Society's General Depressive Worldview -

[Classist.]

It seems to me like American society right now has a really negative view of the future. Personally speaking most people I ask don't think that the future will be better than the present, and many think it will be much worse. I've encountered this across nearly the entire political spectrum and it seems the same across different classes, ethnicities, and religions too. Do you think that this pessimistic outlook is realistic? Why should things get better or worse (in your opinion)? Is it different where you live?

Spoiler: Personal opinion

Personally I tend to be unjustifiably optimistic and think that things generally work out for the best. Terrible things happen sure, but so do beautiful and wonderful things. I think that focusing to much on the bad is unhealthy for a culture and can lead to paralysis and paranoia, just like how focusing too much on the good (as I tend to) can lead to blind confidence and arrogance. I hope that things become more balanced as time goes on and that worldviews begin to brighten up.

 

[DARKB1KE]

The collapse is coming. Take the red pill and you'll see the depressing world we live in. With the rise of feminism, the family unit is destroyed and people rely on state to provide for them. We haven't moved past the industrial revolution, schooling systems are outdated and training people simply for slavery and corporate work. Corporations are running the show now, it's nearly impossible to start your own business. The 1% get richer while the poor get poorer. I doubt there will ever be a revolution of our time to make shit change... politicians are all corrupt.
Have fun...

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

The collapse is coming. Take the red pill and you'll see the depressing world we live in. With the rise of feminism, the family unit is destroyed and people rely on state to provide for them. We haven't moved past the industrial revolution, schooling systems are outdated and training people simply for slavery and corporate work. Corporations are running the show now, it's nearly impossible to start your own business. The 1% get richer while the poor get poorer. I doubt there will ever be a revolution of our time to make shit change... politicians are all corrupt.
Have fun...

Eventually, the people get poor enough that they decide to make the rich give them what they want.
The funny thing is that for a "redpill" position, the situation you describe is essentially the end of a Marxian historical cycle.

 

[DARKB1KE]

Eventually, the people get poor enough that they decide to make the rich give them what they want.

How? Violence?

 

[Classist.]

How? Violence?

Possibly, sometimes you just get boring stuff like land or tax reform too. Occasionally someone will see the entire system as no longer functional and write a whole new set of laws like the Napoleonic or Justinian codes, etc.

 

[L50LasPak]

I agree that what we're experiencing now is more or less the fallout of both the Industrial Revolution and how it interacts with the Information Age. Early education is still largely based on producing factory workers, while formal education is based on creating office drones. At no point in the course of this system is a human being really prepared for the arbitrary and restrictive nature of working for a modern corporate entity, nor are they adequately prepared to seek a government job and deal with the reams of red tape and bureaucracy.

I think technology has outpaced the average person's will to live. Everyone would much rather be at home playing videogames or on their phone constantly using Facebook or Twitter. This isn't the fault of that technology, its the end result of how delusional and short-sighted the people in power are. Shareholders, investors and company executives demand ever-increasing returns and ever-higher successes while at the same time refusing to listen to any criticism of the system they've sunk their money into.

Meanwhile the people on the ground reap none of these benefits. Those same people on the ground can then get on their phones and view the conditions in third world countries where life is even shittier and thus feel even more like the whole thing is pointless. Leaders act totally without responsibility and engage in actions that are morally dubious at best and outright villainous at worst. Some people snap completely and flee to ideas like Socialism or Neo-Communism because of their promises of a better world, but for the people who actually look into that kind of thing they find that promise just as empty.

I don't think there's a collapse coming, per se. I do however think society will shortly experience a huge schism that will sharply divide people along ideological lines. I think we'll see a lot more suicides and random acts of violent crime, at lot more chaos and a lot worse behavior on the part of our leaders as they struggle more and more with the reality of the situation. When our current model of economics becomes unsustainable due to mass automation, the leaders and fat cats will start to pick each other off one by one. When their numbers dwindled far enough, they're either going to have to implement reforms of some kind or they're going to double-down and withdraw from society completely.

Its a pretty zero-sum game. Nobody's going to win in the long run. I think we've reached the limits of human cognitive capacity and there appears to be no way of extending that capacity any further. Eventually people's minds just melt from the overload, which is why our leaders seem to be increasingly unhinged and why a lot of otherwise intelligent people are becoming depressed or killing themselves.

 

[Classist.]

I think technology has outpaced the average person's will to live. Everyone would much rather be at home playing videogames or on their phone constantly using Facebook or Twitter.

