I'd like to believe it. But I'd also like to believe that Disney movies were about reality.
Gaul became France because Julius Caesar cut off the hands of all the males who objected to becoming a province of Rome. They lost, Ceasar won, and a couple of millennia later the descendants of the Gauls were blessed with, and pretty much emb…
I'd like to believe it. But I'd also like to believe that Disney movies were about reality.
Gaul became France because Julius Caesar cut off the hands of all the males who objected to becoming a province of Rome. They lost, Ceasar won, and a couple of millennia later the descendants of the Gauls were blessed with, and pretty much embraced, a quisling government in Vichy. Then in my lifetime the so called heroic leader of France, who survived WWII only through the intervention of interested foreign powers, withdrew from NATO so he could have the benefits of not being deposed by a pro-Soviet cabal without having to endure the inconveniences of self-defence, leaving all that annoyance to the aforementioned alliance.
Then the descendants of the self-interested power that saved the bacon of that self-same egotist voted to install as their leader a paid agent of a corrupt gangster empire. That agent's primary foreign policy objective was to fulfil the directive of his master in Moscow to defenestrate the alliance that saved half of Europe from becoming postwar Kremlin satrapies. And those descendants will, in two short years' time, restore that paid agent to power so he can finish the work he started.
Pretty hard to be an optimist if you've read any history.
There's a photo tweeted by Adam Kinzinger of two children waving at Ukranian soldiers en route to confronting the myrmidons of the revanant ghost of Stalin. Where they will probably perish.
And yet here we stand, with Wars of Religion, Human Slavery, Absolutism, Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism largely consigned to our past, at least in the West. I would contend that, in the light of all that, being an optimist is easy. It's staying a pessimist that requires real work, constant effort, in fact.
Not sure about pessimism being more work... for me it seems the other way around. Although it is true I've predicted at least twelve of the last two recessions.
On the contrary. I'm no starry-eyed idealist, by any length. Even though there are a thousand steps upwards to civilized behavior, there's only one step downwards into barbarism. But history is a record of people choosing to mount that thousand steps upwards again and again, rather than indulge in what people of my home town used to call "nostalgie de la boue". Between decadence and depravity on one side, and civilization and decency on the other, that which is civilized and decent tends to take far greater strides than that which chooses to lie face down in the mud.
I have not your courage to will to believe that there is some merit in our species that can create a telos that will lead us to a Lamarckian better future.
But I would rather have you as a neighbor than a Cassandra like me. May you increase and multiply.
Maybe the closest I can come is -- I cannot honestly conclude humans ever will be good.
Yet I do believe, and know, it is in our power not to be as dreadful as we can.
Humans -- hell, Americans -- made the James Webb space telescope. And Galileo persisted: Eppur si muove.
I'd like to believe it. But I'd also like to believe that Disney movies were about reality.
Gaul became France because Julius Caesar cut off the hands of all the males who objected to becoming a province of Rome. They lost, Ceasar won, and a couple of millennia later the descendants of the Gauls were blessed with, and pretty much embraced, a quisling government in Vichy. Then in my lifetime the so called heroic leader of France, who survived WWII only through the intervention of interested foreign powers, withdrew from NATO so he could have the benefits of not being deposed by a pro-Soviet cabal without having to endure the inconveniences of self-defence, leaving all that annoyance to the aforementioned alliance.
Then the descendants of the self-interested power that saved the bacon of that self-same egotist voted to install as their leader a paid agent of a corrupt gangster empire. That agent's primary foreign policy objective was to fulfil the directive of his master in Moscow to defenestrate the alliance that saved half of Europe from becoming postwar Kremlin satrapies. And those descendants will, in two short years' time, restore that paid agent to power so he can finish the work he started.
Pretty hard to be an optimist if you've read any history.
There's a photo tweeted by Adam Kinzinger of two children waving at Ukranian soldiers en route to confronting the myrmidons of the revanant ghost of Stalin. Where they will probably perish.
Words fail.
And yet here we stand, with Wars of Religion, Human Slavery, Absolutism, Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism largely consigned to our past, at least in the West. I would contend that, in the light of all that, being an optimist is easy. It's staying a pessimist that requires real work, constant effort, in fact.
Not sure about pessimism being more work... for me it seems the other way around. Although it is true I've predicted at least twelve of the last two recessions.
On the contrary. I'm no starry-eyed idealist, by any length. Even though there are a thousand steps upwards to civilized behavior, there's only one step downwards into barbarism. But history is a record of people choosing to mount that thousand steps upwards again and again, rather than indulge in what people of my home town used to call "nostalgie de la boue". Between decadence and depravity on one side, and civilization and decency on the other, that which is civilized and decent tends to take far greater strides than that which chooses to lie face down in the mud.
I have not your courage to will to believe that there is some merit in our species that can create a telos that will lead us to a Lamarckian better future.
But I would rather have you as a neighbor than a Cassandra like me. May you increase and multiply.
Maybe the closest I can come is -- I cannot honestly conclude humans ever will be good.
Yet I do believe, and know, it is in our power not to be as dreadful as we can.
Humans -- hell, Americans -- made the James Webb space telescope. And Galileo persisted: Eppur si muove.
Nihilism is not an option.
I'm working on it. Not very good at it. I guess if you are still horrified you're not yet a complete nihilist.