“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I'm not optimistic. I think an accurate assessment of the world is, in a sense, pretty pessimistic. But I don't see any reason to get worked up about it. It would be very stupid to let my mind tell me that I cannot experience pleasure in the world just because the long term situation looks bleak. I can't control any of that stuff anyway, so why bother feeling bad about it?
Rustin Cohle:
Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of non existence into
this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher. That"s... so my daughter, she
spared me the sin of being a father.
> I would not recommend avoiding the biological imperative. Reproduce. Everything else after that moment is clarity.
I'd like to point out that experience is far from universal. Parenting beyond "feed and shelter them" is a minefield of ambiguity and conflicting evidence.
In a western democracy, you can, at least in theory, freely criticize those in power without fear of retribution, but also without any hope of your criticism changing anything. It's just a pressure release valve. When criticism starts taking a form that might force change, the mask and the gloves come off, as you can see in the violence against protesters once protests reach a critical mass.
You can't force change, sure, but that doesn't mean you can't be part of it. Individuals can and do join political parties and become influential within them. Political parties win elections and ultimately set policy which can start to change things.
None of those things happen quickly, and most people don't succeed in their attempt to do it. That doesn't mean it's not possible. I'd argue that it's a feature of the system that the system makes it hard to change course - it averages out the extremes.
China has one proletarian party. The US has two bourgeois parties. One might think the ideal would be to have one bourgeois party, and one proletarian party, but that hasn't seemed to work out anywhere.
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