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I used to read the headlines on Slashdot during downtime at work, but then I noticed my mental health starting to suffer. Had to stop. Also had to stop watching the Daily Show or anything about politics.
Do you mean thrive?
Despite the drama, Lemmy, and despite the continued dominance of proprietary software, the FOSS movement in general. I've been absolutely blown away with my reintroduction to Linux. And I've finally started getting job interviews. I'm starting to feel okay for the first time in a long time.
Lately? There has been negative news since forever. That's what people interested in and that what's generates clicks.
It's in my hands how I react to my environment. And I can't change other people. Knowing this and considering where the humanity is now, I'm pretty hopeful for the future.
It's a slim hope for humanity but a real one. We're approaching 80 years without a nuclear war.
In 1945, we dropped atomic bombs on two cities in the closing of a big fat war. Since then, countless states decided they too needed nukes, because on the international stage it's still about power and not ethics.
But nukes have been in the hands of idiots, genuses, cold calculators and red hot fanatics. And yet not a one launched in aggression.
The Trump administration revealed a thing, that its the underlings, the deep state that has made sure that every close call only got close, but the last switches never got connected. It's the rest of us, on whom war hawks and capitalist plutocrats depend who can delay, obstruct or sabotage the self destructive tendencies of our masters.
It's no guarantee we'll survive the climate crisis, the plastic crisis or the rising takeover of the transnational white power movement. But that's where the good guys have power to change the course of history.
Have you ever read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser? I've never read anything that made feel so terrified and hopeful at the same time. The number of close calls (that we know about) that we've had but, cooler heads (or random chance) saved us at the last moment is both horrifying and grounds for having a fair amount of faith in most people to do the right thing with these things. Of course, the amount of times we were saved by random ass chance is absolutely terrifying.
Prozac helped tremendously. Seriously though, without it I wouldn't be here. So I'm thankful for doctors and drugs that actually work and which can make you feel better about merely existing for the time being, and enable you to enjoy what little pleasures you may be lucky enough to have.
I rejoice in the fact that my kids still want to give me hugs.
I have faith in my childrens' ability for compassion, and am proud of how they and their fellow kids at school demonstrate that compassion for each other. Their generation is infinitely better than ours was. They're just nicer people. And that's what truly gives me hope.
Perspective, really.
I've no hopes for humanity or our collective future. I don't believe I'll retire, or even live to the point where I'll be able to retire. I'm kind of 50/50 on society even still being around by the time I retire.
But, I'm moving next week. I'm very excited for that. The new area is lovely. There'll be a dog park pretty much right outside the door, and we'll be able to go for walkies next to a lovely lake. There's also a huge forest area nearby. So I tend to think of the immediate future and "live in the moment" so to speak because the future is going to be rubbish, and hopefully I won't be around to see it.
This here is the light of my life.

I found Lemmy when Reddit went to pot. That's a small good thing.
They fact that there's always been a lot of negative news and world ending crisises throughout history. Everyone always feels were in the end times but we keep making it through. Not only that, we consistently get through it and make things better in the process.
There are broken parts to the world but we are objectively better off now than at any other time in history.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by bad news, it's time to adjust your news intake.
"we are objectively better off now than at any other time in history."
Is that true? Not here in the UK... It's almost impossible to get an NHS dentist now so people are living in pain. My parent's generation were the last to easily be able to buy a house. The climate has changed very rapidly (I experienced 40°C heat in my city last year which is unheard of. It was 32°C yesterday which used to be unheard of but is now quite normal). I couldn't afford to heat my home last winter, even though I earn a decent wage. We have asylum seekers crossing the channel in thousands because their homes are unlivable. This isn't like any other time in history, we already peaked.
I guess the world really is ending then. No one in history has had it as bad as you, I'm so sorry.
That isn't what I said - I'm disputing your point that this is the best it's ever been.
Right, you're disputing it with your own personal experience. I can't argue with that so I concede the point, no one has ever had it as bad as you. 30 years ago everyone could afford to heat their homes and go to the dentist and there were no migrants. This era is the dark recessed pit of humanity, woe to us who shall only ever see the shadow cast by the peaceful, prosperous generations who came before us!
