Yeah but toxic optimism won’t lead us to a better future either. We need optimists to work towards a better society and pessimists to keep them in check when they are being naive to a fault. Optimists built the nukes, pessimists keep us from using them.
Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#22"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings." Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason. And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet,…
I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die. You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If anything, living a life in a way that you put off doing the fun things until the after life, spiritual or digital, sounds awful.
The end shows us the entirety of anything real happening: it’s a modern day pharaoh’s tomb. Nothing’s alive, just pantomiming at life. Hieroglyphs and organs in jars, but even less human.
What you see is the only real thing. Caretaker machines swapping hard drives or whatever it is they were doing (it’s been a while since I watched it)
That’s why it shows us that, when it does.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#23[deleted]
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#24"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings." Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason. And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet,…
Iirc Pandora’s Box explicitly contained the opposite of hope. The last demon which she kept trapped inside it was “foreknowledge” and the only reason humanity was able to continue was that without knowing the future, we were able to have hope.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#25Humans need some level of paranoia, mistrust and waryness of new technology in the same way electrical circuits need circuit breakers and ships need life boats.
Pessimism saves lives and resources. It won't lead us to a better future, but it might save what does.
Furthermore, for many of us, we are already in a state of technological mindfuckery beyond Black Mirror levels. Black Mirror sounds like a fairy tale.
We need humans, kind humans that are not fools. That's very hard to make. Without that any future, technological or not, is bleak.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#26Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
Slight correction, Black Mirror copied Community’s MeowMeowBeenz, not the other way around.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#27Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
I enjoyed several episodes, some more than others. "San Junipero" is one of the better ones IMO and IIRC it's a good bit more upbeat than the others.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#28I disagree with the premise of this article. Sometimes an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future CAN change things...by making it so people are determined to fight to prevent that possible future from ever happening. The novel 1984 by George Orwell was published in 1948. It is an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future for mankind....and many of us over the generations who read it really really d…
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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#29Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
> To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story
The world is full of terrible people, though. It's a "mirror" on current society, which is probably where they got the name. And by terrible I don't mean "literally Hitler," but the boring terribleness and malaise that so many around us have kind of just slipped into: Selfishness, impoliteness, paranoia, anger, belligerence, spitefulness, indifference to cruelty, unnecessary competitiveness in everything. Just an overall lack of socialization, grace and empathy.
Maybe it's boring to you because the characters' traits can be found all over the place in real life.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#30Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
> To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story The world is full of terrible people, though. It's a "mirror" on current society, which is probably where they got the name. And by terrible I don't mean "literally Hitler," but the boring terribleness and malaise that so many around us have kind of just slipped into: Sel…
I don't feel my social circle is like that. I mean, you're right that there are plenty of people as you describe, but I like to think that I surround myself with people for which that does not match (not always successfully when I was younger, but you learn as you grow older).
As such, bawolff's point resonates with me. And even if that wasn't the case, they still have a good point. If you pick terrible protagonists to begin with, it undermines the morale of the episode a little. Showing how "reasonable" people are affected is stronger, and I indeed feel that both Community and Orville did that really well.