i like to remind myself of #fascist #spain under #franco and look at spain today
doesn't mean spain is utopia today
doesn't mean "it's all going to be ok, relax"
it means
1. we have a lot fucking work to do
2. there is a lot of fucking suffering ahead of us
but it also means i will not accept #pessimism #cynicism nor #capitulation
as long as we *fight* we can right this rotten ship
biggest ally of #maga:
lazy indifference
get off your fucking asses and fight
After pondering Cynicism a bit, I came across a TED talk about Stoicism. Appropriately, it doesn't have the hyped-up crowds and boosterism of so many TED talks, instead, it's an academic philosopher calmly lecturing on the history of Stoicism and how he thinks it is relevant to modern day. Also appropriate, it was delivered in Athens (but in English)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhn1Fe8cT0Q
Massimo Pigliucci is becoming one of my favorite philosophers. I first encountered him over 10 years ago when he was working on evolutionary theory. He has a podcast about stoicism, that I'm looking forward to listening to.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stoic-meditations/id1328933559
Thank you to @johentsch for bringing up the word #cynicism instead of #nihilism—that is a _much_ more accurate descriptor of the symptom I’m describing! I’ve edited the post to use that term.
Do your best to resist #cynicism, because cynicism destroys nuance, and almost everything valuable in life exists inside nuance.
Resist saying #cynical things like “who cares about privacy; your data is already out there”, “who cares about stopping climate change; it’s already too late”, “who cares about voting; we don’t have a democracy any more”, and any number of similarly simplistic, thought-destroying nonsense.
Cynicism is faux-intellectualism. It’s attempting to impress people with rational-sounding generalizations that lead to absurd, defeatist behavior. It’s a claim of “being real” while being too lazy to think through the problem. It’s feeling superior by kicking a table on which someone else is doing their homework.
Nuance exists even during a crisis—it’s arguably even more important then. Things can ALWAYS get worse, and things can ALWAYS get better. Working to make things better is worth doing. Feeling smug and telling people to give up is not; it’s the asshole’s easy way out.
