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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Meh.

It's not really cynicism.

It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.

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I'm at the age where 30 years may well be the rest of my life (even assuming a fairly normal old-age sort of death) and 50 almost certainly is, so while I do care about what happens after for my kids, they'll also be quite old by then, so "the whole rest of your life during which you're still significantly active, plus all of your kids' lives up to as late as late-middle-age, by which time they're firmly set on their life courses and family planning and such, will suck" is... pretty bad.

> rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.

Maybe this was your intention or maybe not, but this is kinda what I'm talking about. It presupposes that there will be nuclear exchanges and annihilation in the first place, because, well, why wouldn't there be? Life is shit, tensions are high, and that's the grim dark end we all see coming anyway?

Peace and prosperity in 200yr won't help my retirement in 30.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Planting trees is categorically fraud, waste, and abuse under the current regime.

I love a low effort circle jerk as much as the next online commentor but let's be real here, nobody who's worried about stuff lower down the pyramid of needs can afford the luxury of donating resources to a hypothetical future.

Society hasn't earned me caring about it. If it wanted me to care then it shouldn't have spent decades kicking me around.

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