Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don't want your hope, I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act, I want you to act as if you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire, because it is.
Which is more likely to increase our chances of weathering climate change? Optimism or Pessimism? — Mark Dennis
Is it the biggest challenged we’ve faced as a species? — Mark Dennis
Political priorities of world governments don’t seem to be matching up with the priorities that are required for long term survival — Mark Dennis
... extremely hard to get a true gauge of what our chances really are — Mark Dennis
But which of the two is more pragmatic? Is believing there is a way with optimism better than disbelieving there is a way with Pessimism? — Mark Dennis
The social protest is but a mere contradiction - we indulge and waste what we have and at the same time demand change to our own behaviour. — Metaphyzik
weren’t all the previous challenges we’ve made it through as a species described as impossible by many? — Mark Dennis
I look around me and see many items we take for granted... — Mark Dennis
Which is the better motivator to actually act and contribute toward the problem within your area of it? For example, if I was pessimistic, would I have bothered to post and ask the question? — Mark Dennis
research has shown that positive thinking, in the form of fantasies about an idealized future, predicts low effort and poor performance.
We believe that making even a small change in the past, would drastically alter the present. — Mark Dennis
So is the Optimism butterfly the one we should be collectively stepping on? — Mark Dennis
A hand full of ultra-rich and power people in the world are both guilty and responsible for the critical problems we face. — Bitter Crank
Climate is a matter of faith and ideology.
Sarcasm alert. — unenlightened
Um, I think you got lost in your metaphors here. Stomping on an optimism butterfly is supposed to accomplish what? Extinguish optimism?
We don’t? Everything I’ve read about chaos theory and time travel theory and every science fiction seems to indicate this and the margins aren’t always by millions of years. While literally stepping on one butterfly may be the sort of change that might take these magnitudes, to metaphorically choose the Optimism butterfly can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. A working class man may invest a dollar a month toward climate change research or technology to fight climate change, his student daughter may believe there is a way and go to school to study to look for it, in order to join the scientist whose optimism makes him work and research for a solution in the first place and the scientists grandmother may decide to gift as much of her accumulated wealth as she can to her grandsons research. These are all examples of (Freeing instead of stepping on?) the Optimism butterfly.We believe that making even a small change in the past, would drastically alter the present.
— Mark Dennis
No, we don't.
research has shown that positive thinking, in the form of fantasies about an idealized future, predicts low effort and poor performance.
Basically as good a description of the problem as you're ever going to get. Success measured by number of shiny items.
Define 'made it through'. What criteria are you using to determine that we've 'made it' - mere survival of the species (I expect that's going to happen anyway at some level).
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