You believe in a thing called love?
Romantic love? No. It’s just people being horny.
Friendship “Love” (友爱)? Ehh… not really… most those who you call “friends” are really just acquaintances.
Sibling “Love” (兄弟姐妹爱)? No… so much abuse…
Paternal/Maternal Love (父母爱)? Sort of, I believe it probably exist somewhere out there, but I got a bad roll of dice this “incarnation” so I got sort of shitty parents…
But at the end of the day, it’s really just brain chemicals.
Just listen to the rhythm of my heart!
There’s a chance we could make it now
You can always rely on gravity, and NOTHING ELSE!
There are three constants in the universe. Death, Taxes, and Change.
Also, I’m not certain about the first two.
2035 bingo card: by drilling forever deeper for oil, we messed up the earth’s core and somehow that turned off gravity (yes, I know there’s no scientific basis for it happening, it comes as a surprise).
Might make a good (ridiculous) disaster movie. Heck, let’s trigger real time continental drift while we’re at it
I like using ghosts and gravity as reference lines
Human goodness should plummet as well
Someone had a very sad childhood to not believe in human goodness as a kid
I found myself among some Mister Rogers quotes and artifacts yesterday, of all possible things.
So just for today I’m gonna push back on this one a little bit. I think the goodness is out there, but unfortunately much of our society is kinda designed to separate us from our humanity and mental peace.
A sentence I rarely deploy, but has the ability to stop most adults in their tracks is, “You aren’t being the neighbor that Fred Rogers knew you could be.” It works on Americans. I’ve never felt the need to deploy a social nuke on any foreigners.
I almost used a Fred Roger’s quote for evil, before I caught myself. It was a thread about maga groupies abusing government power for personal agenda. Someone was lamenting how the Supreme Court made this administration above the law, so I almost said “Look for the helpers”. All those groupies and minions are NOT above the law and should face justice for their actions. As long as the charges are brought in three years, it could happen.
Perhaps mass jail terms for everyone depriving human rights or violating the constitution or enriching themselves at our expense or following personal agendas will keep this situation from happening again
Depends. A lot of people build bubbles and spend the rest of their lives reinforcing their walls. They will deeply interact only with very few hand-picked people, and their mutual trust keeps getting stronger. Also, you might be surprised that a lot of people never even read or watch the news.
From this POV, your faith in what you think represents humanity might as well increase over time.I’ve started spotting more examples of goodness too, not just evil. I rather think society is polarising, with some people becoming more visibly selfish (out of desperation, I think: the more you worry about your future, the less charity you’re willing to extend) and others making a point of being nicer to counteract the negativity.
Part of that will be the influence of media. Outrage apparently sells better than kindness, and particularly where corporate influences are a factor, despair and division are useful to make the populace more pliable. If people are shit anyways, why bother trying to fix anything?
Lemmy is no saint either: It’s easy to jump to conclusions and throw accusations over what might just be genuine error or civil disagreement rather than fundamental hostility.
So instead, let’s also make a point of being nicer and more charitable to each other, and to others elsewhere. Good people aren’t gone, they’re just cowed and overshadowed. Let’s fix that, you and me and everyone else who wants a nicer world. The indifference wins if we stop, so let’s keep going!
I hope you have a nice day, a pleasen start into your year, and I hope you can find that faith in humanity again.
The world is getting dumber and meaner, so good morality stands out more.
Someone else suggested that the rise in belief in human goodness is a function of the rise in belief of human incompetence. When you start recognizing that people frequently do stupid bad things not because they are bad, but because they are stupid, your heart softens a bit with regards to their intent.
Anti-abortion is a great example. The majority of anti-abortion people genuinely believe that a zygote is an innocent human life, and terminating it is literally murder. If that’s what they believe, why wouldn’t they do everything in their power to stop it? People are murdering innocent babies!
The more you get to know people, the more you start believing in Hanlon’s razor. Most of the “bad” people aren’t bad, they’re just good people with stupid beliefs.
people frequently do stupid bad things not because they are bad, but because they are stupid,
I get that, right up until you start talking about MAGA. Those people didn’t grow up being ignorant of MAGA’s evils, and then were seduced by them. MAGA gave voice to the evil that was already brewing in them, so they enthusiastically joined in.
Some people may do bad things out of ignorance, but MAGAs do bad things because it’s fun for them. They may be ignorant, too, but that’s no excuse, they don’t get a pass because of it. Some people are just bad people, who have lost the benefit of the doubt.
I started feeling a bit this way when I saw that many Trump voters were genuinely confused and angry that Trump didn’t release Epstein files lol
I love your optimism, but its rather misplaced.
The majority of anti-abortion people genuinely believe that a zygote is an innocent human life, and terminating it is literally murder. If that’s what they believe, why wouldn’t they do everything in their power to stop it?
But they’re NOT doing that.
They’re not promoting sex education, which drastically reduces teenage pregnancy and thus abortions. They’re not working to increase financial and social security for mothers to ensure having a child isn’t a massive risk. They’re not doing to reduce sexual assault of women leading to unwanted pregnancy.
