Why do some people find comfort in thinking we're all doomed?

[apples and oranges]

We'll all be slaves... The bottom is about to fall out... The Great Depression is coming... etc etc...


Why do such negative thoughts and predictions appear to comfort some people? And why do they seem disappointed when their predictions prove false?

[SocialistLez]

1. I'm all for the negative predictions being wrong BUT

I'm not about creating false hopes.

YAHOO! The unemployment rate went down from 9.8 in one state to 9.6!

Uhm....no. That isn't really progress in my book.

Edit for spelling.

[TwilightGardener]

4. I hate false hoops.

[dmallind]

6. What is it then?

It's not getting worse (9.6 is better than 9.8), and it's not staying the same (they are not equal) so what else can it be? It doesn't have to be dramatic or universal to be progress. To a patient with a shattered leg, a painful cast and walking on crutches is progress.

[SocialistLez]

7. I don't trust the #s that are put out for unemployment

What if someone worked part-time and couldn't file a claim for unemployment?
What if they didn't work at a place long enough to claim unemployment?

So on and so forth.

If people want to get all happy about a .2 drop in unemployment...be my guest.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/146569/the_middle_class_game_is_up%3A_we%27re_heading_to_a_slave_labor_planet

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. So you'd rather have the 13 or 14 that we were heading for.

Okie dokie.

By the way I know what the OTHER rate is, if officially we were at 14 the unofficial would be close to 30. That's better?

By the way I am not going to say we live in a Capitalist economy, but jeesus age, thing are actually getting better, just that ... and I get tired of saying this, EMPLOYMENT IS A LAGGING INDICATOR in any recovery. This is Econ 101... don't care what system you are talking off.

[SocialistLez]

35. I know employment is a lagging indicator

I don't know why you assume I don't know this.

At the same time, if you think we're going to be back to the way things were with a real middle class....I'd love whatever you're smoking.

Until our "representatives" wake the fu** up and play hardball with our trade deals, we're screwed.

We can cheer that people are getting retail jobs and the like but we need manufacturing jobs.
We won't ever get ALL the manufacturing jobs we've offshored but we can at least try to get some of them back.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. That's a different discussion

and you know what? It is NOT JUST our leaders... it is US.

Oh wait, nobody has been talkin' 'bout class or class solidarity in this country for thirty years.

And here is the deal... you know what it will take for that to happen? Sure GATT and NAFTA are there... it will take UNION ORGANIZING ON A WORLD SCALE.

Damn Samuel Gompers got this in the 1880s... but one hundred and twenty years later we just don't

[SocialistLez]

39. I agree, it isn't JUST the leaders

We are to blame for this mess.

At the same time, I'm only 19 so it's not like I voted for the fuck*rs who screwed us over.

Your post reminds me of a part in Michael Moore's movie where he shows the dog jumping over and over trying to get food off the table. We all pretty much know he won't be successful.

It reminds me of those on the right who are SO against taxing the rich because they someday think they're going to be rich all the while ignoring how the rich have fu*ked us over. They're offshoring jobs, decimating unions, etc.

We're just laying down and taking it.

Sure some people are standing up, protesting, boycotting, etc. but it's like a drop in the bucket.
There needs to be a ground swell (however you spell it).

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. As I am slowly and painfully discovering

this low taxes mantra (not that the Tea parties will get it) goes to oh... the 1760s.

It is not about being rich themselves, it goes much more beyond just that... but history is instructive.

When the people organize and not just boycotts, strikes, demonstrations, work stoppages, things change. (and people die). When the people believe that politicos will do what they want... well we find ourselves where we are.

And I did not vote fer them either. My first election where I actually could vote was 2000, and that experience made me wonder just how broken the system truly is.

But I don't blame the leaders, just the leaders... We are very much to blame too.

[LiberalLoner]

2. I often think those things, but I am not comforted by those thoughts. rop

I am just scared and depressed, that's all. And I feel so hopeless sometimes. I try anyway, I try to make things better, but you know after 49 years on the planet I can't see where I've done any good at all. I'm sorry to be so negative, but that's where I'm at....

[proudohioan]

15. I'm right there with you, LiberalLoner! nt

[dmallind]

3. Buggered if I know but to be honest

it does seem to have gotten a BIT less universal. A few months ago there were maybe three people on DU willing to accept news of improvements as (small and incipient) good news, and all of us were soundly abused for it. Now it's getting to be maybe 25% or so on any economy related therad who can tell the difference between "improving" and "perfection" and who are willing to admit the former is possible. In another couple of months we should see a 50/50 split if all continues.

