this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
1015 points (98.9% liked)

Privacy

31853 readers
182 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1015
Internet Archive is in danger (www.battleforlibraries.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure. I personally find cynicism intensely irritating. It's infectious so it inevitably ends up poisoning everything. Nobody ever solved any problem with cynicism. In fact I'd go further: all the world's backward societies (i.e. most of them) are characterized by all-pervasive cynicism ("they're in it for themselves", "they're all crooks", "nothing will ever change"), whereas the successful countries (few in number) are the ones where people have a more optimistic view of others' motives. Cynicism is so obviously a self-fulfilling prophesy that I struggle to understand why so many choose to indulge it. I've heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness. Perhaps I'm too logical but I wish people would choose not to wallow in pessimism - after all, nobody can prove anything one way or the other when it comes to the motivations of others. And oddly, most humans tend to trust others that they know personally. Personally don't see why strangers would somehow be a different variety of human. Rant over.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I've heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness.

That certainly sounds like an accurate theory, and I have been known to be cynical about stuff every so often, and am still trying to remove that from my personality. It may have been a defense mechanism developed to block all the helplessness, as that theory describes, but that does not justify my demeanor in those instances.

Like you, I believe having an optimistic stand in front of all the adversity, if nothing else, makes things a bit more manageable. And I agree that if more people dropped cynicism, the world would be all the better for it. Having said that, once that's embedded in a person's character, removing it is an entire re-learning process which requires one to forcibly unlearn it, because it does turn into a subconscious reaction.