They’re not doing everything in their power, not even remotely close. They’re literally just doing one single thing, and that’s the thing that hurts women the most, in the most ways and empowers terrible men the most.
So, given that they’re actually not trying very hard, and doing things that benefit themselves, one has to wonder if that’s truly a surprising of highly specific incompetence, or intentional.
There we go, next level Critical.Thinking. Nicely done.
One has to wonder if that’s truly a highly specific incompetence, or intentional.
I’ll apply Hanlons razor again: These people are stupid, therefore doing “everything in their power” involves using woefully ineffective means to achieve their goal. I have no problem believing that most anti-abortionists genuinely believe that they’re trying to save innocent lives. However, being relatively dumb people means they are primarily driven by feelings rather than logic, and are easily manipulated. This results in them using the means that they “feel” should be effective, rather than proven methods. It also means that the few people that actively are looking to oppress others can manipulate their feelings to make them support means that hurt the people they’re trying to help.
Complementary the believe should rise that some adults know what they do. It’s not bad luck or human nature. Some people really know how to manipulate the masses.
Anyone whose “ghosts” isn’t at zero, as an adult, is someone I’m not going to be trusting on any subject.
Ditto “aliens”, if we interpret it as “extraterrestrials that have been to Earth”.
I think there may be room to interpret that line as not necessarily a belief in ghosts, but that whatever the base belief, it hasn’t changed much. They may not have believed much on the concept of ghosts, but keeping the door open to the idea, but as time went on, it faded a bit. They never really believed, but they did think about it a lot.
That could describe me. I don’t really believe in ghosts, but I also know that we don’t know much at all about the universe, so who really knows? However, throughout my life, I’ve thought about ghosts a lot, mostly because of books and movies, but it’s been a common subject of thought throughout my life. I probably believe less I’m them now, just like the chart. So while I don’t really believe in them, I’ve thought about them a lot, and that would put them in a similar place on my chart.
In fact my entire chart would look very much like this one.
I don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but I’ve visited sites where America massacred Native Americans and enslaved Africans. What I felt and experienced there can only be described as haunting. Brains do weird things in stressful situations. I get why some people give too much legitimacy to their hallucinations. They can be chilling, compelling, convincing, formative, and even beneficial.
Ditto “aliens”, if we interpret it as “extraterrestrials that have been to Earth”.
This is an important distinction.
100% chance there is extraterrestrial life out there somewhere
0% chance any of it has come to visit
0% chance any of it has come to visit
0% chance any intelligent aliens have come to visit. There is a non-0% chance that there have been some microbes on an asteroid. There are some variations on the panspermia theory that suggest that life didn’t even originate in this star system. There’s no evidence for any of it of course but it’s possible.
My friends cousins are all convinced they saw ghosts when they were kids. They also had an uncle who frequently played tricks on them. These two things are unrelated apparently
hey, i have a ghost that lives in my microwave.
first a few things you should know. my entire town was built on an american indian burial ground. like, starting in the 70s they’d have the tribe come out for every new development and help relocate artifacts to [redacted fuck you i ain’t telling] and our house is legit burial ground. not cursed burial ground or anything. anyways we have this ghost that turns on our microwave from time to time, seemingly randomly. I named him Smudgy, because we have one of those touchscreen control thingies and i noticed he’s active whenever someone with greasy fingers has been using the microwave. and he’s really easy to shut up with a soapy washcloth.
i “believe” in ghosts. it’s harmless fun.
my entire town was built on an american indian burial ground
I see why would you believe in ghosts
he’s active whenever someone with greasy fingers has been using the microwave. and he’s really easy to shut up with a soapy washcloth.
huh
My opinions on the subject are entirely opposite of yours, but I think we might agree that the two lines should actually meet and become “are aliens ghosts?”
Real adulthood is knowing there’s no logical way to unconditionally prove those particular negatives. What you do with that information is another discussion.
Edit: Also if anybody is interested in reading up in an absolutely fascinating phenomenon, this was a topic that came up during my hospice / palliative care rotations. This article in particular is a systematic review from last year.
One of the most fascinating things about this phenomenon is that it’s markedly different from the hallucinations seen with psychosis and delirium (which I’m more familiar with, my specialty being psychiatry). In particular the person experiencing it presents with orientation and cognition that is completely logical, linear, and otherwise intact.
A patient with psychosis often presents with poor understanding of their situation overall, such as not knowing where they are, not remembering recent events, or sometimes not even recognizing themselves. Their speech also usually presents with either thought blocking / poverty of thought, or the opposite—tangentiality / flight of ideas where their statements don’t logically follow each other.
Meanwhile patients reporting death visions are typically able to accurately recall where they are, what has been happening, what is likely to happen next, and retain the ability to have linear and reality based discussions. They just also report seeing deceased family or pets, religious figures, etc.
Fascinating topic.
Thats a super interesting phenomenon that has absolutely nothing to do at all with ghosts existing or not.
End-of-life visions are Santa cosplaying as people’s dead relatives, as he’s known to only be visible to those he wishes to be visible to
And, of course, as a real adult you know there is no logical way to unconditionally disprove this particular statement about Santa
Fuck that’s stupid, how the hell could you believe in that kind of incoherent nonsense?