This is a bit of a faulty reasoning though. Just because something happened in history doesn't mean it has to happen again. Especially if we wouldn't have been here if the worst happened. If nuclear war happened and destroyed human civilization, with most, if not all, humans dying off in the aftermath, then we wouldn't have been born and here talking about it.
And there have been very bad parts to history. For example, being a Jew or other minority in Germany during the second World War (or most of anyone really, it was a world war). That might as well have been the end of the world for many. And we also didn't just get through tough times by itself, people worked hard to change things.
The part about the broken things, they may destroy the objectively good progress that has been made if they are not handled. And things won't get fixed by themselves.
The worst part about this trend of doomerism is how it feeds on it itself, denying all hope despite evidence to the contrary.
One day I will die
For me personally the momentum of the neurodiversity movement makes me hopeful that society can change to be more inclusive and accepting of neurodivergent people. I'm also hopeful that a lot of the normative structures that have hurt so many groups of people will continue to be challenged and society becomes more accepting of all forms of diversity.
Wait, what movement? The only thing I see is that there’s slightly more awareness that neurodiverse is a thing. But I don’t see that leading to more inclusivity.
I would recommend looking up the work of Nick Walker. Neuroqueer Heresies is an amazing book and addresses all of your questions.
I focus on the good news, like a lot of medical breakthrough stuff. I just heard researchers think they’re close to a cancer treatment pill that will target only the cancer cells.
And the recent breakthrough in an artificial kidney! Only a very small fraction of kidney failure patients get transplants each year and this would be a game changer for the thousands who don’t. Plus no immunosuppressants and a much more normal life? Amazing!
The preponderance of evidence is that humans are generally, good, kind and helpful (most of the time). Our evolutionary superpower is fucking cooperation!
I genuinely believe that - in spite of the if-it-bleeds-it-leads news cycle - humanity is rising to the challenges of our time.
Our time is hard, but there are so many people working to improve the world. They don't get into the news cycle, but they're out there.
Mr Rogers related a story about his mother, who told him that when he saw disasters on TV, to remember to "look for the Helpers." They're always there. No matter how bad things get, the Helpers seem to come out of the woodwork whenever aid is needed. Look for them.
I remind myself a lot that fear sells, so fear is manufactured. I carry on my life the way I see fit so I can enjoy it as if nothing terrible is happening. I'm not in politics, so all I worry about is voting for the candidate I see fit, I'm only me, so I recycle and don't litter, but I live as if the earth isn't going to burn up. I disconnect from the internet a lot and focus on the people around me and what they're going through. I take time for my hobbies and social life. I just enjoy.
Reading into the past makes me hopeful for the future. The ever consistent doomsday climate news has been going on for decades, and it used to be panic about the earth freezing, so I'm not putting a bunch of stock in the idea that we'll all be wiped out by boiling seas.
Despite the claims, Trump didn't turn our system into a dictoral wasteland. He tried to overturn the election through legal means, and the legal system worked. Biden became president when he was supposed to. I don't think Trump will be able to turn out system into a dictoral wasteland if he gets elected again. The system will see to it that the next will come into office after.
Some states handing down abortion laws is awful, but I live in a state where it's legal, and I'll move if it becomes illegal. With countries like Mexico making abortion legal recently, it makes those states look so backwards. I think abortion will eventually become legal everywhere in the US again.
People live through horrible times. We do what we have to do. I'm just one of them.
Tried to overturn the election through legal means? So the sedicious conspiracy is legal? The false electors were legal? The multiple phone calls to various senators and the vice president to ask them to not certify the election results were legal?
Well I guess they should drop all those charges then.
My kids are fucking awesome and I'm doing my best to raise them to continue being awesome. I hate thinking about the future we're leaving for them, but I know they'll be smart, capable and caring people in that future.
Extremophilic prokaryotes. Stargazing. Organisms that digest plastic.
