Change the World

No "good morning" for me then, apparently...

I am, I will admit, not one of those people who "remains optimistic about the basic goodness of humanity." Mainly because I'm fairly confident of the basic neutrality of humanity. Few people are intentionally deviant enough to qualify as evil, while only a small number are consistently compassionate enough to manage being good.

And yes, I place myself in the neutral category.

But I'm also one of those people who wonders how the world becomes a "trainwreck clusterfuck dumpsterfire hellscape." Something tells me the author of this hasn't actually read very many reductive and simplistic science-fiction screenplays. Because in the grand scheme of things, life, especially in the United States, Europe and other first/second world nations, is pretty good. In most science-fiction dystopias (and more than a few real-world nation states) complaining about things publicly like this would earn one a visit from the authorities.

I've never really been one for "attitude of gratitude" thinking. It strikes me as, well, a platitude, and one based on maintaining an unrealistically pessimistic view of the world. But, like a lot of other things, there is wisdom there. Mainly, don't let one's expectations have free rein, because they'll make one miserable. There is use in taking the world as it is, rather than constantly comparing it to something that one might want it to be. And if the world must fall short, there is value in seeing at as fixable, and by the self as an individual.

Viewing the world as a fundamentally broken place, populated by generally well-meaning, but basically hapless people absolves individuals of responsibility and robs them of agency. "This world" didn't get into the state that it's in because some wicked cabal somewhere steamrollered what is right and good. Rather, the world is in the state that it's in because it was seen as better than the alternatives. It was the path of least resistance. But it doesn't have to be.