, TRULY care in a MEANINGFUL way that AFFECTS a wider world beyond the few miles outside of our own immediate knowledge is simply a fiction. That is why those little joys like music and our loves ones are so powerful, because that's what we're programmed to derive real meaning from, the immediate, and not the abstract, like the world outside. We're simply not designed to live on a global scale, which is why the global world can seem to be affected by us on such a seemingly arbitrary, impersonal level, because it is, because that's the most that can be expected of the human race.

Still happy?

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MicShazam

It seems that you are making the argument that the darker, more hopeless aspects of life are always there, right under the surface. I try to remember that in cases of, for example, the Rwandan genocide, there are not only those that commited atrocities agaisnt a minority, but also that minority. I can empahtize with that minority and hold on to that as an example of a just cause. Even if 90% of humanity turned out to be ****, I can still remind myself that those other 10% are worth investing my hopes in.
I think humans are better than that, by the way, even if WWII makes a good argument to the contrary.
TL;DR: I won't give in to cynicism no matter how many horrible things happen, because I still see a powerful strain of grace in the human spirit. Taking this on a much less serious level, I'd say that it's worth trying to maintain a sort of wide eyed enthusiasm for art and human accomplishment, no matter how dark the shadow side of the coin gets.
Otherwise, I could just as well give up and down a bottle of pills and be done with it.

Chula Vista

Whoa.

I just called the funeral home folks to change the inscription on my urn.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

MicShazam

Maybe it's a bit sentimental, but I just think that... when you can only see how **** everything is, you've sort of given up on everything, and I don't want to go there.

The Batlord

In the Rwandan genocide the government handed out machetes to the Hutu populace and expected them to contribute, and they did, without resistance or complaint. That's one reason why the death toll was so quick so soon, because there was no escape for the Tutsis with the enemy being next door. The massacre wasn't carried out just by death squads, but by people just like you and me who'd been conditioned to hate, which is something that humanity as a whole is very easily conditioned to do. The human race is tribalistic by nature, and it doesn't really take much to bring it out. Basically just not having a comfortable lifestyle is enough to make people take their frustrations out on an outsider group, so long as it's easy, because they have different color skin, or a different religion, or simply a history of being seen as different. Just look at America with Trump and Hispanics, or Europe with Muslims. Just how different would it be if Europe wasn't such a comfortable, 1st world place to live in? How accepting do you think your country would be? How many would die?

How much did it take the Germans to take their frustrations out on the Jews? How much did it take to let the Jews be the scapegoats? How much did it take for the majority of Germans to turn their heads away from what they knew was happening and go about their lives as if nothing was happening because it was simply easier than doing something about it? That's the real issue. Not that some Germans killed a bunch of Jews, but that the majority of Germans didn't care enough to do anything about it. People simply don't care enough to try to stop genocide if it's too hard. Or if it's hard at all. Or simply if the people in charge say "do it" when they can make a case for it that jibes with some narrative that seems plausibe. That's honestly all that's needed to change civilization to barbarism, because ultimately the difference is imaginary.

And no country is different. Under the right conditions, nearly every single human on Earth could be so callous and indifferent. We might sing to our children and sing Christmas carols and give to charity, but nearly all of those same people could look the other way in the face of state sanctioned murder because it's simply difficult to do otherwise. There's a quote from a Holocaust survivor that I think sums up the human race pretty well, "This world is not this world." The human race and its civilization is simply a front to pretend that we are not simply animals capable of monstrosity at the drop of a hat the same as any animal.

Still happy?

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MicShazam

I basically agree with you, except I don't want to diminish the value of the human will towards something better.

A about a week ago, I attended a public meeting where candidates for the upcoming city council election presented their political platform. In a room of 95% white, christian or atheist "natives" like me, there was overwhelmingly one sided "booing" whenever a particular candidate went on about how muslims were the root of all evil. It's not that I don't see problems with radical Islam, but it was heartwarming to see such overwhelming resistance against attempts to stir animosity against a group of immigrants in our country.

On the other hand, I know that there's some of that darkness in all of us. I ****ing hate that Spielberg movie, Schindler's List - but I hate it exactly because it makes the villains seem so different from us. It gives us this easy boogeyman, which is this cartoonishly evil Nazi stereotype, when in reality, there's depressingly little difference between most of the soldiers who served at the side of Nazi Germany and of us 'regular' movie watching pundits. Despite all this, I think there's reason to insist on the good sides of human beings. To at least aspire to be one of the good guys, even if you might ultimately fail to be so...
Also, in case you haven't, the graphic novel Maus is absolutely required reading for anyone who appreciates that medium - and really anyone who dares to look deep inside the human spirit in a way that's not as black & white as Schindler's List.

The Batlord

I mean I totally agree with that, that humanity can very much work together and not be tribalistic. But what happens when you're not living in a post-scarcity, Western society? What happens when the human race REALLY meats the balls to the wall? Do you think we DON'T become so tribalistic?

And even that isn't so awful when you consider how far we've come. Thousands of years past the time when tribalism was the law of the land everywhere every day all day 365 days a year, we really have come a distance that you'd have to actively ignore to pretend hasn't happened. But the question is just how much is that progress worth in 2017? It's probably worth more than it was a thousand years ago. And worth more than that two thousand years ago. But how much is it actually worth right the **** now? With genocide still a very going concern? Just how unmurderous is the human race?

Do we have the amount of cooperation necessary to deal with very ****ing immediate concerns like global warming? Even people from the same country can't agree that manmade global warming is even a thing, and I doubt that people from different countries across the globe can, or what is to be done about it, or that even anything should be done about it.

And even if we can, nuclear war has kind of become a joke after the Soviet Union collapsed, but... we all still have ****ing nuclear weapons and all still talk **** to each other at the drop of a hat. At some point someone is going to say one thing to far or someone is going to be just a tad too crazy, and then... what?


And all of this is in the most general sense. Hutus killed Tutsis for... what? Turks killed Armenians for... what? Whites enslaved blacks for... what? Just how much suffering is the human race capable of inflicting upon each other? I'd ask if you could quantify it but clearly you can't. We could say that the human race is advancing, and we are, but what happens if modern society takes a nose dive and we return to barbarism? Does all of our progress come with us? Or does it all die with our society, and barbarism truly return with all of the death and genocide that it will inevitably bring? Is all of this pretty progress just a comfortable illusion to believe in because we have the money to keep it going?

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MicShazam

I think all of that is still in us and it always will be. That's exactly why art is so important. Escapism is fine, but we also can't afford to pretend that we're not always balancing on a knife's edge. I have my sincerest doubts that we will manage to do **** all about global warming and I know that genocide isn't ever going to be a thing of the past, but human impulses to resists all the worst of our specieas this have endured through time, and that's what I cling to. I know that there will always be people who will choose the better path - even if they're a minority - and I know that we've got this amazing capacity for empathy and self sacrifice. I'm not saying it's easy to see the good sides of our species, but I think it's necessary to try. Otherwise, just what are we left with?

Chula Vista

Under the right conditions?

Got any qualifiers?

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”