Science is depressing

KipperSnacks · Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:00 pm

Any minute the world could come to an end. Any minute a meteorite could smash into the earth with the destructive power of a hammer to a babies head. Any minute the ocean could eat your city. Any minute a super volcano could fill the air with poison ash.
Is is just me or is earth science depressing. I wish I could go back to being a kid when I didn't know the sun could burp and kill us all. All I ever hear any more is that we're all tippy toeing around in a Dragons den. Every show and article I read is about the end of the freaking world. The worst part is they're right, and there is no cure. It's like your doctor telling you your very sick then walking out of the room. The more we learn about the Earth and the universe the more it becomes clear that each day could end in a major bummer.
I believe I've had enough, I'm going back to cartoons and girly magazines where I never have to think about the end of the world again.
Talk to you later unless we're all on fire.

President Camacho · Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:10 pm

girly magazines? There must be a scientific explanation for your choice in comfort reading.

lol

Interbane · Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:26 pm

Don't blame the messenger, even though it doesn't seem like you are.

Consider the Bucket List. When contrasted with their antitheses, good things are emphasized. Enjoy life, it's precious beyond compare and you never know what the future holds, tomorrow might be your last.

Let's start a list of good things being contrasted by their opposites. If you're ever swindled by someone in business, you appreciate the innocence of a toddler so much more. Purity/corruption.

MidnightCoder · Mon Mar 15, 2010 12:00 am

Personally, I find the sheer number and viciousness of atrocities committed by people, against people, and against animals/habitat to be much more depressing.

A meteor knocking earth back into the primordial ooze phase would be doing the planet a favour.

etudiant · Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:08 am

They have a saying in the news media: “If it bleeds, it leads”. Meaning that there is nothing like the tension created by conflict, crime, or natural disaster, actual or imminent, to draw public interest. This is also something novelists understand (which is a label that could be applied to some news commentators). It’s almost as if it were hard-wired in to our character.

But taking the news too literally can be very distorting. A quick look at Fox News, or CNN will likely give you an idea. But for every earthquake or plague of locusts, there are millions of people going about their business, but doing things that aren’t “newsworthy”.

Even many less favored regions get by quite well. Japan has some of the highest number of earthquakes around, but is the number two economy in the world, and is doing quite well thank you. Costa Rica has a volcano that is so active it explodes almost every hour. It has been turned into a tourist attraction.

Despite the mayhem in some parts of the world, in many ways things are looking up. Democracy, generally speaking, is more common now than during the cold war. Pollution is decreasing in many categories in the developed world, albeit increasing in some third world countries. Violent crime is decreasing in many areas, particularly countries with aging populations, which is a large category. An economist at my bank told me that, here in Canada at least, things are so dull and predictable that institutions have no trouble at all attracting capital from around the world.

So kipper, I would feel safe in taking off my crash helmet, unlocking the door, and having a beer.

Interbane · Mon Mar 15, 2010 1:53 pm

Good point.

Media companies don't make as much money off mundanity. Stories showing the good of humanity are shown, but not remembered. Negative stories are not only shown more often, but remembered more clearly. It's not only the media that's biased, but also our memories.

The first couple chapters in "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky give some good insight into media bias.

KipperSnacks · Mon Mar 15, 2010 2:23 pm


	MidnightCoder wrote: Personally, I find the sheer number and viciousness of atrocities committed by people, against people, and against animals/habitat to be much more depressing. A meteor knocking earth back into the primordial ooze phase would be doing the planet a favour.

But what about your inner circle? Don't you and yours do right by other living things? I know mine do. In fact most everyone I know is a good and decent person. I always feel like it's not us it's them, but who are they.
If you take a small concentration of people say 500 heads, and weed out the scum tooth no good dirty bags you would find that the majority are good people. It's when you turn on the TV or open a newspaper that you find 98% of the world has lost it's marbles. If you base the world on what someone shows you than you will be left thinking that you are surrounded by violent crazy primates with clean teeth.
I challenge you to take a poll of your friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers and decided who is for us and who is against. I think you will be surprised.
The questions are: Who is giving us such a bad name? Who makes the world seem horrible and frightening? Who do they want you to turn to when you get scared? And Who can take a rainbow and sprinkle it with dew?

bleachededen · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:01 pm

What do you mean by "for us" or "against?" For us or against what?

I think you've left out part of your argument here, because polling my family and friends to find out who is "for us" or "against" us would be useless because I don't know what "for" or "against" mean in this context.

