From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu Dec 26 2002 - 12:00:41 MST
> (Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>):
>
> >>And yet our culture is, if anything, more filed with emptiness
> >>and hype than it was then. I doubt that that is lost on the
> >>young today either.
>
> >What utter hogwash.
>
> If you expect a response from me then start over. I didn't say
> nothing had improved in any areas at all. I said that the level
> of that feeling of emptinness and hype has not improved
> significantly. Take a look at anti-depressant prescription
> volume if you don't think so. Better yet, tell me how this
> culture feeds that which is most important to you and fuels you.
I never expect responses unless I ask questions, but your point
is taken: sure, lots of people are depressed and pessimistic;
always have been, always will be. How people feel about their
circumstances says more about them than about the circumstances.
Aside from those taking SSRIs to be more productive, I have seen
no reason to think the number taking them for real depression now
indicates more cases of depression than at earlier times--it just
represents the fact that there's now an available treatment and
people want to take advantage of it, because being depressed
sucks. Isn't that a good thing? Why do /you/ automatically
assume that more people are depressed?
What's most important to me is learning; what fuels me is knowledge.
Acquiring it, distributing it, improving it. Aside from the
obvious technological boons to that enterprize today, the culture
today has improved my chances (and those of others) in several ways:
home schooling of children is common and accepted now, mass media
like television and radio are freer and have more and better content,
there is more diversity in colleges and other research institutions,
"nerdiness" is much more culturally acceptable now, information about
things like medicine and law that was once tightly guarded is now
made available to the public, etc.
At every point in history, there is progress, and there are problems
to overcome, and now is no different. There have always been, and will
always be, pessimists and doomsayers as well as optimists, and some of
them may even get a prediction right now and then. But pathological
pessimism is a debilitating disease that does no one any good, and I
for one don't care to be infected by it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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