Topic: I can't stand the bad news anymore

[Cobra951]

I think I'm going to lose it.  It's one thing to say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and another to see it happening inexorably before your very eyes.  Between the economic catastrophe and the increasingly widespread and powerful evil that dominates so much of the muslim world, Western civilization, the bright light that promised an end to the dark ages, is looking more and more likely to fail, and sink into the muck that is unwashed, ignorant, and very stupid humanity.

No one in charge has a fucking clue.  Or those who do have no power to put their knowledge into action.  The loud cacophony of self interest drowns it out.  With the red stains of their bloodsucking policies still wet on their shirts, the reactionary right still have the gall to obstruct anything that would curb their free reign to rape and pillage the country.  No, we will not eat cake, you motherfuckers.  You should be grateful to accept some protectionism and socialism in exchange for your heads.

I need to stay away from the news for a while.  After the last few interviews with the Sullenberger crew, about the only unmistakably positive thing that has happened so far this year, I intend to do just that.  My sanity, or what's left, depends on it.

[Quemaqua]

I will never, ever in a billion years agree that even the slightest amount of socialism is the answer (the right and left are really no different, in my opinion - they all have for years and continue to sacrifice their own people in exchange for increased power and for security in maintaining that power; make no mistake about what this "stimulus" package actually is), but I feel much the same as you do on the whole.  I'm half convinced right now that between work struggles, home struggles, and the state of the world in general, I'm developing an ulcer.  I've had stomach problems for a while now that have degraded into... unpleasantness.  I really need to see a doctor.  Like you, I've also been forced to stop listening to any form of news during my commute, and I feel at least marginally better having stopped.  I understand your frustration very well, and I think there are a lot of people congregating in that space now, regardless of where they stand on one thing or another.

What's also getting to me is the way games have changed.  It's fucking sad that I basically can't listen to podcasts anymore because of the ideologies that a lot of these guys have in relation to how things are changing, where the future lies, online distribution, no longer owning games but licensing them instead, etc.  I just can't do it.  It's not just one thing or another, just this deluge of small changes in the way people view things and what they feel is important, not to mention what they feel is worth devoting lots of discussion time to.

Anyway... I feel your pain, my friend.  And unfortunately for my shredding stomach, I don't have any faith that it's going to get better.

[gpw11]

Yeah, i hear what you're saying and i kind of avoid the news and such.  Fuck being informed, i'd rather be content.

[Cobra951]

Yes, you better go to a doctor for that.  You're too young for that kind of trouble.

You're right about politics and ideologies, and I'm not going to pretend I have a gift for absolute truth.  The problem is that something has to be tried, and it has to be *different* from what got us here.  E.g., more lack of business constraints or oversight, and lower taxes for wealthy private concerns should be entirely off the table.

[Ghandi]

The problem is that no one holds these people responsible anymore. Representation became a dead concept when we stopped hoping these people responsible for their actions. It baffles me that we could tolerate a government that speaks only for itself, and yet we have done it for years. Our voice has been drown out through the self-serving cacophony of bullshit. 

And yet we will almost surely do nothing about it. People voted for Obama for good reason, but they put all of their hope in him. They assumed that he would solve all of their problems, which is absurd. This nation became great for a reason, and not from its politicians. We built this nation and we died for this nation, and now we put all of our hope in a hopelessly corrupt system. It makes no sense.

America tolerated the past 10 years and it will pay for them.

[PyroMenace]

Ive actually been reading Asimov's Foundation series and some of it I feel is resonating today. How an empire crumbles away due to stagnation and inaction. I dont know which is worse, living in ignorant bliss, or in a everlasting state of depression of knowing, and no one is picking a third option.

[Quemaqua]

I agree completely, Ghandi.  Well said indeed.

And that's interesting, Pyro.  I haven't read those books, but I think I may do that now.  I've been looking for something new to listen to at work (audiobooks ftw).  It amazes me how often science fiction meets reality these days.  It's a bit scary.

[Cobra951]

The Foundation trilogy is a longtime favorite of mine.  It's well worth a read for its imagination and rich universe.  It's somewhat naive and very grandiose.  That just makes it all the more entertaining.

I think you will find the seeds for some very popular sci-fi properties of the past 3 decades in there.

[Quemaqua]

I've always wanted to read more Asimov, but I just never seem to get around to it.  I spend too much time with history books and fiction that's a little closer to my obscure tastes.

[Ghandi]

Well I know what I'm going to pick up tomorrow. I just finished some books and I need a new read.

[PyroMenace]

Well cool, Im glad Ive inspired some to read it. I personally cant get enough of him, I read through the Robot series (which is also linked to the Foundation novels at some points) and wanted more. Though the order which they were written is a little everywhere. He wrote 4 foundation novels at the start, then much later, like 30 years even, he wrote 2 more that take place before all of them. Similarly in the Robot novels he wrote the first 2 in the 50s and didnt make a 3rd one till the 80s, which you can tell in his writing style the differences from the age gap.

