Anyone else feel like the reason why humanity doesn’t bother to fix important issues for a long time is because the people simply don’t care enough to group up and fix them. I mean when I try to educate folks on complex problems they often seem like they don’t want to discuss it and quickly defend the status quo saying “that’s just how things are”
But we can’t keep ignoring these issues because then it could delay necessary progress for thousands of years.
It really makes me understand why we don’t see any advanced space faring civilizations as we look to the stars. Life just isn’t good at cooperation.
Maybe it’s you.
Life just isn’t good at cooperation.
Our only data point for life is carbon based life on Earth. And from that we have
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a variety of insects that live in colonies that cooperate in a profound way, putting themselves in harm’s way for the sake of the colony. Ie ants, bees, termites
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a variety of insects (and fish and birds) that have swarming behaviors, which involves individuals coordinating movements to confuse predators, conserve energy, or find food. ie locusts, sardines, starlings
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a variety of animals that work as herd animals, which intuitively agree to use the power of numbers to increase the safety of the herd. Ie gazelles, sheep, cattle
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a variety of predatory animals that cooperate in order to bring down animals they would have a much harder time getting alone. Ie wolves, lions, and arguably humans
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a variety of primates that live in tribes ie chimps, baboons, and again humans
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a variety of trees that share resources through vast underground fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks. so not only are trees cooperating with other trees, the fungus is enabling that cooperation in exchange for a piece of the pie
and that’s just complex life, there’s many more examples in cellular life. animals have been known to show altruism, social animals take care of each other, like feeding and caring for the wounded.
cooperation has evolved in virtually every branch of the tree of life and oftentimes independently. it wouldn’t happen if life wasn’t conducive to cooperation and cooperation wasn’t a positive selective pressure of evolution
and i mean, just look at modern human society. do you really think our globalized society would work without a profound amount of cooperation? we even have a word for this idea, the social contract.
I really don’t get this viewpoint of yours. I see the opposite. Yes, humans run into problems at large scales but life absolutely is good at cooperation and in fact the most successful species tend to be the most cooperative
We are approaching the second time life has changed earth’s atmosphere enough to cause a mass extinction. Sure, on a small scale, we’re great at working together, but on the biggest scale we’ve reached, we seem to be really bad at it.
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I think that this problem is similar to the monkeysphere: there are too many issues and problems for us to worry about, so we typically pick the problems that are closest to us and most solvable.
This is basically the same idea that someone else mentioned in this thread.
Maybe globalism was a bad idea? Maybe we should just create a lot of monkey spheres and each find our own local and relative level of happiness?
Nah i wouldnt blame globalism if anything id blame on the human tendency to take the path of least resistance. Where convenience trumps all
The shifting of manufacturing outside the region is a massive problem.
Even then, people tend to not even give a shit about local issues unless its something so obvious. People wont really give a shit about electing the right officials but will complain about their flammable water until someONE stands up to organize and rile up the politicians
Given that, i believe its something worse than simple overload of issues.
The issue is people are too distracted and living in their own world. Its not that they cant handle worrying about other issues its because people are living on autopilot
Yes. Me included.
I don’t care.
Meh.
It’s a cross between our innate limitations, a societal system which works against us but continues from sheer momentum, and then by design by those who benefit. I don’t think most people woke up and decided to live apathetic lives. We are chronically cognitively tasked
Gaza is all I need to know about humanity…
Never again until Israelis do a genocide then it is america, fuck yeah! Kill 'em all!
I mean the US has done a lot of genocide. Hitler took inspiration from how the US dealt with it’s native people. It’s not that strange that a nation founded on genocide and slavery is okay with that.
We at least we are coming around that genocide is cool when the good guys do it!
Decades of bullshit undone!
Meh
most people are caught up in their own day to day lives. it’s just the nature of things.
you have to go to work to pay your bills. your girlfriend wants to go out to dinner every once in a while. you have to go have dinner at your parents. you have to walk your dog. you have to brush your teeth, do your laundry. you have to figure out what you’re gonna eat for dinner. should probably schedule that dentist appointment soon. need to do my taxes.
etc
really doesn’t leave you that much time or energy to worry about the big problems of the world.
That’s pretty accurate! I just wish they wouldn’t be so insistent on defending the status quo when it has problems like world hunger.
“Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.”
There’s little to nothing I can do to fix world hunger, if I can’t feed myself.
There are very few people in first world countries who cant feed themselves
There are also very few people who take everything extremely literally, yet here you are.
