Thread: This World is Rotten

Originally Posted by Nightspren

Maybe I'm just a crazy twelve-year-old who doesn't know anything about the world.

Fixed it for you. The world is better than you think. So much better.

OP, you have only had the experience of one point of view of life. You would not feel necessarily the same if you were to die to day and be reborn into another person. Your life may be rotten, mine might be too, but the world is not rotten. This is the most important thing people today do not come to terms with when evaluating their unhappiness. The world is not rotten and has nothing to do with your life's rottenness. Believe me, I'e been in that same boat, but realizing that it is you that is the problem is essential. Otherwise you wind up like all these fucking mass murders because these people felt the same as us but believed that the world really was rotten and that it didn't stem from their attitude or life experience. Therefore, instead of solemnly accepting his own death, alone, just like he was when he was born, and going out with no one knowing, he decided to take it out on those he wrongly perceived to have ruined his life.

Maybe it is rotten, but rotten stuff tends to make good fertilizer for seeds, just saying

Don't watch the news so much or pay so much attention to the larger state of the world - it is literally extremely depressing because generally what they report on is when things go wrong. Not only that, but it isn't really productive or necessary to know too much about the wide world in general, unless you're the kind of person who really likes to do that. Until mass media it wasn't possible to know so much about what was going on in other countries or even across your own country - people mostly just knew what was going on in their own neighborhoods and to some extent their city or town. That's how we evolved to live and all this info overload largely just stresses us out, though it can also spread understanding across the globe to some extent.

I find I'm at my best when I'm concentrating on doing something productive in my own life, paying attention to the people near me and my friends and family.

Snoop:

I believe I miscommunicated. I have an amazing, wonderful life. I can't imagine how it could be better. I have two parents with an amazing marriage, three delicious meals a day, a large allowance, and a wise, supportive big brother.
But when I watch the news, when I see all the war, the genocide, the killing, the bigotry, the radicalism, the crimes against humanity-I feel that there is something deeply wrong with the world.

Darkmatters:

I see that we have different worldviews. I have dedicated myself to the understanding of all peoples in this world. As a result, I research different geographical regions, their culture, their history, and the problems they have with the people around them. I always get both sides of the story. I do all of these things so that I can better understand my culture, and how the world is effecting me today.

Thomas Jefferson said something once about how the news fools people into thinking they're informed without actually informing them, and it's better not to read the news and know you're not informed than to read the news and think you are. This is very much true with mainstream news, but even good investigative programs like Vice will contort your worldview into pessimism if you take it as the entire picture.

Humanity's vileness will always outweigh the number of newsworthy grand messianic gestures, so it'll always look like evil's winning if you inform yourself. That's why DM suggests not to look at the news so much. My suggestion is to remember that the story you tell yourself, or the story you're told, is fiction. Feel free to suck up as much information as you can but remember that you're not receiving an accurate depiction of reality. Remember that things are different from how you think of them.

And if you really can't stand it, fear not for Global warming will displace 80% of the world's population in the next century (optimistically), and Monsanto is attempting to collapse the ecosphere so we won't have to suffer the indignity of self-aware existence much longer.

Things aren't really all that bad. If you ask me, we're heading toward an age of enlightenment. The vast majority of countries are becoming more accepting of people in general, we've had discoveries in science and computing over the last 40-50 years that are absolutely mind blowing and the general population seems to be taking an interest into nerd and science culture. You can only have a broken system for so long. With greater awareness comes greater progress, and maybe one day, even within your lifetime, we'll see nations turn from business and politics to science and understanding. That's the best way to move forward if you ask me

Originally Posted by Nightspren

I pretty much hate the world right now.
Everything just seems so pointless. Government isn't doing anything to stop wrongdoing, they're enabling it. Anarchists aren't doing anything, order is there for a reason. Mankind is rotten, and the ones making it decay are the ones in charge.

I do want to ask you, why do you think it is the governments responsibility to stop wrongdoing? Why should this not be a personal decision that people make? The more you force it down their throat, the more you "make" them stop wrong doing, the more wrong doing they will learn (and want) to do, because the government is teaching you to become subversive and that in order to do something you want, you have to break the rules. Now breaking the law is not only almost impossible to avoid, but it becomes cool to do so by those easily impressionable people which make up a majority of the populace, now being above the law or purposefully bad is all over entertainment (think drugs, violence, and other lude stuff that is in all types of media--music, movies, shows... everything) and again, it just makes it seem that much more cool. If there were less laws, people would a)be less able to break the law, obviously, b)be less willing to break the law since they aren't already breaking the law doing something they should already be able to do, and c) deciding to be good on their own. The reasons why you would want to be polite and do the right thing don't even matter at that point--either it's because you feel that is the right thing to do, or for the morally corrupt or completely devoid, for fear of being rightfully "taken care" of by the direct surrounding community, who realize for everyone's sakes and safety, choosing to be good is better than choosing to be bad. If there was a chance for you being an asshole and spitting on people and going over the speed limit through town that angry people would kick your ass or even shoot you, would you continue to do it? Would you think twice about your actions? You would probably develop some sense and not do such a stupid thing. Not only that, then people learn to have some self-responsibility. You don't act like a felon because the outside forces of the world taught you to be that way, you decided to act like a valueless, morally corrupt human being of your own accord, and the only way to atone for it is to accept this fact and actually sincerely be sorry for the fact you did such things.

I was reminded of that quotation attributed to Gandhi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Apparently what he really said was: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.” But it's good advice either way! (Source: Brian Morton, "Falser Words Were Never Spoken," New York Times, August 29, 2011)

The news is unbelievably depressing these days, but there's something useful to remember: we live in an era of media transparency like never before. On the downside, this exposes us to a constant barrage of horrors and injustice, but on the upside, awareness is the necessary first step toward making things better. Unfortunately, many problems in the world take generations to solve, and there are a lot of vested interests in not solving them. But if you look at how bad things were as recently as the nineteenth century (racism, sexism, pollution, exploitation, etc. etc. all much worse than today, mitigated only by the fact that the population was smaller), in many respects things have actually improved a great deal, despite all our cultural nostalgia for "the good old days."

Recently I came across an amusing book called The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible! by Otto L. Bettmann. It's a fun read if you want to compare modern life in the US with how wretched things were in the 19th century! And it's full of great illustrations from the era.