We don’t allow personal attacks on this site, so please find a way to frame your arguments without insulting people.

I’m a little surprised at how prickly some people become when you speak ill of racism and ethnocentrism. I would agree latter is nowhere near as bad as the former; however, ethnocentrism is not simply “liking one’s own culture.” It has to do with assuming that one’s culture is superior and the standard by which all others are to be judged. And, yes, I think it derives from the same basic source as racism — the fear of the other.

No harm, no foul.

Interesting that Hesiod was predicting the end of it all a couple or three hundred years before Alexander, a good two millennia before the fall of Constantinople — what he might have viewed (had he been around to witness it) as the end of the end of the end of the virtually unrecognizable abomination that Hellenic civilization had become.

But even that was hardly the end of the world.

I wonder if Hesiod were around today if he would be a film critic?

What they mean is that they feel saddled by their own ability to think — by a brain that’s capable of seeing and analyzing reality to the point of discomfort.

You’ve probably sometimes felt like shaking them: “Yes, you ARE smart — but you’re not seeing the whole picture! Yes, you DO have a brain that can incisively analyze reality, but you’ve zeroed in on the sliver of bad stuff at the expense of all the good!”

That’s what a lot of this feels like: a collective tendency to zero in on the world’s ills, at the expense of seeing the bigger picture and all its good. And maybe the “smarter” we collectively become, the more pronounced this tendency.

“Ignorance is bliss” didn’t become a cliche just by accident.

I assure you I did make some effort at reading it before posting, as it was this sentance “However, the fatalism that both she and Roger Ebert express is a palpable undercurrent in much contemporary discourse, political and otherwise.” that got my wheels turning about ancient pessimism and then Hesiod.

It seems the first couple paragraphs, which I skimmed through with utter ineptness, address both my (incorrect) concern that pessimism was being considered new and my confusion at the “new racism” context.

Once I got to thinking about “this relevant but obscure quote!!1!” I failed in my due diligence regarding what you were trying to express, and I feel foolish. Mea culpa.

As demonstrably ridiculous as your supposition that rampant pessimism is a recent phenomenon…

Oops, looks like you clicked the wrong browser button somewhere and ended up on a different blog post. You’re commenting on a post wherein the author claims that pessimism is innate and that it’s been with us since before we were even fully human. Like, way before Hesiod, if that helps.

it pales in comparison to the sheer madness of declaring pessimism “the new racism”–whatever exactly that means.

Well, again, that would require reading the actual post.

They also say that non-religious folks are more pessimistic so perhaps there is another simultanious trend at work.

A lot of people confuse their own decline with that of society, or the world.

I think it’s the Boomers getting old.

(translation: Lombardo)

Hesiod was an extremely influential author, and his vision of the inevitable doom of mankind was by no means uncommon.

As demonstrably ridiculous as your supposition that rampant pessimism is a recent phenomenon may be, it pales in comparison to the sheer madness of declaring pessimism “the new racism”–whatever exactly that means.

Add amorality, moral relativism and rationalization. Convince a large number of the population that these are all virtues when done correctly.

You’ll get the problems we have now: people are unhappy.