DreamerofDays

That went from zero to apocalypse very quickly.

I think you’ve been chasing the news dragon too long and too hard. Past a point, it doesn’t make you more informed, just… sadder. More given to misanthropy and despair.

We’re here, and we’re not all bad. Most of us want the same things: health, happiness, love, and camaraderie. We want those things for the people we care about— sometimes more than for ourselves.

The vast, vast majority of us are just people. We get caught up in things, and we forget it sometimes, but that’s a people thing too. And so is helping— when tragedy strikes, or those times we create tragedy, people are also the ones running toward the danger and uncertainty to help save those who cannot save themselves.

All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.

That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…

… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.

We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.

That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.

Does Agent Smith have autonomy?

Another way of thinking about it:

Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.

If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.

But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.

So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.

so I just feel like I should be able to live my life and not have to worry about all this. Why can’t I?

Are you seeking permission or explanation?

I mean, you’re not wrong. Neither of you are.

It is scary, and the precedent in the world is not for long-term national stability. Even setting aside invasion and occupation, dynasties end, governments fall, and a country’s name might be among its only bits of continuity to the past.

Betting on a country maintaining a continuous government for a hundred years is taking the long odds. Those odds become even worse if the government is relatively new. The USSR lasted less than 70 years, and the current Russian government has only been around a bit over 30(less, if you’d argue that Putin has fundamentally changed it). Stability is truly a bad bet for them in particular.

And they have a giant arsenal of weapons, nuclear and otherwise. “Worrying “ is a fully reasonable response.

The last sentence feels a little “perfect being the enemy of the good.” Outside of wanting purity of intention, what is the issue here, if the result is people being helped?

Some of it is distrust of young people. Some of it is a slavish devotion to “the rules” or “the way it’s always been I’ve always known it to be”.

I don’t get the former, and I’m doing my best to never settle for “the rules” as an answer without those rules being grounded and justifiable.

My criticism on this topic isn’t attached to the rescue efforts, but to the media coverage.

Attempting to save people is a good thing. There’s few people so truly undeserving that they don’t deserve the attempt, and I don’t trust myself to make that distinction.

But what made this story such catnip to everyone who had a platform?

Was it the submarine? A conveyance so exotic it captures the imagination. Was it the passengers? Not famous but wealthy, and easy to know about. Was it the destination? Our obsession with the Titanic has a constantly refreshing shelf life, it seems. Or was it more morbid— the imaginary oxygen clock ticking down breath by breath, trapped beneath an uncaring sea.

Whatever thing or combination it was, this story was goddamn everywhere.

But I don’t know that the media ought to carry all the blame. They supplied the drug, but it’s not like we haven’t taken the hit every chance we can get.

Every story about every development gets comments and discussions. The story is the star of many a “have you heard?” conversation. And every schmo with a classist axe to grind is gleefully grinding it in the briny deep.

But maybe I’m chasing the wrong thing here; moralising about what is printed, what is read, and what the “right” kind of news is. It might be that “news as entertainment” is just something people like, and that there’s nothing inherently wrong in it besides what I was taught and have imagined to be so. Perhaps in accepting it as valid, I can retrain those criticisms on what actually is healthy or unhealthy about it.