Fewer people in abject poverty every decade, fewer people malnourished every decade, fewer deaths from preventable disease every decade, more access to information for more people every decade- to name a few.
Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106026)
Keeping people just healthy enough to not die usually works fine. Big diseases like the COVID19 pandemic disrupt the gobal economy and supply chains, which slims profits. In this mode of just healthy enough to expand profits "fewer deaths from preventable disease every decade" is a given. But true prevention of health issues through rigorous environmental conservation and enforced protection and offering free, extensive and immediate healthcare to all citizens just will not happen.
To your last point: "more access to information for more people every decade" - true, but that doesn't mean anything if people having access to this vast amount of information do not have had lessons (and need to be constantly reminded of them) in critical thinking towards media consumpion. This tabula rasa approach to letting people use the internet is just ripe to be exploited by phsychological manipulators, as we can observe on a daily basis.
Sorry to be the pedantic one, given then topic of this thread, but the points you named coincide with the talking points of status quo advocates and can all be proven to be untrue or misdirecting at the least.
Generic vyvanse that I can afford.
I don't let external events impact my personal life. Only stress about things you can control. If the world blows up in nuclear war, so be it. Until then, I'm chugging along, enjoying the ride.
I'm hopeful that with the advance of technology there comes significant societal and political changes that will result in a more equitable society. It might get better before it gets worse, if history is any teacher, but there's potential for great things.
We’ve been through shit before, and were still standing.
Look, the universe will die a heat death, there is no God so everything is meaningless anyway. The only thing we can do is having a blast here and now within this short blink of an eye which we call life. If we're lucky then we can extend it a little bit by having children and grandchildren, but that's it.
So I'm hopeful because half a year ago my son was born, he is healthy and I have a ton of fun with him, and the older he gets the more fun he becomes. In addition to that all the other children around me are amazing people so even if climate change will make their lifes more difficult, I im hopeful that they will work together to tackle all the problems and live long and prosper!
To be honest, I'll be glad when all major missery won't happen within the next 50 years. I doubt I'll be here after that. No kids that will have to clean the mess.
Can't think of anything positive, apart from nature surviving.
I meant here and not the minor stuff like huge fires and floodings, but total climate colapse. I'm afraid we're on the road to an extinction event, when we don't already have triggered one by now.
That writers strike looks damn promising.
-- cycles. Not that kind. Today’s swerve toward conservatives, isolations, hatred, is just backlash to too much change. It’ll come around again. Progress is inevitable
-- technology. To the extent technology can help reduce climate change, it’s finally happening. I do expect to see all electric vehicles on the road in my lifetime. I do expect to see mostly renewable energy generation. It may be too little too late to escape negative effects, but we finally have technology working with us and adoption is sjkyrocketing. Even in the US
— walkable cities are desirable again. I live in one. Yes, in the US
Hey there. Was just curious on your opinion on this...
How do you think EVs can become more accessible to people living in apartments at the like? I'd seriously consider an EV if I could charge it at night, but I can't feasibly do that where I live. I'd have to drive over to a charging station and pay to charge my car for a few hours (unless you're lucky enough to have a fast charging station nearby, but even then it takes orders of magnitude longer than filling up at the pump). I think it's probably one of the bigger barriers to more widespread EV adoption imo and I don't know of a great solution to it.
I live in semi-rural Quebec. I can either drive to a place about 5 minutes from my home and charge for a few dollars, takes about 5 hours. Park and rides also have charging stations so going to Montreal means I can charge during the work day. I only use my car like twice a week when I need to visit family or go to the office, so your mileage may vary.
The real solution for about 75% of people isn't EV, it's public transportation and proper bike infrastructure/bike shares/mixed use neighborhoods/density. That is especially true for people living in places dense enough to have apartments. An EV is nice, but it is a patch, not a fix. Not needing a car is the fix. Cities just can't afford to have one car per 2-3 person.
Not needing a car would be ideal, but less likely for rural or semi-rural areas.
