I'm what many people would call an optimist, but I don't subscribe to an unrealistic view of the world, what I try to look for is the root of reality. I think truly evil people are a very small part of the world, they are unfortunately the kind of people who seek power, and their goal is to turn people against each other. After disasters, people tend to come together, they donate food, water, money, blood, and time, but something always sets in, the Elite hate when people organize, and remember they control the media. After Katrina, suddenly there were reports of gangs roaming in the Thunderdome, people being raped and murdered, the reality is that never happened, people formed gangs, but to help each other, making sure women were protected, that children got food, and people got medicine. What happened was suddenly upper-class people got worried about their stuff and grabbed guns, a similar thing happened in Ferguson, saying people were "breaking" into their neighborhoods. Yes, there are people with bad motives who want to hurt you, but mostly those people are the elites. Tragedy moves towards Socialism, and they will literally make stuff up to stop this.
@Basmitharts Exactly they actually took people off search and rescue to protect stores, which is fucking ridiculous, stuff is not more important than life.
@RickiTarr This! I have a similar worldview. I have friends who are older like myself & they tend to be very cynical (& angry old leftists can be just as narrow-minded as any reactionary). I try to keep perspective. I mean, yes, we could all die tomorrow, but that’s remote. If you go back thousands of years, we’ve come a long way as a species. We are better off. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated, the arc of history is justice. It’s just a long & uneven (if linear) one.
My colleague always tells me to get off my flowery meadow because I'm too optimistic...
But I am also realistic
and also hopeful, somehow you have to be...
You're right, unfortunately there are too many who don't want to see the hope, optimism and solidarity of people
They work against it
@RickiTarr I look for the best in people, and that is maybe why I get to meet nice, genuine people like yourself on social media.
I hear so many people complain that they see so many terrible people on social media, and, yes, I have met a few; mostly misinformed, and a few bigoted, but mostly people are nice if you treat them with respect.
The problem is with main stream media, tasked with setting people at each others throats to whip up hatred....MAGA anyone?
@RickiTarr co sign. To me a major problem is, apparently millions of people really still don't understand that they do control -all- large (corporately owned) media groups. And that yes, they will regularly lie or omit things, and start wars (Iraq anyone?) to keep their riches coming and their places on the tops of the dung heaps they create.
@RickiTarr yeah, but OTOH it really is difficult to tell how many people still buy what is being sold…because large media groups keep hammering away with stories about what four people in some rural Ohio diner think…all while millions of people who only want peace and equity and support for the common good get described very differently, or in -many- cases are not given much coverage at all.
@RickiTarr This is exactly why I hate those "The World Turns Into The Purge The Second There's A Power Outage" disaster movies - like, have you seen "World War Z"? It takes half a zombie attack before a**holes start shooting each other over groceries. In "The Walking Dead", too, zombies seem to be a minor inconveniece compared to the armies of douchenozzles who were just waiting to live out their Lord Humongous fantasies. Lazy writing at best, elitist propaganda at worst.
@jwcph There will always be asshats, but I've watched people with not much to their name, give so other people can have better. People aren't perfect, but there's enough compassionate people that it gives me hope.
Despite the previous years of criminality by mob rule of my nation I was still an optimist until late March 2020. I had thought on March 10th, 2020 that people of all kinds step up and help each other no matter what in disasters. Then by March 30th we had a very loud vocal minority of people screaming about not wanting to wear a mask, one of the easiest things they could do to help each other. Now they scream about vaccines. 30%. fascists worldwide.
We should never make the mistake of assuming evil is only in others. To start fixing this issue we have to work on ourselves first to realize what are our evil sides and try to reverse those.
We can fix ourselves. Very much like when a compost pile starts to stink we have to add more browns to keep it under balance.
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