Comment by gchamonlive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gchamonlive | Hacker News Reader

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> [...] Gen Z cannot go online or be a part of a social setting without being exposed to the sheer amount of horrors happening around the globe. You can’t turn on the television without being shown the terrors of school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles.

Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regarding the pain of others". Basically as soon as we had the means to know what is happening around the world almost instantly (at least as soon as the information is properly formatted) we opened this exposure to the collective suffering of the entirety of the human race. It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it. The article goes more into detail of the naturalization of suffering and the ideia that knowing the horrors by recounts and pictures we think we know the horrors themselves. It is very well worth the read.

On the long run I believe it's a good thing.

I just hope the take on it will be to understand the watcher is also suffering a lot, and the people you hate as well.

Life is full of of suffering, for every body.

Yes, even the person you are thinking about right now.

And sure, we can always rank suffering by taking examples and saying a raped tortured 6 years old suffers more than your average tech billionaire.

But the main point is, suffering is universal. It's a common ground we all share. It's goes beyond context and morality, because we all agree we don't want to suffer, and we do anyway. That's one of the rare things we all get to experience again and again, and that shapes your life.

I really wish people looking at the internet window will get this as the message, as a way to get closer to the other humans, instead of classify suffering and divide us in categories. Maybe develop a deeper understanding of suffering, which is not just pain or other obvious manifestations.

And also be more kind, tolerant, wish others, and oneself.

And also be more kind, tolerant, wish others, and oneself.

I agree that this is the ideal response, but unfortunately this hasn't been the general result and I doubt it ever will be. When an animal learns (or is tricked) that its environment is more harsh and dangerous than it previously believed, its instinctive reaction is to become less trusting, less curious, more withdrawn, and very often more prone to anger and violence. Humans are no different by and large.

> I agree that this is the ideal response, but unfortunately this hasn't been the general result

I think rates of poverty, starvation, rape, murder, etc. all disagree with you here.

To be clear, my comment was specifically about the effect of "horror news bombardment" on individuals, particularly via social media. I'm not sure it can take credit for the trends you mentioned, which started a very long time ago.

This is important. Life is not a contest of who suffers the most, but suffering brings us together. There also isn't a scarcity of suffering in the world, so we don't have to go looking for it. On the contrary, we as a society are failing to reduce the suffering of others. Maybe because we can't reconnect with people? They are just numbers and dates in political history?

In any case, welcoming pain as immanent in life while not being numbed and crushed by the sheer amount of it is a very important skill to develop.

But I’m sure you want to help the person who is suffering more before you help the person who is suffering less yes? The idea that “suffering is suffering” is almost sociopathic.

Can't both be done? Can't society provide for both in immediate danger as well as those suffering less?

Do we need to stop tending for people's mental health because many are not eating?

Maybe the effort involved in categorising, understanding and prioritising suffering would be better used... well... actually reducing suffering.

Because when we think like this we risk dismanteling efforts that are really important, like protecting other animals from abandonment or abuse, or protecting the environment, because we risk putting them in lower hierarchical priority compared to our own most immediate form of suffering.

Apparently we can’t. So I’m looking at this as a form of triage. At the very least, we can help those who are suffering the most, right? Because right now I’m neither being treated for my mental illness or my homelessness so there you go.

But yes, many people would rather protect and house animals than protect and house people. So I guess as humans we should have the same priorities, no?

But if you think protecting the environment is more important than providing people shelter I don’t know what to say. And in fact, I am going to state that it is easier to care about the climate than to provide people with housing, which is why people focus on the formal rather than the later.

> The idea that “suffering is suffering” is almost sociopathic.

I'm somewhat troubled by this line of thinking. Some people suffer due to war, climate change, hunger and so on, and others because their mother passed away peacefully at age 90. These are absolutely not the same and saying suffering is suffering greatly devalues the (somewhat preventable) suffering caused by unmet material needs, political actions and the like.

For anyone interested in Susan Sontag I can recommend the POD “Philosophy this!” and the episodes about Susan. They are well worth a listen.

Got my first dose of Sontag from that exact same podcast. It is well worth listening and revisiting in its entirety, all the 192 episodes.

This is a self made problem. The news/internet today is sanitary compared to the early days and we mostly turned out fine.

The problem is not the suffering, the problem is hopelessness in the face of suffering. If people are comforted when they are suffering, or if we can end suffering, where is the problem with the suffering and horror of the world?

