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Leopards Ate My Face! The Official Thread.

I remember being in high school and reading quotations of hatred by Southerners during desegregation and thinking what was it like to be a "normal" person back in the day watching that happen in real time. Would it have been appalling, or would the mindset that produced that kind of person imply a wider culture where that kind of thing was acceptable? Same with reading in college about Hilter's formal speeches before the Reichstag, where he said Jews and Liberals were subhumans poisoning the blood.

Because I was just as cuddly back then, I inferred the spirit of the age made that rhetoric ordinary. The change in mores is what makes it horrifying now.

It didn't occur to me that the spirit of the age isn't real. Every period has a smattering of humans, a smattering of vicious dogs, and a majority of lethargic and disengaged potted plants. Exactly like now. SSDD.

I am prepared to believe we haven't evolved in our ethics an inch. We are the ape men with clubs in the "Dawn of Man" scene.
 
Kepler said:
I remember being in high school and reading quotations of hatred by Southerners during desegregation and thinking what was it like to be a "normal" person back in the day watching that happen in real time. Would it have been appalling, or would the mindset that produced that kind of person imply a wider culture where that kind of thing was acceptable? Same with reading in college about Hilter's formal speeches before the Reichstag, where he said Jews and Liberals were subhumans poisoning the blood.

Because I was just as cuddly back then, I inferred the spirit of the age made that rhetoric ordinary. The change in mores is what makes it horrifying now.

It didn't occur to me that the spirit of the age isn't real. Every period has a smattering of humans, a smattering of vicious dogs, and a majority of lethargic and disengaged potted plants. Exactly like now. SSDD.

I am prepared to believe we haven't evolved in our ethics an inch. We are the ape men with clubs in the "Dawn of Man" scene.
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Which is exactly why I always tell people there is no hope for Humankind. We're too dumb to learn.
 
Russell Jaslow said:
Which is exactly why I always tell people there is no hope for Humankind. We're too dumb to learn.
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I take the opposite view: there are two rough halves of humankind. The more distance we can put between our human half and that door stop half, the better. A few million light years would be a good start.

Our species has a plastic aspect which evolves and meets new challenges, and a lithic aspect that is forever frozen, inanimate, and dead. We need a divorce. We need to leave them to die with this husk they have used up.
 
Kepler said:
I take the opposite view: there are two rough halves of humankind. The more distance we can put between our human half and that door stop half, the better. A few million light years would be a good start.

Our species has a plastic aspect which evolves and meets new challenges, and a lithic aspect that is forever frozen, inanimate, and dead. We need a divorce. We need to leave them to die with this husk they have used up.
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Ever the optimist...
 
I think there are very brief times we manage to get our shit together and do a little good. Could you imagine trying to deal with the huge ozone hole due to CFCs now? Or convincing people to cut six pack rings? I guess it’s all about how much gets done in those fleeting windows.
 
I'm not saying there isn't good, I'm saying the relative amount of good to bad never changes. The Whiggish history where we gradually attain more wealth, security, and happiness is a myth. There has always been the same relative level of good and bad, kindness and neglect, wisdom and stupidity. Our technology gets better but it's a magnifier. The misery index stays the same.

It has always been super easy to live rich and super hard to live poor. There is always a ruling class which rules by brute force papered over by some flimsy ideology. There are always some selfless people who have mitigated pain, some truly vicious fucks who exacerbate it, and then a massive majority who sleepwalk along only aware of their own navels.

The good news is we weren't born too later for bucolic calm or too early for Star Trek paradise: we're always equidistant from it. Every Now is equally pregnant with joy and misery, so the only Now we ever need to worry about is this one. We are already in heaven; we are already in hell.
 
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Sorry, Kep, but (some of that) is just not true. The good/bad ratio may stay the same, but the misery index does not.

Ask yourself: would you rather have a net worth of $100K in 2026, or a net worth of $100K in 1926? $100K in 1926 put you in the top 1% - fabulously wealthy, so that's better, right? But no air conditioning, no cell phones or computers, a car with a top speed of 40 mph, no TV, no/little professional sports, no vaccines, no antibiotics, etc.... It's a far easier life to be poor today than it was to be rich even 100 years ago.

Like it or not, engineers and inventors are the heroes of the story. :) (Along with progressive politicians who allow the government to utilize those tools for the public good)

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Material condition. We are wealthier, but no happier. No kinder. No more moral or more tolerant. No smarter or wiser. No less violent or abusive.

That chart is fine, but putting it as a proxy for what it is to be a fulfilled human is merely this age's excuse. You might as well put up a chart showing the decline in doctrinaire religiosity and say we are all going to hell.

Each scale merely feeds its own narrative.
 
Kepler said:
Material condition. We are wealthier, but no happier. No kinder. No more moral or more tolerant. No smarter or wiser. No less violent or abusive.

That chart is fine, but putting it as a proxy for what it is to be a fulfilled human is merely this age's excuse. You might as well put up a chart showing the decline in doctrinaire religiosity and say we are all going to hell.

Each scale merely feeds its own narrative.
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Maybe not, but Maslow would say that we should at least have a greater chance at happiness (or even fulfillment) when our bellies are full and our tissues are not diseased.
 
LynahFan said:
Maybe not, but Maslow would say that we should at least have a greater chance at happiness (or even fulfillment) when our bellies are full and our tissues are not diseased.
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That's fair although Maslow is situated within modern expectations.

You don't miss wifi til you've got it.
 
Kepler said:
That's fair although Maslow is situated within modern expectations.

You don't miss wifi til you've got it.
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This is also very true.

Happiness = Reality - Expectations

As soon as you expect something, then that cancels out the fact that it exists in reality and you're left with zero happiness.

The key to happiness, then, is low expectations....
 
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