I think we've reached the limits of human cognitive capacity and there appears to be no way of extending that capacity any further.

Although things like the smart phone and the internet have become permanent fixtures of many peoples lives, I think that over time people may move away from these more extreme sorts of lifestyles naturally. As kids who grew up with a phone instead of real parental affection start to mature I could see a pretty powerful push back forming, and I even could see something like the rebirth of hippie communes or perhaps a resurrection of something akin to monastic life. Also, the urbanization the world is experiencing is declining in much of the west, and its likely that the future will be a bit more rural and perhaps less technologically oriented, for good or ill.
TLDR: I think tech is here to stay but I think that the current unhealthy fetisization of it will probably either be dramatically toned down or rejected entirely.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

I agree that what we're experiencing now is more or less the fallout of both the Industrial Revolution and how it interacts with the Information Age. Early education is still largely based on producing factory workers, while formal education is based on creating office drones. At no point in the course of this system is a human being really prepared for the arbitrary and restrictive nature of working for a modern corporate entity, nor are they adequately prepared to seek a government job and deal with the reams of red tape and bureaucracy.

I think technology has outpaced the average person's will to live. Everyone would much rather be at home playing videogames or on their phone constantly using Facebook or Twitter. This isn't the fault of that technology, its the end result of how delusional and short-sighted the people in power are. Shareholders, investors and company executives demand ever-increasing returns and ever-higher successes while at the same time refusing to listen to any criticism of the system they've sunk their money into.

Meanwhile the people on the ground reap none of these benefits. Those same people on the ground can then get on their phones and view the conditions in third world countries where life is even shittier and thus feel even more like the whole thing is pointless. Leaders act totally without responsibility and engage in actions that are morally dubious at best and outright villainous at worst. Some people snap completely and flee to ideas like Socialism or Neo-Communism because of their promises of a better world, but for the people who actually look into that kind of thing they find that promise just as empty.

I don't think there's a collapse coming, per se. I do however think society will shortly experience a huge schism that will sharply divide people along ideological lines. I think we'll see a lot more suicides and random acts of violent crime, at lot more chaos and a lot worse behavior on the part of our leaders as they struggle more and more with the reality of the situation. When our current model of economics becomes unsustainable due to mass automation, the leaders and fat cats will start to pick each other off one by one. When their numbers dwindled far enough, they're either going to have to implement reforms of some kind or they're going to double-down and withdraw from society completely.

Its a pretty zero-sum game. Nobody's going to win in the long run. I think we've reached the limits of human cognitive capacity and there appears to be no way of extending that capacity any further. Eventually people's minds just melt from the overload, which is why our leaders seem to be increasingly unhinged and why a lot of otherwise intelligent people are becoming depressed or killing themselves.

And how convenient that it is now, at this age and not any further or sooner, that the limit of the human mind has been reached.
This same argument was made about the television, the radio, and the printing press; they defy the natural order, they force the human brain to stretch beyond its natural limits. Remember what is written upon the walls at Khufu:
"We are living in the final age. The youth have become evil and violent. They no longer honor the priests or their elders, and instead spend their time playing senet and drinking. Soon Man shall be destroyed."

 

[L50LasPak]

And how convenient that it is now, at this age and not any further or sooner, that the limit of the human mind has been reached.
This same argument was made about the television, the radio, and the printing press; they defy the natural order, they force the human brain to stretch beyond its natural limits. Remember what is written upon the walls at Khufu:
"We are living in the final age. The youth have become evil and violent. They no longer honor the priests or their elders, and instead spend their time playing senet and drinking. Soon Man shall be destroyed."

It seems to be the average leader can barely comprehend the actual complexities of the world let alone the average person. Its not a question of the evils of technology, but of the hardwired biological limits of the human brain. I see it as something akin to dementia. And consistently, a person will often choose to be around technology rather than other people for the simple reason that we're a fundamentally unpleasant and erratic species to deal with.

 

[Billy "the Bot" Bobson]

Depression is en vogue. Give it 5-10 years and the depressives will move on. Doomsaying has always existed and will always exist so long as Steins Law holds true and death exists.

 

[Michael Dummett]

Depression is en vogue. Give it 5-10 years and the depressives will move on. Doomsaying has always existed and will always exist so long as Steins Law holds true and death exists.

