Interesting person on LJ

[liveonearth]

theheretic is a type I diabetic and former science fiction writer. I was wandering around in his journal and it is full of great ideas and interesting thoughts about our future and human nature.

Here's a quote from the middle of an entry about why he is alive, which in a word, is "insulin":

Optimism is a terrible evil, one of the greatest ever, imho. Like religion or shame. It is a destructive creation meant to enslave. Its very hard to explain why unless you're a serious pessimist like me. Optimism has positive results, but the negative ones are maddeningly squashed and ignored. People don't learn when they're optimists. They just keep thrashing around until they're dead. And usually, after they've infected more idiots with optimism so they'll die too. Peasants aren't optimists, they're just realistic about their odds of survival and accept an early death as the cost of being alive at all. If we were less greedy for comforts, and less optimistic, we'd have avoided the pitfalls that have already doomed our civilization, and will send people like me off to a painful death.

Comments

Re: reality is not PC

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

I found his responses to my comments to be enlightening and informative. And I agree, getting stuck on semantics leaves out most of the story.

You know I'm not very good at philosophical discussion, at least not in electronic forums, so thanks for letting me try in your journal. :-)

You amaze me with your predictions. I wish I could see the world as clearly and have as good an understanding of things as you do. I'm getting there, slowly.