On hope and despair

Wonderful article by Jared Henderson:

There are many reasons to be a Doomer, to be blackpilled, to decide that nothing matters or, even worse, that things do matter but that there is nothing to be done about it. On top of that, it is cool to be a Doomer. You feel like you are above it all. You understand the magnitude of the world’s problems, and so you can rest assured that you are correct in your assessment that we are all doomed. Climate change, superintelligent and misaligned AI, political malfunction, corporate consolidation — the list goes on, and as you enumerate this list in your mind, your sense of doom and dread grows stronger. Some may even find that being a Doomer offers them a sense of relief, because a Doomer is absolved of all of his responsibilities. And we all have a little Doomer in our soul, that voice that tells us that giving up might be the best course of action.

This cannot be our only way. To be a Doomer is to give up on being human. Human beings are striving creatures. We crafted tools out of raw materials, made complex systems of communication, and built entire civilizations — some of which crumbled, yet few of which fully disappeared. For ages, we have looked at the world as it is and thought We can do better, and we’ve often been correct in that assessment. That striving is never easy, nor is success guaranteed, nor is the subsequent progress without its negative consequences, but history bears out that it was worth it. And none of that would have happened had we succumbed to Doomerism.

You have to kill your inner Doomer.