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The case against crisis-mongering

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Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#71

Post by simonh »

dheera wrote: post #47
h2odragon wrote: post #21

Humans are built to survive adversity. We got so good at it, we took over the planet. Now there's lots of humans who haven't ever faced serious challenges (by previous standards of everyday survival), and they need to feel the drama and triumph humans are programmed for even without the actual life threatening events that used to prompt those feelings. So for many, there's always going to be an imminent apocalypse th…

> Humans are built to survive adversity. No, we aren't. Adversity from other humans, but not adversity from nature. Natural disasters routinely kill huge numbers of people, because we don't know how to deal with them.

Not all adversities are immediately lethal, but many will kill you eventually if you don't adapt.

Anyway It's not necessarily the surviving the immediate disaster that's evolutionarily selected for. No adaptation is going to make a human volcano or tsunami proof. It's the survivors piecing a viable way of life back together in the aftermath that matters.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#72

Post by jerf »

tvirosi wrote: post #33
h2odragon wrote: post #21

Humans are built to survive adversity. We got so good at it, we took over the planet. Now there's lots of humans who haven't ever faced serious challenges (by previous standards of everyday survival), and they need to feel the drama and triumph humans are programmed for even without the actual life threatening events that used to prompt those feelings. So for many, there's always going to be an imminent apocalypse th…

I don't believe in this perspective. I think most people are sick of it (and would live healthier lives if they were allowed to focus more attention on their immediate surroundings) but that it keeps being refueled by profit desperate news corporations.

I think they are sick of it, but not because the grandparent post is wrong. They're sick of it because the emergency is "supposed" to be something you can overcome, feel triumphant about, and move on to the next thing.

But the emergencies in the media don't work that way. It doesn't matter how much you recycle, the media will keep screaming about catastrophe. It doesn't matter how many solar cells adorn your roof, the media will keep screaming. It doesn't how careful you are with your children, the media will keep screaming about child abductions. It doesn't matter if you pour hundreds of hours into organizing your neighborhood and fighting local crime, the media will keep screaming about crime.

It's the nature of this particular beast.

Consequently, you're never able to escape the "crisis" atmosphere, and stay stressed full time. That's not normal, especially in the absence of real, proximal crisis of that degree.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#73

Post by klyrs »

_ykl9 wrote: post #55

Both sides have a tendency to cry wolf. Bush was awful, but he wasn't Hitler. Romney was treated particularly unfairly during his presidential run. Regardless of one's feelings on Trump, it's clear that he wasn't treated entirely fairly by the media from the start. Sure, for a while they would tiptoe around calling him out for outright lies, but I also saw how his words and actions would at times be twisted and prese…

Trump was treated more than fairly by the press. He thrives on and encourages controversy. They played directly into his hand at every step of the way. When he plays the victim, that too is an act. He's a reality TV star, he's a heel, and people on both sides gobbled it up.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#74

Post by dahart »

blagie wrote: post #7

What I would more like is The Case for Resilience. We have a crisis every so often. As a society, we ought to be able to survive it. That might be a pandemic, war, climate change (whether man-made, or from a volcano/asteroid/etc.), nukes, or what-not. Being resilient means: * Some level of economic isolation. Each region ought to be able to produce the bare necessities for themselves, and supply chains shouldn't be b…

So, you’re suggesting we should prepare for unlikely events, seems reasonable as a general thought. And at the same time armchair questioning the best science we have on climate change without any specific evidence, contributing to the very doubt that has already fueled our inaction and inability to prepare to date. How are we to be resilient and prioritize preparedness when we can’t agree on the priorities? Certainly we can’t just ‘be prepared’ for anything that could possibly happen in anyone’s imagination, right? We do need to take a look at history and the current state of things and make some educated guesses as to which crisis might actually happen. We don’t have infinite amounts of money and resources and time, do we?

Given your stated distrust of research, how exactly do you propose to be proactive? This isn’t a choice between 5% odds, pulling a number from thin air and framing it that way makes it seem like there are easy choices. What if the choices are closer to between six million wildly different possibilities of one in a billion odds?

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#75

Post by cblconfederate »

hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

Wearing my rose tinted glasses too

the direction of the 90s was pointing at was, cosmopolitanism, techno-utopianism, radical secularism. I can't help to think that the decades that followed were a big regression from that with human tribes forming around the most ancient, base anxieties of the species. Unfortunately this decline was not captured in the the arts which became significantly less significant

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#76

Post by hliyan »

hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

I remember only two international crises -- the Gulf War and Serbia. when protecting the Earth against asteroid impacts started receiving what felt like more than its fair share of news coverage, even as a teenager I knew that the world must be in a great place. With the Internet taking off, I thought it would be the dawn of a golden age. Of course, that came to an abrupt halt on 2001/9/11.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#77

Post by cblconfederate »

lixtra wrote: post #38
sharikous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely rose tinted glasses. I don't know where you live but it depends on that. For example they were the years of slaughters in former Yugoslavia, terrorist attacks in Israel, various wars in Africa

Or the Rwandan genocide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

things in africa and israel are not better today. The yugoslav wars were kind of to-be-expected since yugoslavia split at that time and they largely ended in the 90s. There 's more war today than in the 90s https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#78

Post by systemvoltage »

hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

We also connected the entire world together, thanks to Big Tech. Silicon Valley culture is imposed on the world whether you like it or not: https://www.economist.com/international/2021/06/12/social-me...

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#79

Post by somebodynew »

namdnay wrote: post #66
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we talking about someone that believes in free speech, a free press, private property, the Rule of Law, opposes cancel-culture, believes in social policies, free elections, Separation of church & State, supports a progressive taxation, abhors violence as a way to change govt, and generally supports the constitution? Or, are we talking about someone that believes in controlled/regulated speech, a controlled press,…

What wrong with “law as a living construct”? So only the bill of rights is valid and we should drop the other amendments?

The eleventh amendment was a "bug fix" to the constitution. The original constitution had wording that accidentally allowed a citizen to file a suit against a state directly in the supreme court. Nobody in the government intended for this to be possible, but citizens began suing states and this conduct was upheld as constitutional.

At the time (1794), this was resolved by amending the constitution to make the desired change. If the same unintended wording had gone unnoticed until today, it is very likely that the supreme court would simply decide that the outcome as written was not desirable and throw out the suits.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#80

Post by vegetablepotpie »

jerf wrote: post #72
tvirosi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe in this perspective. I think most people are sick of it (and would live healthier lives if they were allowed to focus more attention on their immediate surroundings) but that it keeps being refueled by profit desperate news corporations.

I think they are sick of it, but not because the grandparent post is wrong. They're sick of it because the emergency is "supposed" to be something you can overcome, feel triumphant about, and move on to the next thing. But the emergencies in the media don't work that way. It doesn't matter how much you recycle, the media will keep screaming about catastrophe. It doesn't matter how many solar cells adorn your roof, th…

What I gather from your comment is that the media thrusts big societal issues (sustainability, climate change, child abuse, crime) upon the individual. When the individual tries to address these issues with their own actions or purchases, it's has zero impact on the reporting of the crisis.

I can conclude that the only sane things for an individual to do is not to counter these issues with individual actions, but to instead organize for a societal response strong enough to change the media narratives, or switch off the media completely and live life as best as one can.

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