[ixion]

5. ...

fail.

[sufrommich]

8. That's a good question, it's perplexing to me too. nt

[Rex]

9. You tell me.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

10. Glass half full, glass half empty I guess.

I don't understand it either, but some people just seem to be born pessimists. Maybe they need a more long-term view.

[Ernesto]

25. "I dropped the glass and lost the broken pieces!"

That's the quote that got me through Vietnam and most of my adult life.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

27. I'd be more inclined to get another glass.

:)

[ThomWV]

11. Two reasons really, mass failure masks individual failings first and misery loves company second

If a person is not doing well its easiest to think that society has failed rather than self, and second it is reassuring to know that you aren't the only one suffering, that their is some sort of equality in the universe.

[NeedleCast]

17. Good Answer

[cali]

12. that's actually an interesting question

personally I think a lot of it is just a particular millenarian strain.

[Dr Morbius]

13. Seek ye the great and very difficult to find books by Democritus Jr.

"The Anatomy of Melancholy."

Democritus Jr was actually a 13th century (I think) English cleric named Robert Burton. And it is a three-volume analysis of why people choose misery, and all the different ways they do it. I had it recommended to me and asked for it from my library. They put the request into their system and actually found a copy, which I then borrowed for three weeks. They got it from a library in Florida. I live in Illinois. I was unable to renew it, and barely got through the hundred-and-fifty page introduction.

I'm given to understand there's a new translation out there (the original is in latin), which would be welcome.

[Zywiec]

14. Some people are just pessimistic about everything

and they are always fun to be around!

[Karenina]

22. DU tradition

[NeedleCast]

16. Some people just seem to thrive off the doom and gloom

I think it's ego for many of them. They've predicted their doom and gloom scenarios over and over and can't wait for them to come true.

Most of them are outright hostile to any argument on their scenarios.

[jaksavage]

18. The long view

How is the environment looking longterm?
How are race relations looking these days?
What about worldwide pandemic probabilities?
Where does your food come from and what is in it?
Excessive consumption eating us alive?
Wars are decreasing right?
We are served by our elected officials?

answers
shitty
tenuous
increasing
mega farms and poison
yes
not
hahahaha

Hell yes I am cynical.
I refuse to put my head in the sand.

[Warpy]

19. We pessimists ae always being pleasantly surprised

when the bottom doesn't fall out, the sky doesn't fall, and our bank accounts aren't completely drained by some disaster or other.

Optimists are always being crushed when things don't turn out all that well.

[Blue_In_AK]

34. My motto

Expect the worst, and you won't be disappointed. :)

[Fumesucker]

20. Beyond a certain point hope is painful..

Fatalism is easier on the psyche for many than continually having hope that is continually dashed.

[Flipper999]

21. (many) Human beings seem predisposed to this sort of thinking

Especially in hard times like this. If you (or a loved one) has lost a job, it's hard to envision a future full of promise. The news we hear doesn't help much. Most stories involve disasters, corruption, pollution, child abuse, death, death, DEATH!!!!11!1

It's in a good chunk of our fiction too. Think about science fiction; how much of it envisions a brighter future for mankind? Star Trek, and um... Star Trek. Well, there are some others, but much of the genre is filled with monsters, war, killer machines, and dystopian hellscapes.

As to why people get disappointed when doom doesn't come to pass? I think we get emotionally invested in our visions of imminent apocalypse. Doom gives us closure to our stressful existence. A sad, terrible closure, but still closure. When closure inevitably doesn't come, we're forced to face the fact that this drama keeps going, and going, and going, and...

[apples and oranges]

30. I don't understand, but that's very interesting... thanks!

[leveymg]

23. The Apocalypse means that things could always be worse.

It won't matter that you drive an old, beat-up car after the Big One drops.

[Marr]

24. Ask evangelicals.

They do the same thing. They talk about Armageddon like it's some kind of release or something.

[ProudDad]

26. Because I believe that the best scientists are right about...

Peak Oil, Catastrophic Climate Destabilization and Economic Collapse...

I believe that human beings in the aggregate are suicidal and dangerous to other living things...

I believe that Mother Nature and Mother Earth bats last and will prevail in the end...

