It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around
True, but that doesn’t make him wrong. While generalizing is inherently wrong, the chances of ANY corporation giving a fuck about their image for destroying something that could spell them not earning a couple of bucks is low to null.
Look around. The amount of complains about privacy breaches from all the tech giants, and some midgets, is at its highest ever, and do you see any of them pedaling back?
I am part of an executive suite myself, and while I’m trying to make a difference, you should see the ridiculous amount of pushback I get on ANYTHING that could spell improving user and staff experience, sometimes even when it has absolutely no negative financial impact. It’s like they’re programmed to destroy.
You will find a few good men and women in the Corp world, but this few can’t do much against the majority, which happens to be full of bloodsucking pricks.
Sure. I personally find cynicism intensely irritating. It’s infectious so it inevitably ends up poisoning everything. Nobody ever solved any problem with cynicism. In fact I’d go further: all the world’s backward societies (i.e. most of them) are characterized by all-pervasive cynicism (“they’re in it for themselves”, “they’re all crooks”, “nothing will ever change”), whereas the successful countries (few in number) are the ones where people have a more optimistic view of others’ motives. Cynicism is so obviously a self-fulfilling prophesy that I struggle to understand why so many choose to indulge it. I’ve heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness. Perhaps I’m too logical but I wish people would choose not to wallow in pessimism - after all, nobody can prove anything one way or the other when it comes to the motivations of others. And oddly, most humans tend to trust others that they know personally. Personally don’t see why strangers would somehow be a different variety of human. Rant over.
I’ve heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness.
That certainly sounds like an accurate theory, and I have been known to be cynical about stuff every so often, and am still trying to remove that from my personality. It may have been a defense mechanism developed to block all the helplessness, as that theory describes, but that does not justify my demeanor in those instances.
Like you, I believe having an optimistic stand in front of all the adversity, if nothing else, makes things a bit more manageable. And I agree that if more people dropped cynicism, the world would be all the better for it. Having said that, once that’s embedded in a person’s character, removing it is an entire re-learning process which requires one to forcibly unlearn it, because it does turn into a subconscious reaction.