But…

We see the suffering in our cities, poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, but nothing is done. We see endless wars, propagated by the United States around the world, but nothing is done. We see ever increasing homelessness, but nothing is done.

I think we’ve slowly been conditioned that there is someone else that’s supposed to do something, either a politician, or an organization, or or some administrator somewhere, so we just sit back and watch and watch and watch.

If you want to better deal with the suffering over the world, you need to act.

But I’m afraid we’ve let the sociopaths tell us what the correct way to behave is. Look out for yourself! Survival of the fittest!

> I think we’ve slowly been conditioned that there is someone else that’s supposed to do something, either a politician, or an organization, or or some administrator somewhere, so we just sit back and watch and watch and watch.

I am under the very strong impression that "democracy" is what fixes such things, I've seen many charts and discussions asserting that claim.

Personally, I consider democracy to be mostly an obvious illusion/trick, so those who have fallen for it are kind of getting what they deserve for not listening to (if not outright mocking) warnings.

> I consider democracy to be mostly an obvious illusion/trick, so those who have fallen for it are kind of getting what they deserve for not listening to (if not outright mocking) warnings.

That is a vacuous claim without any alternative so support it. I too am not too satisfied with the options I had last elections where I lived, but that is the best we have right now.

Are you describing the fact of the matter, or your knowledge/perception of the matter?

Bonus question: who sets school curriculum, and may that have some relevance here?

> It is not something one can run from and everyone will eventually be exposed to it.

Oh you can. Just don't visit news sites or watch news TV channels. Paper news papers are way better and don't shove stuff down your throat the same way as rage baiting "this just in" news outlets -- who talks for a day about vague rumors.

I think people zoning out from the spam one thing news cycle is the reason The Man decided to start pushing propaganda in the Windows start menu and Facebook feed or whatever.

Yeah, I am not sure it's actually the being aware part, it's the pressure to performatively take a stand - "upvote this comment to change the world" sort of stuff, which turns into "you're a bad person for not upvoting" through the social media treadmill. Stating your position unequivocally as possible and/or demonizing your opponents acting like an influencer gets more clout than actually volunteering or working on problems. It's got to be a nightmare if you fall into that cycle and it seems a lot of kids do.

> actually volunteering or working on problems.

This is a huge problem for communities. The same people that you'd want to run the local kids hockey association or sewer board are drowning in work.

I think the fundamental problem is that society has become to competitive, optimized and effective for our own good.

Like, you'd want the genius entrepreneur guy to run a pub, not some 100 million dollar tech company.

You notice that when visiting poorer countries, that normal people have restaurants and that they are way better. Where as restaurants where I live are run by shady bad people to a big extent -- and by bad people I mean both in a moral sense and a practical sense.

Agreed. There's a world of emotional difference between being philosophically and abstractly aware that the world has a lot of suffering, and spending each day reading/watching/listening up on the fresh new hell of the hour.

Paper News is just as bad regarding this. You’re more likely to see shelves full of celebrity gossip mags at the checkout than you are to find spotlight journalism.

So it’s not the format. It’s our nature to want to understand what’s on the minds of people we care about.

Although I agree the scale in which we are exposed to shit on the internet is unprecedented, I disagree that we can run from it.

Just go to a library. Start browsing. Eventually you will stumble upon a book about the Secons World War. Or about Rwanda... In the information era, you will be exposed accidentally to these kinds of stuff, and learning to recognize that and to develop strategies that prevent this exposure to numb us I think is much more effective than trying to run away from it.

Ye well I didn't mean running away from eventually knowing something, but rather running away from the nagging propaganda spam.

Yes... This really is a problem. Coupled with the fact that big social networks are designed to maximize engagement, they work in a way that depending on how you interact with it you get fed only the worst most horrifying news articles. I see that with my parents. Talking to them and seeing their feeds it looks like the world is ending before we had time to prepare for dinner today.

My mother had her Iphone with all default app notifications enabled. It was a nightmare. I disabled them all except Whatsapp and Messenger at some point. But I imagine that is how most people phones look like?

Or you just dehumanize those suffering.

... it is an easy road to go down on. In politics you can notice politicians start blaming the voters for not voting in a way that they can get a majority but have to cooperate with other parties.

You’re not supposed to run from it, you’re supposed to help. Only a sociopath would turn away from suffering and not try to help.

That is not my point. I am all for helping those in need. The main problem with trying to help is that "trying to help" and "doing something" way to often is used as an excuse to drop bombs over people. Trying to help should be boring and long term and is not what is propagated in the spam news cycle nowadays.

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