[Cobra951]

Foundation was a trilogy when I read it.  I wasn't 100% positive that I didn't simply miss a book, so I looked it up.

Asimov unsuccessfully tried to end the series at the end of Second Foundation. But, because of the predicted thousand years until the rise of the next Empire (of which only a few hundred had elapsed), the series lacked a sense of closure. For decades, fans pressured him to write a sequel.

In 1982, following a thirty-year hiatus, Asimov gave in, and wrote what was at the time a fourth volume: Foundation's Edge.

Wikipedia

That makes sense.  I have not read Edge.  I am skeptical of an author revisiting a work decades later.  So much of his perspective had to change after all that time, and I wonder how cohesive the work would stay.  I really need to read it now.

Make that 4 decades of sci-fi blockbusters to inspire.  I neglected Star Trek.

Edit:  Actually, that's not true.  I did think of Star Trek, but I was thinking movies.  (The series really goes back to the mid-60s.)

[ren]

The original trilogy is fantastic but the prequels and sequels are by no means required reading. They're good in their own ways but the original three is all you really need.

On the original topic: Has the world really changed? I realize I've been around for a pretty short time compared to you but from my perception of history we're not that far away from where we've been before. That bright light promised at the end of the dark ages could very well still exist, we all just thought we were there a bit early. The powerful evil of the Muslim you're speaking of world doesn't seem that different from the evils that have been going on for centuries. Economic catastrophe can be nothing but temporary.

[Cobra951]

No, it was different.  I was born into a post WW-II period when all the serious evil that had to be decimated had just been decimated.  The following 45 years were dominated by the locked horns of its 2 top powers.  Both of those were civilized, meaning neither went around committing the daily slaughter of innocents (though Russia was not exactly love and puppy dogs with its neighbors).  Detente worked for decades.  Assured mutual destruction meant peace (regional wars like Korea and Vietnam notwithstanding), and the advances in industrial capacity the war ushered meant unprecedented prosperity.  To me, this is just the way it was.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of the world was suddenly left to its own means and devices.  Forces that were kept in check for so long got the chance to fester and grow.  I don't understand all the changes, but by now they are huge. 

The Islamic world has a cancerous movement similar to what Germany had to suffer in the 1930s.  There were more Germans than Nazis, but it made no difference.  The Nazis ruled all of Germany by force and intimidation.  And then they promised growth and glory, and many Germans took the bait.  The current fascists are just as brutal, multifaceted unlike the Nazis, and a hell of a lot more dangerous.  They don't need to group under a national banner, making them much more difficult to pin down.  Those they don't attract with their twisted take on religion, they murder and intimidate.  Few in their backyards will take them on, and those who do have short life expectancies.

Sooner or later, this is all going to end in tears.  The dark ages you mentioned came after a long period of great civilization.  We think it can't happen again, but yes it can.  The forces poised on the battlefield are similar.  If we don't have the will to exterminate the enemy at the gates, we're dooming our children to a much more painful world.

[shock]

Things. Aren't. That. Bad.

So many people (in general, but also a lot of you) let yourselves get beat up over the news, be it economic, strife in the Middle East, or natural disasters.  The natural inclination is to look upon our days with great discontent, but looking back to some fictitious time when everything was "simpler" or "people were nicer" or "the world was a better place".  That shit doesn't exist and hasn't ever existed.  We've made amazing technological and social advances in the past hundred years, ones which have no doubt bettered humanity.

I think it is pointless to go about naming catastrophic events in history to juxtapose our current state of general well being, but some worth noting are WW2, where well over 50 million were KILLED, possibly up to 70,000,000, written out emphasis.  Additionally, some countries such as Poland saw ~16% of it's entire population disappear.  WW1 is another great example of 40-50 million dead.  Conquests of Native Americans were awesome, too.

If you are looking less for just number of dead, global poverty is a good example.  People love to doom and gloom this subject, but this is only because of the relative success of the Western countries.  Is it sad that Africans are dying of starvation?  Of course it is.  But it is also a natural thing (I know this is callous) IE the hunt for food has been a constant human struggle for all of our history.  It's only relative to our(Western) success that this is noticed.

I'm not saying we don't face issues that need addressing, because we certainly do.  Humanity has been facing serious issues for all of its existence.  The issues of today are neither more demanding nor challenging than any faced in the past.  AIDs is an immediate example of a current issue.

But don't let yourself be force fed scare tactics by the media.  They only scare you to get you to stay tuned in and continue living in fear.  The tactics are so audacious that it only takes a few objective viewings to realize that 90% of the stories are designed to scare you, while the other 10% are "cute" filler stories (IE kitten rescued from tree).  "Murderer is loose in your neighborhood!" - "Is the TSA doing enough to prevent terrorism on our planes?" - "The truth about cancer" - Etc.

