Don’t want to bring down the mood or offend anyone, but I feel the need to discuss the situation the world is in. Burrying my head in the sand is bliss, but well, It honestly feels like a fragile place at the moment and I was wondering if anyone could put my mind at ease.
I think the world is becomming more unstable every day… North Korea has nukes, US is prepared to defend against them, China are close with North Korea, Russia is close with China, Turkey is close with the US, the US is close with the Kurds, The Kurds are being bombed by Turkey, ISIS is being bombed by Russia, but they’re also using that excuse to bomb western backed rebels trying to topple the Syrian government. Everyone officially hates ISIS but, everyone is stepping on each others toes.
It’s so petty, ridiculous and convoluted and I honestly question if I am truly a member of the human race right now.
[justify]The world is just as unstable as it’s always been, which is ironic seeing as that makes it a "stable" environment. The only difference today is the fact we have so many sources of media and information about these issues in the world that we kind of feel overwhelmed.
Without news coverage, the only people affected by these events would be the ones directly involved. But fortunately (in my opinion) we are all made aware of how terrible our world is, as the human race - for all of it’s accomplishments and sense of "humanity" binding it together - is an easily manipulated species which does some horrible acts of inhumanity for a frighteningly large array of reasons.[/justify]
Do you think that people willfully chose ignorance when the proof is there to be found? Would it effect their need to be a productive and heads-down member of society or would questioning it create social tension among colleagues who just don’t want to be brought down? Even in the "free" world it seems as if we’re living as if we’re under scrutiny of the thought police, though we police ourselves, through peer pressure and groaning whenever someone tries to talk about it.
Any proper discussion seems to be done by a couple of drunk people over a pint, or on an obscure internet forum. Politics seems to be a specacle of men using personal attacks on each other and promising much, whilst delivering little, year after year. All talk and no action, with all the most important decisions done so behind closed doors, and quickly shuffled under the nose of the public and the press.
It seems even in a world with so much freedom of communication, the political shitstorm is way less interesting than clickbait, pseudo news, cat videos and football politics. Its as if we’re willfully living a facade of escapism in order to cope with a brutal and frightening reality, when the first step in changing that world is to discuss it. People seem to cling to ideals they consider their own, when in reality, their entire person is shaped by the social environment they are raised in.
Maybe I’m over thinking things but do you think that political discussion would be held with all members required to be totally shit-faced? Maybe they’d be more honest and direct, and less composed, and content to tip-toe around the issues we face.
I mean do you think people understand, deep down that they’re living a lie, but are comfortable with it, and won’t allow any exterior influences on their established comforts?
I just saw that ISIS managed to steal like 70 or so M1A1 tanks that the US gave to the Iraqis. I mean, they still have to deal with maintaining those brutes…but that’s still a very unsettling thought
My "ideals" are really quite flexible and evolve and change with new information, yet not passing through my doubt filter without scrutiny. I’m lucky that I grew up not indoctrinated into any way of thinking, or perhaps I am and don’t realize it. At any rate I try to detach myself from what feels right and wrong and see things from every perspective, no matter how warped. When you think about it, nobody is truly guilty of anything, and the people around a growing individual are just as much to blame for a murder they would commit, or a loaf of bread stolen, as they are, if not moreso. Even the worst scum of the earth, have their reasons for why they think and act that way that are beyond their control.
I think the world has always been like this, countries support each other out of their own interest. Sometimes it is for more selfish reasons than they publicly claim. For example China supports North Korea not out of international Marxist unity, which would be difficult anyway since neither is a Marxist country anyway, but because they don’t want millions of starving people pouring into Manchuria.
As Lord Palmerston said "Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." In other words "No permanent allies only permanent interests."
As for the Middle East perhaps the main cause of recent problems is the regional Cold War between Shia/Minorities and Sunni Traditionalists. The US and allies invading Iraq just provided a proxy battlefield for Saudi Arabia and Iran to fight over. Now the civil war in Syria has given them another one.
If things are all completely as hunky dory as he claims, then why would the news not report on it? Surely all this doom and gloom is effecting people’s faith in humanity.
I mean, if it did I’d only accuse it of censoring out all the grisly bits so that we are kept in the dark. Perhaps that’s their way of getting us engaged in democracy, and leaning us towards the more right wing politicians. The more repeatedly we see for example middle eastern people blowing up things or russia waving their dicks at us on the news, or hell even watching "poor people" fight on the Jeremy Kyle Show, the more it drives home their agenda’s message, yet at the same time it remains unbiassed and free from accusations of favouring a side. So it’s not how they report it but what they report on (ignoring the finer details of course, the BBC is pretty much owned by the conservative party)
Perhaps i’m too cynical for my own good. I think perhaps it’s human nature to only see the bad in the world, as the good just isn’t interesting enough. Maybe because the bad is a threat to fellow humans and ourselves. And the good is just something you can momentarily feel happy about. I mean nobody on my facebook feed seemed to care that the ESA landed a probe on a freakin’ comet but me.
Did you even watch the video I posted Price? Rosling says that modern media only report on things that happen now. The things he describes are process which don’t happen on a certain moment, but happen during a period of time. If media did report on these things the headlines would be just as untelling of the world as the current ones; "World poverty has decreased by 0,000000001% over the last 24 hours", "10.000 africans now earn more than 1$ per day", "The average family now only has 2.456778 children instead of the 2.456777 children yesterday" etc. If you base your world view upon news stories then you’ll turn into the average American; frightened of his neighbours thinking that literally everyone is out to kill you. Doing so would overgeneralise everything and would result in a completely wrong view of the world.
