No, doomerism discourages people from trying. It also comes from the same place intellectually as the luddite wing of the green movement, which is one major reason we didn't replace coal with nuclear energy decades ago. (The others being that coal is cheap and fossil fuel lobbyists are powerful. But without the luddite greens opposing it we might have gotten somewhere.)
Doomerism leads people to go ahead and buy a ridiculous gas hog SUV they don't need because why not, we're all gonna die. Doomerism means we should cancel all our green and next-generation nuclear development because it doesn't matter. We're all gonna die.
Look up the Moore's law like progress of solar, wind, and batteries. Look up how much renewable energy we're adding, the uptake rate for EVs, etc. We are not doing enough but we are not doing nothing.
The previous poster is right. The global average is below the threshold and the global average is the only number that matters re: physics. Physics doesn't care about politics. The goal now must be to keep chipping away at those higher numbers in developed economies and to make sure the developing world gets renewable and nuclear energy before they decide to industrialize with coal like China did.
Either that or at least make sure we're cutting emissions in mature economies as fast or faster than developing economy emissions are increasing so the average does not exceed the limit.
Truth from the guy who says the parents of murdered kids are “crisis actors.”
This is the essence of populism: revolting against a disliked and distrusted establishment by backing a significantly and very obviously worse alternative. Instead of the mainstream media which has proven itself untrustworthy let’s go for a full on con artist. Instead of bad journalism let’s have pure fantasy made up by dudes taking bong hits.
It’s the intellectual equivalent of protesting police misconduct by setting your own neighborhood on fire and destroying your own things. That’ll show em.
I think you’ll find both concepts, at least in widespread use, are fairly novel concepts. Many would define colonization as a financial institution, for instance, not merely migration or displacement/integration. The legalization of immigration is generally a 19th (and certainly 20th) century innovation, as it requires overcoming significant technological barriers associated with identification and centralized bureaucracy.
For instance, my ancestors have lived on this continent for almost exactly 400 years. Only one of them came here legally, and I don’t think any came here illegally.
That doesn’t help when 70% of phones in the US are iPhones and even a higher percentage of upper income earners are iPhones. It also doesn’t help with Macs
Hopefully there was fraud because the alternative is worse, but there probably wasn't or we'd have heard specific accusations by now. The most likely explanation for Trump winning the election by such a huge margin is that the majority of voters simply prefer Trump's government.
My pet theory is that compared to 2020, all the new Democrat voters who voted because they were tired of Trump didn't bother to repeat it, but all the new Republican voters who joined the Trump cult stayed in the cult and voted again. That's a legitimate election victory, not fraud. It's known that red states engaged in voter suppression, but not enough to cause these numbers.
I think it's okay to protest against fascism even when fascism legitimately wins an election, but not okay to protest for fascism even when fascism legitimately loses, so I'm not sure I'd call it a lack of self-awareness.
The Russians are a people of fascinating extremes.
On one hand, as this explains, they've taken utopian ideas quite seriously and have always been great innovators in the sciences, the arts, and technology. First orbit, first person in space, designed the Tokamak, could easily have been first on the Moon if things had gone a little different, countless great artists and composers, etc.
On the other hand there seems to be a side of Russia that's cynical and nihilistic. There's a joke I heard once that goes something like "in America you die for freedom, in France you die for your country, in England you die for the Queen, and in Russia you die." Today you seem to have dominant thinkers in Russia like Aleksandr Dugin who believe only a tiny number of humans are worthy of agency and this is, with a lot of sophistry, romanticized. For a large number of Russians to swallow this implies to me a level of cynicism about the potential of the human condition.
Or maybe it's not a contradiction. Maybe the utopianism and innovativeness is a brave stand against the cynicism and totalitarian cults of misery-for-most.
The USA of course has its contradictions, like being simultaneously progressive and reactionary. It's a nation built on both slavery and liberation.
Russian here. Speaking of Dugin, I'm not a fan of his ideas about archaic way of living, and I don't personally know anyone who likes them. I consider him to be a hypocrite who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk – unlike German Sterligov, who actually lives in a village without modern technology that he founded and built.
However, there's a sad fact about Dugin. He experienced a personal tragedy – his adult daughter was murdered, likely for political reasons. So, while I'm not a supporter of his ideas, I can never judge him for these ideas considering what he went through. Maybe advocating for these ideas is his way of surviving his tragedy.
As a Russian how would you characterize Dugin? Over here he’s usually considered a fascist (which I don’t think is technically accurate, though he is authoritarian) or grouped with neo-monarchist type “trads.”
I’ve always had a dark view of him. His writing gives me a veiled nihilist vibe. He seems like someone who is bitter about something. He lives in a fantasy world and wants people punished if it can’t be real.
Not a unique thing. This is the dark side of many idealists and romantics. The more someone lives in a dream the more they often hate the real world.
I agree that the attempt on his life is sad and I’m sure further radicalized him, though most of his ideas predate that. Who do you think it was? I always had three possibilities: Ukraine, anti war Russians, or the Putin regime itself for some reason.
The only way for us to move anywhere is to establish set of motivations. Utopias (as extreme goals) are such grand scale motivations.
Were we, as a society, would be without Russian revolution and its attempt to implement extreme utopia of "happiness to everybody and free of charge here and now". I suspect that modern Europe and US that are social-democratic now (but not centuries later) is a result of that idealistic and utopian push Russians tried to implement ahead of time.
Humanity needs global goals that will motivate us to move further. Global warming fight is OK but not enough I think. Something great like "jump to stars now" and is required, no?
Maybe this is my cynicism, but I think the USA is not that different from Russia. The few people who have agency are just better at psychology. They are great at making the masses believe that the utopian ideals handed down from up high are their own ideals.
> The Russians are a people of fascinating extremes.
You could say this about most societies. Just pick one of a million dimensions that a culture is likely to be an outlier in and blamo you got a radical society.
The US now has an isolationist regime. I think that's fairly likely to happen in the next few years if it is going to happen. Ukraine is also done unless Europe (probably Poland) steps up in a big way.
It doesn’t. But as the Empire’s grip on the world is slipping it will become more brazen, aggressive, openly selfish, erratic. Quod licet Iovi etc. A role Trump was born to play. But, as Europe’s economic woes after four years of D rule should tell you, it’s not just him who’s happy to cannibalize the Empire’s subjects.
Doomerism leads people to go ahead and buy a ridiculous gas hog SUV they don't need because why not, we're all gonna die. Doomerism means we should cancel all our green and next-generation nuclear development because it doesn't matter. We're all gonna die.
Look up the Moore's law like progress of solar, wind, and batteries. Look up how much renewable energy we're adding, the uptake rate for EVs, etc. We are not doing enough but we are not doing nothing.
The previous poster is right. The global average is below the threshold and the global average is the only number that matters re: physics. Physics doesn't care about politics. The goal now must be to keep chipping away at those higher numbers in developed economies and to make sure the developing world gets renewable and nuclear energy before they decide to industrialize with coal like China did.
Either that or at least make sure we're cutting emissions in mature economies as fast or faster than developing economy emissions are increasing so the average does not exceed the limit.
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