We're about to witness the best humans have to offer

Posted by collectivist


"What you imagine as overwhelming or terrifying while at leisure becomes something you can cope with when you must-there is no time for fear.”— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
I remember driving into the office in 2008, looking around at the big box stores, fast food restaurants, and strip malls that were along my commute back then, and knowing that they were all about to go away, that a horrific dislocation was starting. It wasn’t a belief; I knew it. I had done the math at that point. As the financial system melted down, I remember thinking that the comfortable world as we experienced it was all about to end. It was utterly depressing.
Of course, I was wrong. The world didn’t end – not even close – and my daughters who were four and one that fall are teenagers today, having grown up in a time more prosperous than I could ever have imagined. Still, I remember that feeling in 2008. It was a helpless form of resignation.
You might anticipate that I’m going to tell you I’m feeling the same today, but I’m not. It’s not that this isn’t scary – if you’re not at least a little fearful today, you probably don’t have a deep enough grasp of the situation. The unlikely-yet-statistically-inevitable global pandemic I wrote about in early February has materialized.
Statistically, while the odds of any single virus resulting in pandemic is small, a future viral pandemic of global scale is almost a certainty. Your odds of escaping it are not good (doubt that: read about the remote and practically isolated Inuit during the 1918 pandemic), but they can be dramatically reduced by supporting things like a free press in authoritarian countries, strong world health organizations, a spirit of open and collaborative scientific inquiry (not distorted by partisan politics), and aggressive steps by international bodies during early stages of potential outbreaks.
The virus has now definitely arrived in the United States, a country that has never dealt with the underlying financial problems that brought about the 2008 crisis. Yes, we’ve had a statistical “recovery” but it’s hard to defend it as anything more than papering over the problem, printing money and running deficits as a way to avoid the difficult challenge of fixing the broken underlying model. . ."

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-03-16/were-about-to-witness-the-best-humans-have-to-offer/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Image
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By   DARREN LINVILL   &   PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t  “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,”  as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ Posted by Jamie B.
Read more

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Image
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term   (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President  Donald Trump  could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent  Joe Biden  when more votes are tallied.  This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President  Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This is arguably the most likely of th
Read more

Philosophical Question #14 – Lifestyle Choices

Image
Here is an interesting question in my list of philosophical questions: 1.) Should governments have penalties for those who live unhealthy lifestyles? A list of unhealthy lifestyles would include things like smoking, drinking, illegal drugs, prostitution, and other “vice” type activities. I guess the “government penalties” would be referring to monetary punishments, withholding medical treatments (insurance companies would love that), possibly imposing/regulating very high (exorbitant) prices on things considered unhealthy in order to cut down on their use, and other possibilities. 2.) Or, would you say that living an unhealthy lifestyle, likely resulting in a LOT of eventual personal pain and suffering, should be punishment enough for unhealthy lifestyles? When people make bad choices in life, often in their youth where ignorance and immediate gratification takes them over,  3.) Should a society be obligated to help "fix" them, by way of tax money?   Is that part of
Read more