However
— if you have off street parking, we need to incent the owner/association to add chargers. Some of that will happen naturally as EV become more common, but that takes time
— the park-n-ride charger is a great start, but what if you could also top off at work, at groceries, at the shopping center, at theme parks: plug in everywhere you go? It could be slow charging, inexpensive, scalable, and not taking extra time beyond the primary reason you’re there: the goal could be to simply replace the charge used to get there
Oh some groceries have them. One even has a free setup. Just park there and recover like 5km worth of charge while doing groceries, but I forgot they exist because I don't do my groceries in a car. Funny enough, the bicycle shop has a plug too. Government is paying part of the cost for home chargers but I just temporarily live in a friend's basement so that's not ideal for me.
Realistically most people don’t need to charge often, most of the time. I have a friend living in a townhouse where there are no chargers, who recently got a Tesla. During a normal week, with normal commuting and errands, he goes to a supercharger about once a week to top off. Yes, it’s not convenient or as cheap as home charging and he’s there for 30-60 minutes but it is doable
In the case of apartment or condo complexes, where there is off-street parking, they can have chargers. The question is how you incent them to. I think that requires two parts: government incentives to help reduce the costs, and demand. Once there is a sufficient number of BEVs on the road and they see more requests, they see they lose money without chargers, they will add them. While BEVs are rare, or they dint risk losing money, why would they spend their money?
I’m not sure how to handle places with street parking, but there are several possibilities. It‘s probably a matter of pursuing all of them, including transit alternatives , since none will be ideal
I'd say investments for public transportation infrastructure is needed, especially for high density areas. But you do make good points. We really need to move away from car-centric thinking.
The growing hate for billionaires by the people, the growing manifestations of desire for equality from minorities in the west, South Korea and Japan starting to make peace because they can agree on the China problem. Also I can see how things changed in 30 years and can tell that within 5 years we have the ability to completely upend the world if we need to. Humans are so adaptable that we don't even notice how fast we're changing our world and ourselves.
DMA and DSA regulations being implemented in the EU
These are two pieces of legislation that have been passed by the European Union (EU) Commission. They apply to all 448 million citizens of the 27 member states. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) establishes a set of clearly defined objective criteria to identify “gatekeepers”. Gatekeepers are large digital platforms providing so called core platform services, such as for example online search engines, app stores, messenger services. Gatekeepers will have to comply with the do’s (i.e. obligations) and don’ts (i.e. prohibitions) listed in the DMA. You can see target services here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/... The Digital Services Act (DSA) is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that's either illegal or violates a platform's terms of service, such as the promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans' fundamental rights like privacy and free speech.
While the world is a broken, unfair place, it's my hope that it doesn't have to stay that way.
We are all human, nothing lasts forever, but it also means that the world is capable of change. it makes me hopeful that by acknowledging that things doesn't have to be the way it is, we will finally make an effort to change for the better during our short time on this Earth.
Humankind will disappear and hearth will evolve to better. This is not pessimistic not optimistic, I just believe life is a continuous evolution. Hard to believe humans are the last step or we're so important to last forever.
I've been seeing a lot of articles lately about new renewable power sites going up. At the same time I've read that the world is going to hit peak oil demand next year and then it'll start to decline. And last week I drove home past a construction site with signs up saying it was going to be a green hydrogen supply depot.
I choose to believe we're not gonna die choking on our own diesel fumes.
I generally don't care about news that aren't directly related. Ignorance is bliss.
Teach me oh wise one.
That with improving education and access to information, people will inevitably realise lots of injustice in this world is unnecessary and easily solved one way or another. They will eventually see through the constant bias and falsehoods pushed onto them since birth and realise that creating suffering and destruction for their own personal desires is not just or normal. Eventually it will end and we will move forward. Soon enough, people will be held accountable.
Nothing. I'm really not in any way hopeful for the future. I'm really not entirely sure there's much outside of the fear of being homeless and/or dead moving my legs back and forth every day, and in truth it's only fear for one and melancholic hope for the other.
What makes me hopeful of the future is simply the fact that most negative news is overblown.