I hope that the Earth will still be a habitable planet after we "humans" have gone to our deserved extinction...I think it will be...Mom Nature's pretty damn smart...

I believe that the web of life will continue and will prosper without the interference of the aborted, failed experiment with large brained bipedal mammals...

I find comfort in all of these beliefs...

[ZeitgeistObserver]

37. Well those are 'predicted' events.

I've lived through a lot of 'predicted' events that never happened. They're good to know about, so we can take steps to prevent or lessen the events, but they certainly aren't guaranteed, even if we did nothing.

The events that DO happen are the 'Black Swan' ones. The ones out of left field that nobody even thought about much less expected. And we'll deal with them when they do, the same as we always have. The earth is a planet, not a person, and it's indifferent to us, not an enemy trying to kill us off.

A planet 'habitable' for wildlife, and not human beings isn't much of a planet at all as far as I'm concerned. It's just a giant park.

Living your life according to predictions, and especially the gloom and doom ones is like living by the sayings of Nostradamus.

[The2ndWheel]

41. Thank you

"A planet 'habitable' for wildlife, and not human beings isn't much of a planet at all as far as I'm concerned. It's just a giant park."

I'm not always able to express what's in my head. But there are so many things about these few words that you wrote which give me negative thoughts. So you helped me out. See, that's a positive outcome.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

43. You're welcome.

Always glad to be of service. ;)

[MadHound]

29. Who says we find comfort?

Frankly I've been pretty accurate in predicting the various disasters we've had during my lifetime, outside of natural disasters that is. I don't find comfort in this, other than the comfort of knowing what is coming down the pike and being able to plan accordingly. Other than that however, it has simply made me deeply cynical.

[The2ndWheel]

31. It's like comparing apples and oranges

People are different.

People fall all over that spectrum of life, attitude, thought, whatever. Why do positive thoughts and predictions appear the comfort some people? Probably for the same reason.

[Speck Tater]

32. I find no comfort in facing the truth, but I find even less comfort in fantasy and denial.

The human race has overshot the carrying capacity of the planet and a population collapse is inevitable. The human race may survive a while longer before eventually going extinct (like every other species since the big bang), but industrial high-tech civilization, based as it is upon living beyond our means, is not sustainable, and will cease to exist when the cheap oil runs out. We are decades away, at most, from a world in which electricity and running water are dim memories of the past. I find not comfort in that because chances are very good that I won't survive that collapse. Chances are that most of the people on the planet won't survive that crash. There's no comfort to be had in that. It's a tragedy, but there's nothing we can really do about it. The outcome is cast in stone by the laws of thermodynamics.

[SocialistLez]

36. I like the title NT

[Blue_In_AK]

33. Those thoughts don't comfort me,

but I do admit to a fondness for Megadisaster documentaries on the science channel. It's comforting to me to know that Mother Nature will have the final say.

[Silent3]

42. I think many people confuse cynicism with wisdom

In part, that's understandable, because many times simply taking a reflexively cynical position on an issue works out equally well to actually thinking the issue through. :)

Besides, if you don't pin down specific dates when your dire predictions are supposed to come to pass (or put them so far off into the future than no one will remember or care about your long-ago proclamations) you can always play the "Well, just you wait and see!" game, smugly certain that your predicted form of doom is just around the corner.

I think a lot of the problem is a lack of a bigger perspective and looking at the past through rose-colored glasses when judging current conditions. I saw one person here complaining about how our food is now "poison". There may well be stuff in some of our food that isn't particularly good for us, but whatever this "crap" is that we're eating, we're living longer now while we're eating "crap" than a century or two ago when nearly everything people ate was "organic" and "natural".

Our crappy US healthcare system is nevertheless a damn sight better than the treatment you'd get (in exchange for a chicken, perhaps?) from your local country doctor two hundred years ago.

We're now causing big problems for the planet, but we're also more advanced in our capabilities to detect those problems and devise solutions. For all the harm we've caused the planet, we're also the first species with any hope of developing the technology to stave off the next big mass (or even total) extinction caused by a rogue asteroid or comet, and the first species with a good chance of helping re-establish itself and other life on another planet, so we don't have all of our eggs in one basket.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

44. I absolutely agree.

The world, and human life, is far better off today than at any time in history. And we've seen that steady progress for centuries, no matter what catastrophes happened along the way.