• @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    You get to exist and understand that you do. That’s pretty huge already, as far as I can tell.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      That’s an interesting comment. History and science have proven that we have evolved in a way that everything we do becomes easier. Arguably the end goal is that everything is easy (can be debated in many ways, even philosophcally), but there’s no denial that humanity has done everything in its power to make things easier. That’s the whole point of the creation and use of tools

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        I guess you’re referring to the part I edited out where I said that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that life is supposed to be easy. I don’t think that contradicts humans trying to make life easy.

        But it seems to me that a lot of meaning is derived from being at the limit of what is impossible and staying at the level of easy makes people depressed and unhappy.

  • @[email protected]
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    108 months ago

    There are books written about this exact topic. The most famous in recent years is Factfulness.

    • @[email protected]
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      48 months ago

      Another one is called “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker. I read it a few years ago and found it very encouraging

  • Phoenixz
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    38 months ago

    Everybody here things it so funny to talk about how we’ll all die ans it’s all horrible but really?

    Lifw is pretty good. Yeah, we’re off worse off today than, say, 30 years ago, but compared to the 4 billion or so years before that? We’re doing awesome.

    We have direct communicationto anyone in the world in the palm of our hands. Even the poor got better and nicer food today than kings had 300 years ago. Life expectancy even over the past 100 years has gone up dramatically…

    This “we’re living in the worst times ever!” Is kind of like climate change deniers cherry picking a tiny sliver of a huge graph and say “see? Temperatures.are going down!” It’s nonsense. Yeah, things got a bit worse.over the past decade, they’ll get better again soon and we’re still way better off than, say, 1980

  • MrsDoyle
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    338 months ago

    I regularly shop at a supermarket built on a site where people were burned as witches in the 17th century.

    A ship’s captain was away at sea and died after his ship was wrecked in a storm. Back home, his housemaid was accused of having created the storm and was burned at the stake. And there I am buying lemons and ice cream and toothpaste. It blows my mind.

  • @[email protected]
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    398 months ago

    There are multiple cases where pure chance and human hesitation prevented all out nuclear bombardment in the Cold War.

    So for that alone we are extremely lucky.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    What makes me think this is “worst timeline” is that i fear things will start regressing and we will have to go back to the beforetimes or worse. And in some better world where people are less apathetic it might not go that way.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        We will all get what we deserve, whatever that is. I hope its not the worst thing but I havent seen any real effort to resist, nothing to rally behind. If starving to death or being murdered for your things in dying planet isnt the worst timeline i dont know what is. Hopefully this wont start happening in my lifetime or that at least i dont have to make it not happen in my lfietime. I dont understand how people can have kids anymore.

        Sorry to say such horrible things but it feels like this shit is just pouring out of me now…

  • Dae
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    418 months ago

    Statically speaking, globally, we are living in the freest, most prosperous age in recorded history. It was the most peaceful as well, but I am unsure if recent events have changed that.

    But by and large, we have more rights and are more prosperous than any other era of human history. And drspite the fact we could literally end the whole goddamn world right fucking now, it’s very, very clear that the powers that be really like living, and most conflicts are more focused and less destructive than ever before.

    It could very easily be way, way fucking worse. We are nowhere near the worst timeline yet.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      But by and large, we have more rights and are more prosperous than any other era of human history.

      Wall-E Buy-N-Large hehe

  • KingJalopy
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    208 months ago

    I’m sitting in my air conditioned house, watching not one, but 2 HD screens, one of which is playing cheers because I love that show and I can watch it all I want anytime I want. The other is my phone which is a absolute miracle of human achievement allowing me access to the sum of the worlds knowledge which I’m currently using to look at funny shit that amuses me. Also I didn’t move a finger to say any of that. I just said it and it typed it for me, correcting most of my mistakes. And you, who are reading this, might be literally anywhere on this planet right now. I also used my phone to order my food which was promptly brought to my home for my enjoyment.

    The world certainly has a lot of shit aspects but on the whole, we are living in amazing times right now for those of us fortunate enough to be in a safe country.

    • @[email protected]
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      Italiano
      18 months ago

      Yeah, all great, now ask people how was life in the 80s and 90s and ask them if they prefer now or them.

      • KingJalopy
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        48 months ago

        I was alive in the 80s and 90s. I prefer now. I’m nostalgic for those times but I don’t prefer them.

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          No worry of climate collapse, normal seasons, no massive heatwaves, no Trump, no Tiktok, no corporate dystopia, no Bezos, no Musk… yeah, sure, horrible times those were.

          • @[email protected]
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            18 months ago

            bro what are you on about. do you really think there were no equivalent problems back then weve since solved? i cant examplify because i was not alive at that time and im not read up enough but to me its obvious every time period will have their own challenges, and stop putting words in ppls mouths lol

            • @[email protected]
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              18 months ago

              Solve me climate change and then I’ll be happy. And no, ozone layer is not an equivalent problem and neither is the Cold War.

  • @[email protected]
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    298 months ago

    In terms of total war and death worldwide, this is the most peaceful time in known human history.

    • @[email protected]
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      48 months ago

      Is that still true? Like, as in, updated in the past year-to-the-last-few-months? War (even though they’re not calling it war) is rising in many places.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        It’s no longer true as of about two years ago no, but the measurement was always a bit skewed for Western audiences and glosses over increases in specific types of crimes ( categorically ) such as homicide bombings and domestic terrorism.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        I don’t believe this is something easily tracked and updated annually. The point is in terms of amount of population as a percentage. People in the 21st century largely have more food, shelter, and general security worldwide than in all of known human history.

        Don’t let anecdotal news about wars worldwide override the fact that much larger scale (as percent of world population) have occurred and occurred consistently in past history. Wars, famines, plagues, and other things have wiped out far more of the population overall historically. While the wars you see today are horrible, and in specific regions they might be decimating, they still pale in comparison to the level of death in human history and the scope of death of past wars.

        The Black Death in the 1300s itself killed 30-50% of all of Europe. Ghengis Khan is estimated to have been responsible for killing 10% of the world population (10% today would be more than the entire population of Europe, for perspective). There’s a lot of less than documented Chinese history that also suggests massive deaths from famines and plagues and stuff that seem to have amounted to a large percentage of the world population at the time.

        Another thing I have seen a lot of in the last decade, mostly relating the the US, is that while large scale violent crime may be up (like mass killings) overall murder and crime is lower than it has been in past decades. Again, in a macro scope of things. You’ll always have pockets of geography and/or time that are bad.

        • trainsaresexy
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          28 months ago

          Ghengis Khan is estimated to have been responsible for killing 10% of the world population, which would be more than the entire population of Europe today.

          The population of europe today is more than 750 million so that can’t be right.

          • @[email protected]
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            38 months ago

            I altered my wording. Thank you. I meant it as perspective. 10% today would equate to more than all of Europe.

    • kingthrillgore
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      38 months ago

      We’re getting awfully close to another World War given ongoing affairs in Ukraine and the Middle East…