And the answer to your last question is the Candy Man. The Candy Man can.

blankspace101 · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:03 pm

cover it in chocolate and a miracle or too...lol sorry with an opener like that how could I resist?
I agree its more of media bias that makes us believe that the world is ending. All we have for our source of information is the media, which is more interested in making money than anything else, Thus we recieve only the most "entertaining" of news, and we watch it because its entertaining. It's like traffic, it's only entertaining if by the end you see the aftermath of a horrible wreck. lol

KipperSnacks · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:20 pm

For us=Peace on Earth, good will towards men, no child left behind, equal opportunity, it takes a community to raise a child, and all that jazz.
Against=pervs, murderers, tyrants, the greedy, and the like.

bleachededen · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:34 pm


	KipperSnacks wrote: For us=Peace on Earth, good will towards men, no child left behind, equal opportunity, it takes a community to raise a child, and all that jazz. Against=pervs, murderers, tyrants, the greedy, and the like.

No offense, but I think this is a very naive concept.

Peace on Earth sounds good, but is most likely impossible, and just because someone isn't spending all of their energy trying to bring it about doesn't make them a bad person. Good will towards men is fine and most people try to accomplish this as much as is possible, but not everyone will get along with everyone else all the time and so on. No Child Left Behind as a law actually screws more kids out of education than helps them. It was lousy legislation and now makes it even more difficult for kids to learn efficiently and effectively and punishes schools whose kids aren't "smart" enough instead of giving them the funds they need to improve their chances. So to think this is a good idea is pretty naive and shows a lack of understanding of the bill. The title sounds good, but the law actually does the opposite of the title.

Equal opportunity is pretty common, sure businesses can always get around it, but I wouldn't say that steps aren't being made to make this better. It does not take a community to raise a child, in fact that kind of thinking actually makes bad parents because they shirk the responsibility of parenting by giving their children to others to raise, etc. These ideas sound good on paper but aren't realistic or helpful.

As for perverts, murderers, and rapists, these people are human, too, no matter how much we'd like to wish otherwise. Where they go wrong is different every time, and not every one who has committed these crimes wishes for all mankind to perish, and therefore isn't neccesarily "against us".

We're all just human, both good and bad, and no matter how idealistic you are, nothing will change that fact. The best we can do is make our own lives and the lives of those around us and that we care about better and find a way to live in a world that seems so disgusting at times. Nothing will ever be 100% perfect, and everyone has bad things inside them and some of them will act on them and some of them won't. The only thing to do is to help those you can, live how you see fit, and don't fret about the state of the rest of the world, if you can help it.

The Earth probably won't be destroyed tomorrow, but sure, it could be, so live how you want to today, just in case. That's all anyone can really do, honestly. Best of luck.

MidnightCoder · Mon Mar 15, 2010 5:12 pm


	KipperSnacks wrote: I challenge you to take a poll of your friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers and decided who is for us and who is against. I think you will be surprised. The questions are: Who is giving us such a bad name? Who makes the world seem horrible and frightening? Who do they want you to turn to when you get scared?

I'm probably going to sound harsh here. In fact, I've been trying to decide if to continue in this thread at all since you posted this. To hell with it, what follows is just one more idiot's opinion.

This that I quoted above is one of the reasons things will never change. You seem to think that insulating yourself from the horrors going on in the world somehow makes them less horrible, or at least less important.

Just an example*: "Oh, someone far away got butchered with machetes, left to bleed to death with a missing leg, all to fulfill some greedy peoples' mythology that an albino's leg could somehow be used to make magic potions? Well, it's far away and there's probably not that many people doing this so I'm not going to be bothered by it"

BTW, this is happening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6UpuJIFaY
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/282077
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL3580125
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7733597.stm

W. T. F.

I could easily list hundreds of atrocities of this magnitude, or worse, because I'm (a) not afraid to read these things, in fact I actively keep myself informed on news you would probably characterize as both light and dark, and (b) I understand that these stories MEAN something. Nothing is ever going to change until enough people agree that change is necessary. Hiding your head in the sand because your life, or you family's lives, or your inner circle of friends lives is "safe" might preserve some of your sanity, but it won't do a damn thing to improve the world.

Being informed, and sharing - even in a small way - the information you find can contribute to making some kind of difference. For a lot of us it's all we can do, due to finances, geography, and the balance of personal risk that comes from taking action.


	KipperSnacks wrote: And Who can take a rainbow and sprinkle it with dew?

To this I would say, "And Who can take someone's leg, and sprinkle it with blood". Harsh? Yes. But a damn sight more meaningful than this kind of platitude.

*No, I'm not putting these words in your mouth. I'm saying that this kind of attitude leads to this kind of statement or thought.

