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Making the world a better place
electricitylikesme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Or more accurately, how do you make the world a better place?
Here in D&D, pretty much every thread on a serious subject is ultimately a discussion on how we think the world could be made a better place, or what we think are impingements on projects and progress towards such.
What this thread is about, is what do you do and how do you think it makes the world a better place? It is not intended to be judgmental - far from it - the idea is to say "this is what I do, and really without this things wouldn't work quite so well/at all etc."
Personally, I'm a scientist (albeit lazy enough to be making this thread from uni). I really enjoy the fact that my life has turned out this way, since at no point can I look at it and say "well I'm just working for myself" - well I am, but I think it's to try and make a positive contribution to the world as well as for myself.
So that is the question for this thread - what do you do, and why is it important for the world? What would we lose if people didn't do it?
Here in D&D, pretty much every thread on a serious subject is ultimately a discussion on how we think the world could be made a better place, or what we think are impingements on projects and progress towards such.
What this thread is about, is what do you do and how do you think it makes the world a better place? It is not intended to be judgmental - far from it - the idea is to say "this is what I do, and really without this things wouldn't work quite so well/at all etc."
Personally, I'm a scientist (albeit lazy enough to be making this thread from uni). I really enjoy the fact that my life has turned out this way, since at no point can I look at it and say "well I'm just working for myself" - well I am, but I think it's to try and make a positive contribution to the world as well as for myself.
So that is the question for this thread - what do you do, and why is it important for the world? What would we lose if people didn't do it?
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As far as things I'm actively doing rather than the passive action I've taken with regards to conservation, I like to think that I help make individuals' lives better with my job. It's really difficult dealing with kids that are in terrible, deplorable situations. As a result of what I deal with on a daily basis, I'm steadily becoming more and more emotionally void and depleted. The first time I saw a kid that really took it out of me (she had a functional IQ of about 70 and had been routinely raped by her stepfather, and worked on a chinchilla farm for her parents where her job was snapping the creatures' necks), I shook with rage for the entire day after my appointment with her. But I've been trying to keep up with the more depressing cases, and I like talking to them when they come through afterwards and seeing how they're doing. I'm not a big part, but I'm still a part of getting them the help they're going to need.
Control the youth control the future.
and on my off days help administer the education of adult learners
i will argue vehemently about what's wrong with the world and do absolutely nothing to address it
i have no intention of pursuing a career that will in any way better the world
worst of all, i don't really care
i'm pretty sure i'm what's wrong with the west, possibly the world
Also also I'm good at making people laugh. That's a good thing, right?
Also I'm incredibly kind and ethical towards people despite hating almost all of them.
I'll be making sure FirstComradeStalin's buildings don't fall and crush black babies? I don't know.
Hey, me too.
It's harder work than it sounds.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
When people ask me how they can repay me, I usually just tell them to pay it forward.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
I'm happy to work for a company that, for all it's little dysfunctional quirks and OfficeSpace moments, manages to be Not-Evil. We engage in a lot of 'lets move large sums of money around' type deals that ultimately won't matter to anybody in 20 years, but we also engage in a lot of good interesting beneficial projects, too. One that would be most familiar to the readers of this board... it was my company that pored through all of EA's records, all of their emails, mined all of their data to determine exactly how much they owed their programmers in back overtime pay when that scandal went down. We do a lot of corporate malfeasance work and not a little bit of environmental and insurance claims work, making sure that corporations pay their dues when they fuck up.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Unfortunately it's really easy for me to see that grand rolling snowball more as a dehumanizing machine steamrolling creativity and individuality into the ground. I make a conscious to see the grand enterprise of human endeavor as being overall good and progressive despite the bad stuff, but sometimes it's a struggle and I just want to say "fuck it" to my whole damn race and go live in a shack in the mountains and hope the human race kills ourselves off without taking too many other species with us.
Simply being a small part of a bigger something isn't nearly good enough for me. I need evidence that the bigger something is a good something. Or else I need to see that what I'm doing, here and now, is a small good directly improving the lives of the people closest to me. I need one or the other.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
...read NonZero.
...
On topic:
I tell people to read Nonzero.
I'm asking here because it appears to be thread-relevant.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It combines those with a look at history, dynamics of society and some futurist speculation. Also some stuff on the nature of consciousness.
One observation is that, as costs of communication gets cheaper (the internet basically making communication dirt-cheap, and it's only getting cheaper), the possible and likely impact of individuals at all levels of society becomes far more significant.