It's only because we catch glimpses of what things COULD be that we get allow ourselves to get depressed about how they ARE.  Take them for what they are and you will be much happier.

[/ramble]

[Quemaqua]

I can't completely agree, but it's a fairly well-reasoned ramble.  What you fail to realize, shock, is that a lot of us know things aren't that bad, because we've lived lives that, really, haven't been so bad.  They've been pretty good.  Stuff has been status quo and pretty easy to swallow.  But those times are rapidly going down the toilet, and the standard of living we've known is going to disappear, in large part due to the corruption, ignorance, or greed of people who've massed more power than they ever should have been allowed to have.  So yeah, things are pretty bad in that light, and they only get worse when you start considering some of the sweeping changes which could theoretically occur due to stuff happening now that's never had the context of the world we live in today.  You said it yourself: much has changed.  There have been technological and social advances (some I'd be hesitant to call positive, but your mileage may vary), and the world community is in a very different state.  Things that may have happened many times before in history may now have entirely different effects, and some of them are pretty scary.

So granted, the media loves to scare people, as do politicians, and those two groups do have their hands in a lot of the bad shit happening to us now, one way or another.  But just because some are exaggerating or playing something up doesn't mean there aren't things to be well and truly scared of.  And really, just because something's happened before in history certainly doesn't mean you want it happening to you.

[K-man]

I think the next 5-10 years are going to promote some sweeping changes in how we live our lives.

Our generation (and younger generations) have been born into the work-force with a strong sense of entitlement, and I can definitely see a shift happening back to the older ways of thinking.  Things like your job being an asset, strong work ethic, working hard for what you want, etc.  We've been working on the notion that our jobs are an entitlement, a distraction from what we would rather be doing, and that other jobs can be found easily.  We are quickly finding out that is not the case, and having a job right now is a luxury if anything.

It's a precarious situation right now for sure.  But I think positive change will bloom from the downturn of the economy.  It's definitely going to take some time though.

[Cobra951]

I saw the jobs-as-assets story.  It's bullshit.  Assets derive from successful endeavors, whether those endeavors are strictly for ourselves (i.e., if we own our own business) or for others who deal above board (i.e., jobs).  The labor itself is not the reward.  It's the means to the reward.

As Americans, we are entitled to 3 things: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This is in our declaration of independence.  Being entitled to those necessarily implies we are entitled to the means of obtaining them.  (Note that we are not entitled to happiness, only to the freedom to pursue it.)

If large corporations are no longer the path to those guarantees, then they need to step out of the way.  With everything worth doing being patented, regardless of how obvious the process may be, it has become near impossible for new small businesses to innovate.  At one time, most of the country was self-employed.  If we have to go back to that, we need the freedom to do it restored.

I'm all for a good work ethic.  That by itself isn't worth a damn anymore.  The last thing before losing his job that my brother, the lawyer, heard from the CEO of the foreign company that swallowed Lexis-Nexis was:  "I'm sorry all those people lost their jobs.  But why did they have jobs in the first place?"

[K-man]

I saw the jobs-as-assets story.  It's bullshit.  Assets derive from successful endeavors, whether those endeavors are strictly for ourselves (i.e., if we own our own business) or for others who deal above board (i.e., jobs).  The labor itself is not the reward.  It's the means to the reward.

As Americans, we are entitled to 3 things: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This is in our declaration of independence.  Being entitled to those necessarily implies we are entitled to the means of obtaining them.  (Note that we are not entitled to happiness, only to the freedom to pursue it.)

If large corporations are no longer the path to those guarantees, then they need to step out of the way.  With everything worth doing being patented, regardless of how obvious the process may be, it has become near impossible for new small businesses to innovate.  At one time, most of the country was self-employed.  If we have to go back to that, we need the freedom to do it restored.

I'm all for a good work ethic.  That by itself isn't worth a damn anymore.  The last thing before losing his job that my brother, the lawyer, heard from the CEO of the foreign company that swallowed Lexis-Nexis was:  "I'm sorry all those people lost their jobs.  But why did they have jobs in the first place?"

You're right.  A job by itself is not an asset.  However, the job is the means to obtain those assets.  I read the same article and disagree with it at a number of points.  I think a lot of people leave college feeling entitled to a stable, well paying job.  In some cases that happens, but for the most part graduates face the very real fact that nothing is going to be handed to them just because they have a piece of paper that says they are educated.  I think that is one of the major flaws in our method of thought in the past 10-15 years.  That you can get rich quickly without having to work hard for it.  And hell, it was true for a while in certain circles (and still may be true in a few others).  But the bubble inevitably bursts and what we're left with is the opportunity to obtain what we want by working hard for it.  Ultimately you are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I don't think anyone is ever guaranteed a job.

I realize I'm jumping back and forth here.  But I am at work and won't have the opportunity to really sit down and formulate something considered a coherent response until later.