KipperSnacks · Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:52 pm

I guess I need to responed to both of the above, although I believe both help make my point. First of all the list I made for the for us side I thought established a trend of ideas that are along the right line of thinking and atleast are an effort, but are clearly not the solution. Saying that murdrers and rapist aren't against us makes me think you have lost sight of the impotance of the idividual. If a good person is murdered than we have just lost a battle. The ratio has swung in the enemies favor.
As for the last one, perhaps you missed my point because I ussually right fiction and I'm not always straight forward. The people in your grusome movies are the minority, we the majority have the hammer but we under us it. Spreading information is great but when where and who will use all this intel to strike a blow or two? The human race makes me sick every day but i won't go down without a fight. Wanting a meteor to wipe us all out is the same as waving a white flag. Don't give up the good fight.

Interbane · Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:19 am


	Quote: Saying that murdrers and rapist aren't against us makes me think you have lost sight of the impotance of the idividual. If a good person is murdered than we have just lost a battle. The ratio has swung in the enemies favor.

By what criteria do you distinguish the murderers from the good guys? By their dental hygiene? I agree that those people who are shown beyond the shadow of a doubt to have broken what society agrees as a moral code should be punished. But what makes you think good people can't break a moral code? Would that mean they are no longer good? If someone in your close family were to break a moral code, would you immediately reject them as the enemy? I don't think you would. Neither would I. Neither would the family members of most of the criminals in our society.

You seem to be able to easily distinguish between "us" and "them". I think there is a more fundamental problem, and it is widespread. The very fact that we as a species have the tendency to distinguish between "us" and "them" is a problem. There are many ideologies which exclude our fellow man. Nationalism and religious belief are prime examples. Whatever our differences, they need not be narcissistic, small nor large. As a disclaimer, I consider excluding albinos or odd women(witches) to be due to religious belief.

We need to embrace our fellow man without branding him as a "them" or an "outsider" or an "enemy". Of course, such a thing is almost impossible in some cases. How do we reference the people who occupy our prisons? Well, they are criminals. If we consider all criminals to also be our enemies, we will be including not only some good innocent people, but also ignoring some of our neighbors who may secretly be murderers or rapists. Not only are labels inaccurate most of the time, but such labeling is indicative of exclusionary ideologies.

Crime should not tolerated. At the same time, people should not be labeled. I realize there are behavioral trends that make labels accurate. A person who is a member of the Taliban will likely behave similar to other Taliban members. The distinction we need to make here is that it is the ideology the person follows that is the true culprit. This does not excuse them from criminal actions, it is merely a distinction we need to be aware of. Each individual is their own unique "case", and we need to be aware of why they act the way they act.

If a person commits a crime, they should be punished. If there is an ideological motive behind the crime, we should attempt to combat the ideology as well. This raises the question of how we can have our cake and eat it too. What I mean is, how do you combat an ideology without being guilty of excluding the people who follow it? How do you combat Communism without also vilifying it's proponents? Education is the likely answer, but then who gets to decide what the correct information is that people should be taught? It may very well be impossible to satiate someone's cosmological curiosity without teaching them some ideology or another. I honestly don't think it matters, as long as the ideology isn't one that advises to exclude others.

If you're looking for a clear cut solution or a clear cut way to think about it, I don't think you'll find one. This is a complicated topic, and the best approach is through wisdom and understanding.

For your original post, bleachededen and etudiant hit the nail on the head. Media bias makes it seem like things are worse than they are. I don't think they intentionally want to make the world seem horrible. It's an inevitable consequence of a capitalist system. Horrible news is more profitable than heartwarming news, since people(in general) are more willing to watch horrible news rather than heartwarming news. Media companies need profit to compete, so they air more horrible news than heartwarming news. Unless every media company on the planet decided at the same time to stop airing horrible news, we are stuck with this dilemma. If every media company except one decided at the same time to stop airing horrible news, that one company would come to dominate the industry. The only real solution to this type of media problem is for every person on Earth to decide to only watch "good" news. Knowing human nature, that isn't a solution that would work.

So it's up to you whether or not the glass is half full or half empty. Be aware of the negative, but don't let it dominate your disposition.

bleachededen · Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:41 am

Thank you, Interbane. You said everything I was thinking more concisely and eloquently and with less frustration in the tone.

You can't ignore everything that's bad in the world, but you can't dwell on it, either. You can do what you can to help society, donate money to those in need, inform people about Amber alerts, etc., but beyond that there is little else you can do. No matter how many good people band together and promote good works and deeds, there will still be just as many others doing bad things, and there is nothing to be done about that. That does not mean anyone is giving up. It only means they are accepting reality, and there is nothing wrong with accepting your own limitations.

Forum rules

Science is depressing Tweet This Topic

Who is online

Chat Room Always Open!