Yes, we have environmental issues that need to be addressed, but guess what... the world isn't ending tomorrow. Climate change isn't going to kill everyone by next year or even in 10 or 20 years. There are real hurdles we need to clear, but the end-is-coming-tomorrow doom and gloom is simply hyperbole.
Humanity is very good at creating problems, but we are also really good at solving problems.
I personally love history and I also am a big gearhead. Throughout the roughly 100 years of the automobile, there have been some major events where the general attitude has been that X-type of car is doomed, or Y-event is something that will kill off cars for good, and initially those predictions are true, but when all the hyperbole dies down and engineers are given the resources we need, solutions typically are found that previously would have been considered impossible. The oil crises of the 70s is one such event. We had massive 7 liter engines that could barely make more than 100 HP with smog regulations and fuel economy concerns. Now some 50 years later, gasoline engines are so clean, you could just about breathe their exhaust all while still making tons of power and getting damn impressive fuel economy. But that only happens when the executives shut the fuck up, the marketers stop crying, and the accountants open their wallets and let the engineers do what they do best.
My hatred of pessimistic people.
People who actively contribute to horrible acts dying. Or at least getting proper receipts for wretched behavior (arrests, bankrupcy, etc.)
I'm old enough now that I won't be around for too futuristic of times and I find it a peaceful thought that I'll be getting off the ferris wheel before too much longer, regardless of what's happening. To just stop existing while the world melts down seems like I'll be getting the better end of the deal.
In the grand scheme of things, it won't matter if we survive as a species or not.
A lot of people in this thread are being absolute doomers, celebrating how humanity is going to die or suffer harshly, so here's something completely opposite: people are slowly but surely waking up to the hellscape that was created by the rich and powerful, and the younger generation is leaning more to the political left (if statistics are to be trusted). Once the boomer generation is gone from power, I'm hopeful that actual change starts happening in the world for the better, be it revolutions or radical social reforms that strive to make life better for everyone, rather than the cycle we're in where it's not systems or politicians fault that things are going to shit, but some group that's responsible for everything bad happening (be it jews, gays, commies, socialists, lgbt).
The coming end of humanity.
You're being downvoted but honestly I get what you feel.
Back in an interview in the 70s, the author Frank Herbert said
I say frequently that I do not want to be put in the position, I refuse to be put in the position of having to tell my grandchildren - and I have grandchildren - that "I'm sorry there's no more world for you, we used it all up."
We're there now. The people responsible left the consequences to us. Lovely stuff.
It's ironic that people believe that this idiotic society, that human civilisation deserves to exist just for the purpose of existing, when no single person within it is granted the same clemency.
The saddest part of it all though, is that the people who will suffer the most will also be the ones that have done the least to get us to where we are, and where we're going.
If human civilization crashes it will never recover to it's current state and that might just be the best thing for humanity in the long run.
We've used all the easily accessible resources, a big enough technological setback will put us beyond the point of being able to access the resources needed to redevelop technology and our fate will be permanantly tied to the planet with no hope of extraplanatary expansion.
The fact is we're destroying this planet faster than we can escape it, we may have already missed the mark for humanity to spread to the stars. If that's the case, best humanity lose the ability to continue to harm itself and it's environment, before we do something even more permanant.
Eh, the universe is mostly gas, emptiness and hot rocks, if we get out there the only thing we will likey hurt is ourselves. At least we'd have the time to develop some decorum before running into another species.
Hell, if anything we'd become the progenitor species for our local space cluster. Agriculture 2: Interplanetary Boogaloo.
I hope our mistakes come to light and we're able to solve the fallout graciously, strive to do better and we continue to advance to a society that cherishes human life and individuals as ends rather than means.
The suffering we create for ourselves may be an expected outcome of our behavior, but deserve doesn't really factor into it. I won't celebrate pain, suffering and death. Nobody deserves that, no matter how precisely they orchestrated their own demise,
thanks for using Leebra!
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Doomscrolling news headlines can make me feel depressed.
I've added a community to my subscriptions to counteract the negativity. Check it out !upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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