The world has never been as safe as it has been today, and I am pretty certain that in 50 years from now we’ll live in an awesome world.
True yes, the only news reported is breaking news. Like: someone bombs someone, or someone puts his genitles in the mouth of a dead pig, or someone crashes a plane, or someone is injured playing football. Unless the news has any impact, then its not really reported on. They don’t have on-going statistics of things like they do the weather report. I think they should. Imagine that, the birthrate, literacy rates etc alongside the stock market fluctuations.
You’re not taking into account one important thing, money. Popular news stations or newspapers will not get their views or sales up unless it shocking. It’s all about making a sensation out of it. Do you guys remember the Supermoon of 2015? It’s the best example how the news is not interesting to report on unless it’s made sensational.
There are some underlying factors that perpetuate this sensationalistic reporting. One of them is generally poor education of populus. They don’t have education in basic scientific methods - something which you should be taught in grade school - to see through bullshit that Fox or The Guardian and alike are serving. The other one maybe equally big, is lack of time to do the investigation. People who are working 8h or more don’t have time nor willpower to verify something that might seem suspicious or don’t have energy to think about it at all.
And that brings me to the next point. You do have "smart" news magazines and portals, but they don’t deal with worldly topics such as immigration crisis, how VW falsified reports and ISIS. Instead they are purely scientific magazines, reporting on new discoveries or ongoing experiments from various different fields. Articles in there are written with a bigger vocabulary and require you to think about what you’re reading to understand it, so you can see why they’re not as popular as yellow pages. See New Scientist, Nature, Phys.org, and my favourite early-morning-tea-read Not Exactly Rocket Science
Indeed sensationalism sells, Whenever someone clicks on an article it’s either provocative in its headline, explosive, tongue in cheek, or has tits plastered on the front… that kind of leads me to clickbait and facebook… It seems most people don’t even get their news from the usual sources anymore, and just get all of it from their facebook feed. It’s mostly just news taken straight from the actual news sources who in some cases have to meticulously fact check them. But random facebook money generating clickbait sites don’t need to. They can pump out a copy of a news story, with more sensationalist language, Have an ambiguous and provocative headline that explains nothing or misleads you completely to further capitalize on your curiosity… throw in a few "OMGs" or "LMAOs" for good measure, and include royalty free images that have nothing to do with the subject, because the attention span of the average person is brick tier and they need visual stimulus.
The worrying thing is, this form of news will eventually outcompete regular news sources, and the clickbaiters will have no real stories to report on… So all of our news in the future might be fabricated bullshit with no fact checking whatsoever… Disturbing.
And since it’s viral, bullshit will spread at the speed of light…
Incidentally and somewhat unrelated I have modified my browser to replace commonly used clickbait words with more cynical versions.
“Literally” becomes “Figuratively”
“Will Blow Your Mind” becomes “Might Perhaps Mildly Entertain You For a Moment”
“One Weird Trick” becomes “One Piece of Completely Anecdotal Horseshit”
“Go Viral” becomes “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop”
“Can’t Even Handle” becomes “Can Totally Handle Without Any Significant Issue”
“Incredible” becomes “Painfully Ordinary”
“You Won’t Believe” becomes “In All Likelihood, You’ll Believe”
“Restored My Faith In Humanity” becomes “Affected Me In No Meaningful Way Whatsoever”
[quote user_id=“9116490” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/9116490/avatar/medium.1400145727.png” name=“Price”]The worrying thing is, this form of news will eventually outcompete regular news sources, and the clickbaiters will have no real stories to report on… So all of our news in the future might be fabricated bullshit with no fact checking whatsoever… Disturbing.
And since it’s viral, bullshit will spread at the speed of light…[/quote]
Oh, you haven’t heard the news? This has already happened with the Internet. Regular magazines written by professional journalists with decent quality control have pretty much died out in favor of free online news sites where people keep up the momentum using only enthusiasm (and ad money). Fact checking is a mostly thing of the past, even with technical sites like phoronix.com - people usually just watch each other and report what others have reported.
Overall, the world is in a big pile of poo like it has always been - pretty much everything has multiple explanations and multiple causes, with the roots being mostly in testosteron or estrogen. I really mean everything. We still fight over borders like animals fight over territories, we just don’t literally piss on each other (eh, mostly), we still maintain that secrecy when it comes to reproduction, we still are incredibly stupid (as a population) and can be easily manipulated - less so than before, but still a great deal.
The thing that has changed is that instead of outsourcing our problems to a deity, we take the pressure upon ourselves, so to makes us not lose the faith in ourselves, we shift the focus on other things - like whether that celebrity had a boob job or not - and /rest assured/ that other people are worse than us (bigger negative societal popularity).
In conclusion to this short post (I could go on forever, but sadly must go :D) - the world has changed, but the people haven’t. It’s not worse, it’s just different. If you realize that we survived through centuries of systematic elimination of people keeping us alive (doctors, "witches"), what can possibly stop us?
Hang on guys I found an interesting article about a simple get rich trick video that rich people don’t want me to see, a skinny pill that literally melts off the fat, and a rare vegetable that makes you into he-man.
This has already happened with the Internet. Regular magazines written by professional journalists with decent quality control have pretty much died out in favor of free online news sites where people keep up the momentum using only enthusiasm (and ad money). Fact checking is a mostly thing of the past, even with technical sites like 