I dont understand what youre saying then. You literally made an analogy for an emergency situation in which you make sure of your own survival first, then tend to others.
I apologize for my snarky remark, but I’m not playing this game with you.
The battle against global starvation is one of the few things that’s actually going well…
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised-768x540.png
Apathy is a coping mechanism
I’m. Tired. I wish I wasn’t.
And a surviving mechanism ; don’t do anything (use up energy) if you don’t need it like now.
Our brains are made for fruit picking and running in the jungle.
In a single day, I can’t worry at the same time about LGTBQ rights, palestinians, Ukranians, animal abuse, 100000 diseases that need research, racism, facism, basic needs for the third world, police brutality, the state of democracy, a migration crisis, climate change, polution, and many many many more things.
It is just too much to handle. So when faced with the horrors of the world for the bazzilionth time a day, I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. If I did, I would be in constant stress about everything that is going wrong with the world. Instead, I throw away the booklets I get from the charities I donate monthly to, I tell the collector at the door I can’t spare any money for children in Palestine, and I scroll past the post about how many children were raped in Ukraine today. Hence, I will come across as apathatic.
But that apathy is a survival mechanic, since without it, I would go insane.
You are right, and it is usually just a (very moral eh) tactic to get your clicks. You aRe okAy with MurDer and Rape? If noT click “click bait article”.
I have decided to follow seriously only one topic (the russian ukraine aggression, so I gonon the lookout myself for information), some others more on a surface level like LGBT+ where you don’t need to know a lot about the topic to understand what’s happening (it’s quite straightforward, terfs are bad, let people be who they are ffs).
But again, if you don’t engage in most of the “news” you are not a bad person, you just prive shady companies advertising money.
I basically came to say this, but also that the cause is systemic.
When modern society, so thoroughly ravaged by late stage capitalism, requires you to spend the majority of your day working or doing chores and your leisure time is resting just enough so you can do it so again, there’s no energy left to fight.
I can’t say that those in charge are smart enough to do this on purpose, but it’s definitely effective.
It certainly has become one for me at any rate…
I used to care a lot about everything, and now I’m just so so tired of trying. Apathy feels like a poplar grove; just keeps growing, spreading, and outcompeting everything else until it takes over and ruins everything, because it takes an absolute ton of energy control spread.
Covid broke our brains, literally.
Do y’all notice how people seem to have gotten more aggressive after covid.
Its like the Lead-Crime hypothesis, but Covid-Crime hypothesis
The statistically low levels of crime we are currently experiencing do not support your hypothesis.
Dude… We have a convicted felon and anti-constitution insurrectionist in the highest office of the US. Crime rate just went back up. Dont forget all the hate crimes he’ll inspire around the country. Murders might have gone down, but the many instances of racial harassment, that are most likely going to be unreported, will skyrocket. Police aren’t gonna make a report until you’ve been injured enough to end up in the hospital.
It’s a disgrace! Somebody should do something!
Someone should at least try to do something!
Someone should talk about doing something because they want to feel involved.
Yes, in every and all aspects.
Wars? Ukraine or Gaza.
Production? Chinas slavery
Sickness? 4 years ago.
Gaming? Triple a studiosIts everywhere to the point in hitting apathy against apathy myself
It’s always been wars, always been slavery, always been sickness.
If anything, we have it much better than before. How do you think it was growing up during the world wars?
Those where just the easy ones out of the top of my head, we both know those are the the miniscule tip of the eisberg.
But dont you think you are just dismissing it yourself by saying we “always had those”, sounds pretty apathetic to me.
Not to me, it just sounds normal. The reason people feel apathy is because there is a difference between expectation and reality that is very big for them.
It’s the thought of “I need the world to be different for me to feel good” that is causing the apathy. You can change the thoughts on this and feel much, much better by being very grateful for having so much choice as a human being to find things you enjoy.
pfft. what do I care. /s honestly I think its more the stress of survival because at least in the us even if you are doing pretty well its setup so a few bumps can have you completely fall into poverty. You pretty much have to be independently wealthy for it not to and even then medical things could take you out if your on the low end.
You’re not wrong. But do consider that those other people may know what works for them better than you think you do.
Oh, certainly. Don’t forget the equal parts of hatred!
Either too much or too little depending on who we’re talking about. You have the people who will amass a protest in the thousands because one person was mistreated and sometimes only a single person who will react at all when a thousand are mistreated. And people wonder why sociopathy exists.