:^:
I'm moving (finally) towards growing my own veggies. Anyone with a backyard or balcony ought to, I think; low-density urban areas frequently have a much higher potential productivity than the land use before it - often pasture around here, although there's an exception to be made for forested areas and former market gardens, which are being built over at an alarming rate. This forces people to buy from further away, meaning a shit-tonne more effort in terms of shipping, storage, packing, middlemen. Its pretty staggering how much energy can be saved by a few tomato plants out the back.
I avoid long-term debt.
I don't let my kitten outside where she can eat the wildlife (well, right now they'd probably eat her, but still)
I try not to yell at bus drivers even when they're being gits :P
Where would the poor be without me?
Just out of curiosity, how is eating wildlife worse than eating chopped-up domestic animals that are in the cat food?
And I work at Subway, so.... like, you guys hungry? Because if you are I could probably make the world a less hungry place.
Oh, and not having children. Because even if Colleen and I ever did want any, we'd rather adopt.
Other than that, I'm in college hoping to eventually end up as a psychoanalyst or some other flavor of psychodynamic therapist.
Me and Sarah, too. I really like kids, but I've never liked the idea of creating more than 2 or 3 biologicals. We figure we can just skip the biologicals and go straight to adoption.
Also, I still assist in running big console LANs every few months. So I like to think that I help some socially maladjusted peeps get out from their Xbox-Live routine for a while and you know, face-to-face interact. Helping people is cool even when they're not poor and can afford their own Xbox 360 right?
...Damn, I wish I could afford an Xbox 360 and play with them...
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
Until you need to outrun the zombie apocalypse. Then who's Mr. Silly?
My mother and I have a gaggle of homeless kids we try to keep fed and out of trouble. Some days are easier than others. I also try my best to alleviate the current energy shortage we are having.
STEAM
I also believe that time is an illusion and that nothing is ever "gone." Therefore, I think the meaning of life (or at least A meaning) is to create as much happiness as possible in oneself and in others. I try to do that whenever I can.
So that basically means I will be bettering the world in two ways:
1) By making myself lots of money.
2) By using my ideas, my writing and my prose to advance (inter)national cognizance.
That second one sounds a lot more douchey than it actually is, because I personally believe that you should not be able to read a book without taking something away from it. So I'm not saying I am going to be the next Orwell and shake the earth, I'm just saying that I am going to write and people are going to read and learn.
If I fail as a writer, well, then, I'll just make money and be materialistic, and thereby make the world a better place.
Sorry to tell you this, but that might not be better.
I don't know if that qualifies as making the world a better place, though. Probably not.
You aid a charity through testing and enriching your vocabulary. It's one of the best ideas I've seen in a long time.
I provide, intermittently, sexual gratification for people trapped in relationships that are not sexually fulfilling.
In the future, I will write a memoir, and I will raise beautiful children that smile at everyone they pass on the street, play with cats on cats' terms, and respect everyone -- even those people they cannot understand, or those whose conduct they cannot condone.
I've been really struggling with this for the last couple of months. I see all these things happening in the world, and I have this desperate, painful need to do something-- ANYTHING to try and help. But I'm a 19 year old college student-- I'm useless to anyone that can do something. I'm an optimist, and I definitely see the best in people and situations, but it's so fucking frustrating to have to do a bunch of meaningless essays so that in 4 years I can get a piece of paper that lets other people know that I'm intelligent, driven, and capable-- but what good are those traits if I can't do anything with them?
So I do what I can. I donate as much time to the Obama campaign as possible. I'm chronically poor because I give my money away to Heifer, Amnesty International, and Invisible Children. I don't eat meat and I conserve as much as possible. Yesterday I signed up to be a Big Brother.
It just doesn't feel like enough.
My disagreements with other actors comes when I explain how I plan to do that.
You see, for them, they wish to make all this anti-establishment work. Anti war, anti Bush, anti everything they consider "mainstream".
I don't disagree that the work is important, but I know that most of this world doesn't want to be preached at, but wants to be entertained. I've always felt that the greatest good I can do is bring people together with my art.
The idea of having the black woman laugh next to white man while watching my work is the ultimate goal in my mind.
I also really got off on the idea of Fab Labs, tiny manufacturing centers that cost like $10,000 and let you build almost anything you can think of on demand. Bringing those to more people would be excellent, just as a way of eliminating the need for a gigantic factory to produce a shitty little plastic chair or whatever. You want one, you pay $0.10 for the material and make it yourself. I really think that if the cost could be brought down, the average home or at least community would be all over these things.
Basically, I'd like to make the future that is already here more accessible.
As for what I do right now to make the world a better place:
I pretty the joint up, the ladies agree.