Also following the Anger Masturbations post about having a civil coversation, I'm going to ask a relatively simple question. And it's this; we can all agree the state of the world is pretty chaotic, at least for a lot of people relative to five or ten years ago. This is clearly reflected in the politics of our times. No matter how bad things get and no matter how many people in response stop and say 'okay now is the time to really get serious and fix things, before there's no going back', things keep moving forward. The question I have is why. Why is it that the idea that things are wrong right now, and they were right in the past-- so universal, while any proposals to change things back are always controversial? My biggest suspicion is the loud minority that destroys most civil conversations and keeps progress from being made. But surely if enough of the majority were trying they're best to do it, they should be able to carry on a conversation even despite a bit of trolling going on. So it also can be that people just aren't trying they're best, that they don't really care and they're distracted enough by the stresses of their lives to try to fix the world. Or maybe even the majority doesn't really care. Or maybe, and this is the most interesting to me, this is all just an inevitability. There are technological revolutions going on that act on the human race as almost a sort of 'puberty', and it's insane to thing humans _would_ be able to keep on top of this. If this were the case, then what's going on sucks but it's fine, because people will learn to live with one another and things will even out. Of course there's also the view that a certain portion of the population have just been so screwed over that they don't just not give a shit, they wanna burn everything down. They may not cognizantly be planning the end of the world, but they go 'eh fuck it maybe I will vote for X extreme referendum, one the one hand it might end well but even better it might end in the end of the world'. I've met a few people like that. Maybe it's everyone? But the world is always complicated. Or maybe it's no one.. and this is the way it's always been. I dunno. I bet there isn't any real single answer for us to figure out.. but I wanna know what you guys think.
