I love where Sheldon says 'We don't like that you could walk outside and get hit by a fuckin' meteor.' I love his extreme, absurdist view. I thought he was going to say hit by a bus. My mind went straight to a mundane death: killed by bus. Meteor is much, much funnier. Must have skipped back and rewatched that quote several times when I watched Planet of the Humans.
First! This comment is wrapped up in cultural narratives due to unconscious desires for symbolic immortality. I'm going to forget that now so I can pretend death is for other people. Have a nice day.
What do you think about the critique on terror management theory, that it is not consistent with evolution theory? Proposed nu Navarrete and Kirkpatrick?
They are incorrect. It is entirely consistent with evolutionary theory. And their critique has been thoroughly addressed by TMT scholars as far back as 2007. Besides, the evidence is massive
Read the excerpts related to evolution and critiqueswww.researchgate.net/profile/Tom_Pyszczynski2/publication/289309102_Thirty_Years_of_Terror_Management_Theory/links/5a74d39d45851541ce5660af/Thirty-Years-of-Terror-Management-Theory.pdf?origin=publication_detail
it took modern humans tens of thousands of years to reach a population of 700 million - and then we tapped into millions of years of stored energy known as fossil fuels - our human population exploded - it increased by ten times in a mere 200 years - our consumption has also exploded, on average ten times per person and many times more in the Western world - you put the two together the result is a total human impact 100 times greater than only 200 years ago - and that is the most terrifying realization I have ever had - we humans are poised for a fall from an unimaginable height, not because of one thing, not climate change alone, but all the human caused changes, the planet is suffering from - so why are bankers industrialists and environmental leaders only focused on the narrow solution of green technology? is it the profit motive? and why, for most of my life, have I fallen for the illusion, green energy would save us? - clearly to answer this question I needed professional help - I'll just be honest with you upon my dilemma you can be my you know clinical social psycho - it's like the right has religion and they have a belief in infinite fossil fuels. our side says what's gonna be okay we're gonna have solar panels, we're gonna have wind towers - as soon as I heard you talk about our denial of death I'm like could that be it could it be that we can't face our own mortality could we have a religion that we're unaware - absolutely I think you've hit the proverbial nail on the head what just differentiates people from all other forms of life was that you know we're not only here but that we know that we're here - if you know that you're here then you recognize even dimly that you'll not be here someday - and on top of that we don't like that we're animals - so we don't like that we're gonna die someday and we don't like that you could walk outside and get hit by a meteor - what human beings did back in yesteryear it is to envelop ourselves and culturally constructed belief systems - you know call them cultures call them worldviews schemes of things whatever you call them every human community has them - every culture has an account of the origin of the universe, every culture has a prescription for how you're supposed to behave while you're here, and every culture offers its denizens hope of immortality either literally or symbolically - then the question is well what happens when you bump into people who don't share those beliefs? whether you know it or not whether you like it or not but that's undermining the confidence with which you subscribe to your own views and exposing you to the very anxiety that those beliefs were constructed to eradicate in the first place - if we're to make progress whatever that word means or even to persist as a form of life we're going to need to radically overhaul our basic conception of who and what we are and what it is that we value - because the people that you referred to earlier both on the left and the right that think we're going to be able to discover more oil or solar panel ourselves into the future where life will look pretty much like it does now you know only cleaner and better I think that's just frankly delusional - what I'm hearing is that if I haven't come to grips with my own anxiety about death and life and presented with a reminder of that I'm highly likely to make some tragic decisions for the community - yes. the only solution and principle is you know as Albert Camus put it he said there's only one Liberty to come to terms with death thereafter anything is possible - I find that downright inspiring
I've been saying this sort of thing about the climate people, that they have an existential anxiety that goes far beyond what their propositions try to address. As Greta says, people are suffering and dying. But I say that these days more people than every before are suffering and dying because modern science and medicine have allowed a greater population on Earth than ever before, and also because suffering and death are part and parcel of what Benatar calls The Human Predicament.
The need you think of is a want.. we need food and water, air to breath... Some warmth and a dry place to rest helps too... There is no need for nuclear but to perpetuate the evolutionary cul-de-sac we are heading into
@@sweetcornbreadtv4790 'Need' in the sense of needing energy for human societies anywhere above pre-industrial levels, or some sourse as good as nuclear.
@@sweetcornbreadtv4790 'Need' in this case would mean to keep the current population size alive. Without *some* form of energy, we literally could not produce enough food to keep the current population size from mass starvation. If that is allowed to happen, population size would eventually stabilize to pre-industrial sizes of a few hundred years ago.