It’s not Santa, you fucking dolt, he doesn’t exist, it’s Mothman. For fuck’s sake.
Edit: Who the hell is taking this seriously enough to downvote?
Now this answer I will take. Me and my husband have matching booty shorts that say “goblin” and “mothman” on the respective derrieres.
No one’s asking anyone to prove a negative, there’s just zero case for a positive.
You can not believe in ghosts because there’s zero evidence they exist and compassionately support someone at the end of their life who’s experiencing deathbed visions at the same rime
Apparently the other commenter can’t.
Your belief of human goodness went up? Have you been living under a peaceful rock?
I assume the opposite, OP is actually meeting people in real life and touching grass, instead of doomscrolling and talking to clankers online.
Also, where is this rock, and what’s the rent like?
Hawaii, and you don’t want to know.
Most people are really pleasant. That creates a power vacuum where the worst are usually in seats of power.
Gotta go back to working retail to fix this mindset.
Honestly, most people are zero problems. It’s just the those 98% of normal people don’t really register compared to that one absolute fucking asshole…
*Most people are really pleasant, unless inconvenienced in some way
It’s also a little inconsistent with at least one other belief on the graph.
I think I get it and kind of share a similar belief. Most people are “good,” although I’d use a less morally relative term to describe it: Pro-social. People tend to behave in a way that works well with others. This makes sense if you think about it without getting caught up in all the “humans bad” philosopher stuff. One of our defining features as a species is our ability to work together. We form communities, developed languages to communicate, cultural norms and laws to create agreed upon guides on how we behave towards each other, etc. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if we were always stabbing each other in the backs.
At the same time, there are some unfortunate behaviors and phenomenon that emerge out of these dynamics. In group/out group thinking, an unwillingness to change things if it means causing disunity with the community, etc. And while I think most people are good, there are different people with different personalities, and clearly we have at least some psychopaths who are willing to exploit peoples’ natures for their own gain. Also, circumstances can create constraints on how people behave. If you can’t afford to be altruistic, you might end up acting in a selfish way, although even then that’s not always the case.
The fact that you can look out into the world and feel bad about all the people who are getting hurt, even if you aren’t personally affected, should already tell you that there is this “ goodness” to most of humanity. Otherwise a) you wouldn’t care and b) all those bad people would deserve it anyway. So that is the hope that keeps me from full on nihilism. Unfortunately I also think that there are a lot of other factors in place which make it increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to organize enough to survive. Wealth disparities and technological asymmetry allows those handful of psychos to wield a lot of power and it’s getting harder and harder to fight back against that.
So yeah, I don’t think “people are doomed even if most of them have good intentions” is that contradictory of a view to hold.
Occam’s razor? Maybe their growth in belief in people’s stupidity explains why their belief in human goodness increased. Instead, they just believe people are incompetent rather than willfully bad? Curious what the mechanism for it looking like a titration curve is though.
it correlates with love, so that checks out.
the awful big caused the local good to come out here. my community is weird for a lot of ways i refuse to specify for reasons
I want to believe 🛸
I don’t believe in love more than gravity. Gravity has always been there for me to bring me back down to Earth.
So far
Wow your love went up so dramatically. Mine is the opposite in a way.
Gravity is globist propaganda, wake up!
/j because Poe’s law
I’ve seen some flat Earth videos where they legit “explain” how gravity is fully explained by the flat earth constantly accelerating upwards.
That would explain all the giant rocket engines (i live on the bottom of the earth)
I feel like the deeper you get into physics, the more that statement makes sense. 😅
Now I’m studying physn’tics instead. trying to clear my mind of what the “observer” will be up to next
Funny, the thing I believe less and less in as I age is human goodness. Must be a generational thing.
Also, gravity seems to be increasing every morning.
Human goodness and society are two different things. There are many great people that do amazing things that don’t it for credit or recognition or money. Most go unnoticed.
Society on the other hand is crazy and greedy.
Society’s goodness is the average of all the individuals’ goodness that compose it. If society is bad, that means a majority of the people are bad, and some are a lot worse than the minority who are better than the average. It’s not a good outlook.
Where I agree to your fundamentals I think it gets lost in the noise. I think one loud and obnoxious asshole can make many great people look bad. Even if there are more of good stock than bad. You could argue that is a reflection of the people itself. However it’s not necessarily a lack of oversight. It’s an unprecedented event that makes the society look like a bunch of redneck assholes.
I really like the idea of telling people that I believe in ghosts more than myself
Your belief in Santa went up? I mean, as long as it helps you avoid the “naughty list”, I guess that’s alright, lol.
There are three periods in a man’s life:
- he believes in Santa
- he doesn’t believe in Santa
- he is Santa
I’ve got the belly already, I’m just waiting on the disposable income!
Likely for kids. You gotta “believe again”
I’d assume it’s belief in him physically existing as a kid then translating to Saint Nicholas or spirit of christmas, but staying low to represent that it’s shifted.
Ah, good ole gravity. No matter where you go, there it is.
Every year I believe that my faith in humanity can’t get any lower. And every year I’m proven wrong.