IDK, this isn't like the ADHD or celiac disease craze, where you can tell the people that are talking to you about it are just doing it as sort of a fad thing. This is a real malaise that I see in society in general. My opinion is that as society becomes less and less religious, we lose that sense of purpose and community that people always had over the thousands of years humans have always attached to religion and rites of a sort. Also I think the fact that a lost of marraiges are ending in divorce, the destabilization of the nuclear family and fatherless houses are becoming more common place has a lot to do with the general societal problems we see today.

 

[Y2K Baby]

The collapse is coming. Take the red pill and you'll see the depressing world we live in. With the rise of feminism, the family unit is destroyed and people rely on state to provide for them. We haven't moved past the industrial revolution, schooling systems are outdated and training people simply for slavery and corporate work. Corporations are running the show now, it's nearly impossible to start your own business. The 1% get richer while the poor get poorer. I doubt there will ever be a revolution of our time to make shit change... politicians are all corrupt.
Have fun...

Shut up, child.

 

[Billy "the Bot" Bobson]

IDK, this isn't like the ADHD or celiac disease craze, where you can tell the people that are talking to you about it are just doing it as sort of a fad thing. This is a real malaise that I see in society in general. My opinion is that as society becomes less and less religious, we lose that sense of purpose and community that people always had over the thousands of years humans have always attached to religion and rites of a sort. Also I think the fact that a lost of marraiges are ending in divorce, the destabilization of the nuclear family and fatherless houses are becoming more common place has a lot to do with the general societal problems we see today.

What we are experiencing is the destruction of the American Dream and the popularization of victimhood. Life has always been incredibly miserable; look at Boomer Humor and how much of it is incredibly cynical about the things that are meant to give you meaning in life. Asking "Why?" is nothing new. The rest of the world has always been crushingly cynical and pessimistic compared to the American Enthusiasm. We've had a gradual realization, its not genuine depression. It's so popular now because it is just part of the adjustment process for most of us. Media sees that its en vogue to talk about this, so they ride and perpetuate it to make money and fame. Like a mirror reflecting light into another mirror.

In other words, its popular because every other topic has been exhausted and it's now cool to be depressed (like it was to be an outsider, a grunge head, and a nu waver in different cliques at different times) this too will likely pass with little to no change.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

It seems to be the average leader can barely comprehend the actual complexities of the world let alone the average person. Its not a question of the evils of technology, but of the hardwired biological limits of the human brain. I see it as something akin to dementia. And consistently, a person will often choose to be around technology rather than other people for the simple reason that we're a fundamentally unpleasant and erratic species to deal with.

The error here is thinking that the complexity of the world has grown. In my eyes, the quality of leaders has gone down.
Personally, I think that we are entering a new era; a dissolution of the centralized world of the Industrial era and a return to the decentralized, connected-village model of the old days. But this dissolution, in my eyes, is not apocalyptic, but a promise of a future where people can live beside one another without the prison of enforced hierarchy. Will the transition be smooth? Most likely not; but the transition from empire to republic wasn't smooth, either.

How? Violence?

If no other option presents itself. When the peasants did not get bread, they revolted until they did.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

There's no reason overly invest in society anymore. Our wages mean less and less by the year, our white collar skillset dwindles only ever further yet the blue collar has no prestige and is prohibitive at times to get into. Besides this grim economic outlook, our leaders in the corporate and government world are infinitely shallow, religion is becoming a glorified cash cow at best, the law bends over backwards for the elite and academia is turgid and infested with ideologues and on top of all this shit, people barely have friends, often go loveless and have families which are often unstable at best. To be someone who believes in something earnestly in this world above yourself (besides perhaps the divine) is to be a fool and a naked one at that because everyone knows the game is up.

 

[Y2K Baby]

people barely have friends, often go loveless and have families which are often unstable at best.

I think that's just Shadman fans.

 

[Clipper]

This is gonna sound like boomer rhetoric, and it probably is. But personally I think its cause people spend too much time on the internet seeing all the negative shit of the world, life hasn't gotten particularly worse, and the world won't end in 5 years because of climate change. Its the same problem that the news has with only broadcasting the worst the world has to offer.

 

[Billy "the Bot" Bobson]

people barely have friends

Between hyperfocused hobbies, social retardation, and general large-scale alienation, who the fuck would want to make friends in America these days? I'd rather be blissfully ignorant and believe I'm unique and alone than to be angrily aware of how mediocre and common I am.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

I think that's just Shadman fans.

We and the zonelings are one of the only true brotherhood's left. I coped only in pity for you.

 

[Y2K Baby]

We and the zonelings are one of the only true brotherhood's left. I coped only in pity for you.

You drink gamer girl piss.