I think these posts have a way of propagating doomer-think in a way that almost creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. We all collectively assume good will never win so we don’t do anything, so good doesn’t win, but then we collectively at least feel smug and perceptive.
For all of us, but I think especially for younger generations, it’s hard to see any “wins” from the side of good, so it’s tempting and almost comfortable to just make sardonic memes and embrace depressive nihilism. We’ve been conditioned to helplessness.
We laud cynical storytelling about selfish horrible people because it’s “realistic”. We meme about mass-extinction. We see boring-cyberpunk dystopias as our inevitable near future. We doomscroll about each and every terrible rotten thing that happens on every square inch of the planet that we can’t do anything about and believe it’s our fault.
But we gotta combat this with hope if there’s any possibility for a brighter future.
I’m just gonna leave this here. It’s profound and I think of it every day to keep going:
FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.
SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?
SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
Thanks for saying this.
I think these posts have a way of propagating doomer-think in a way that almost creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. We all collectively assume good will never win so we don’t do anything, so good doesn’t win, but then we collectively at least feel smug and perceptive.
For all of us, but I think especially for younger generations, it’s hard to see any “wins” from the side of good, so it’s tempting and almost comfortable to just make sardonic memes and embrace depressive nihilism. We’ve been conditioned to helplessness.
We laud cynical storytelling about selfish horrible people because it’s “realistic”. We meme about mass-extinction. We see boring-cyberpunk dystopias as our inevitable near future. We doomscroll about each and every terrible rotten thing that happens on every square inch of the planet that we can’t do anything about and believe it’s our fault.
But we gotta combat this with hope if there’s any possibility for a brighter future.
I’m just gonna leave this here. It’s profound and I think of it every day to keep going:
–Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers (film version)