[ExI] Who has a vote that counts?

[Will Steinberg]

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 4:36 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> But back to anecdotes, and casting wide nets...  I, OTOH, am more hopeful
> about the youth of America, although I'm also guilty of taking easy pot
> shots based on what is amplified by media, and social media in particular.
>

The youth are fine, but the world is not.  It's only natural that we are
discouraged.

I do find it sad to hear all of the excuses as to why this current
> generation has it the hardest and has no hope.  Giving up in life is not an
> option that frequently yields a good outcome.   Life itself owes us
> nothing, we can only hope through hard work, happenstance, and family/our
> broader social network that we make a decent go of it.   Every generation
> can find a million reasons for why they have it so bad, and why life is
> unfair, but the only alternative to giving up is carrying on.   The wheel
> moves up and down, and the only guarantee you have from life is that as the
> Buddha said, it is suffering.   Once you accept that, everything else is
> gravy.
>

Not giving up, nor complaining that life is unfair, nor imagining life owes
us.  As you say, Fortuna's wheel moves up and down.  We happen to be a
generation experiencing a downswing, like our grandparents.  What gets
complained about is people from easier and more plentiful times trying to
convince us to apply the same heuristics that worked for them.

Instability waxes and wanes.  It is simple.  Now is a time of greater
instability.  I think a lot of older people have some kind of internal
guilt about their lives having been more stable with more hope for the
future.

"BuT tHe CuBaN mIsSiLe CrIsIs!!!" -- the Cuban Missile Crisis was scary
because ICBMs at the time sucked, so those nukes in Cuba actually
threatened America.  Now, there is an active threat to all countries in the
world, all the time, many times more severe than the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is dog shit compared to the state of nuclear
armament today.

Anyway I'm just saying.  Youth today are disillusioned because it sucks to
be a generation on the downswing of the wheel.  Nobody is giving up.  But
we are certainly worried about existential threats to humanity.
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