nimvlaj30
Joined 7 years ago
Joined 7 years ago
Not a long ramble about being ashamed (why?) about an image board I never even think of.
I wrestled with this in my undergrad, which plunged me into a depression that I had never known before. This was doubly troublesome for me because I had previously believed that God existed and had a plan for my life– some kind of universal determinism, destiny, or fate. Going from that mental model of the universe, to one in which the universe is random, cold, uncaring, and devoid of meaning is quite a shock to the mental health.
My happiness came back significantly once I discovered Existentialism, which the author seems to dislike. Existentialism is the belief that while there is no objective meaning to the universe, there is a subjective meaning. I can love my wife, enjoy my job, and enjoy a few brews with my buddies. All of those matter to me, and they don't have to have universal significance. They don't have to have objective meaning. Hell, people might not even be truly conscious or free anyway. It's not going to stop me from having a good time and loving life.
The author makes broad assertions with very little explanation and few references to back them up. I'm still not convinced nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective. I'm still not convinced that that wouldn't be ok from an objective standpoint (although I'd have a problem with it, subjectively). I'm not convinced that it erodes our culture's ability to tackle problems or change people for the better (in fact, maybe it's the first step). And even if it did, who is to say that isn't okay? Obviously those who lose out will not like it (subjective meaning). But there is no objective meaning to any of this. It's random, inconsequential, cause-and-effect bullshit from top to bottom. Who says it means anything at all?
But if it means something to you, then that's great.
If we ignore all that, then it sounds like I'm saying to give up. But if we take the context into account, it is evident that I'm actually giving OP advice on how to mentally and emotionally survive the coming apocalypse.
Though, maybe I should have been more clear.
> which could easily be interpreted
Perhaps there are more than one way in which to interpret certain concepts? Or maybe I'm interpreting your comment wrong?
The requirements involved with contributing to slowing (or stopping) climate change do not include worrying about it. If you are losing sleep, you would benefit from changing your attitude towards it.
Civilisational decline is a constant. It is coming. Accept it now, and work to delay it if you can make a meaningful change. If not, don't lose sleep over it.
I'm doing what I can to invest in future green tech and trying to limit my consumption. I am NOT losing sleep over the fact that we probably don't have much more of a future as a race.
> to accept the things I cannot change;
> courage to change the things I can;
> and wisdom to know the difference.
Civilisation as we know it, and perhaps even humanity is in the process of ending. The ending is inevitable, whether it is now or nearer to the heat death of the universe.
If you can personally try and affect change, then you should do it. But more likely, you are a slave to the same system that everyone else is. I'd recommend working on acceptance at this point.
> Nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective.
Why?
> That is not OK.
Why?
> It also erodes our cultures’ and societies’ ability to improve lives and tackle urgent problems.
Why?
> That is also not OK.
Why?
----
None of this is answered in the rest of the blog post.
[Example](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/gqfi33/you_can_ma...)
By improving your own education, working hard, and learning good financial habits, you can be at least somewhat better off. You will always suffer at the hands of this capitalist machine that chews the poor and spits them out. But with some level of self-discipline you can (at least slightly) improve your life and the lives of your offspring.
Lots of success is based on probability, so with luck, hard work, and financial literacy you may even be much better off.
I've only had brief familiarity with using Amazon Cognito for work. Pain points are that I'm not sure how secure storing JWT tokens in the browser's localstorage is. I briefly looked into HTTP-only cookies, but it seems more difficult to set, and also not really worth it?
It seems that CSRF and XSS vulnerabilities remain an unsolved problem. If you want to improve on something in that space, I'd say security is the major area to do it in. Seriously, I'd put up with more technical pain than AWS Amplify's Javascript library is giving me just to guarantee that the application is secure.