[5.20] Neutral
This is the last comic of the decade, since I’m taking a break Monday! Check in on Thursday, January 2nd for the next episode.
—-
If I may ramble a little on my thoughts for the new year: While there are many good things to say about the 2010s, it was still a pretty crappy decade overall. Ten years ago I was in middle school, and had no idea just how weird things would get, in a geopolitical sense. It has been a decade dominated by the toxic combination of social media, populist politics, unethical business practices, and general lack of reasonable discussion on any subject. All while people continue to destroy the Earth’s environment, with little real commitment from governments to do anything about it.
I hope that in the new decade, politicians and plebeians (that’s me) alike can hold off from their juvenile mud-slinging long enough to have a polite conversation about the issues at stake. No matter how stupid or offensive the other side’s views may seem, there is always a reason why people, from climate deniers to “angry socialist commies”, see things the way they do.
We may not be able to reach an agreement on every social issue, but at least we can try. (and dear US political scene, exchanging childish insults and pandering to the base do not count as “trying”.)
Stop and listen. Don’t feel compelled to agree or disagree. Just hear them out. I think the world could be a better place for it.
Also, sometime this year I hope to have a slightly less tacky website for y’all to enjoy.
—————————-
5.20 Transcript
Kiro: What emergency?
Daisy: Just an old name… Let’s be careful with our words
A: I don’t suppose she told the others I was alive?
Kiro: Yeah, so I did, and I’m sorry… They forced my hand.
A: I kind of figured that would happen.
Kiro: Look, I know I’ve screwed up big time, but I say this with absolute truth:
Kiro: I’m still new to camp. I haven’t taken any sides. I’m not a spy for anyone. I’m just trying to survive. If anything, Daisy, I took your side.
Daisy: So it’s really just self preservation and nothing more?
A: That’s fine. She’s not going anywhere. Let’s talk about Kiro’s alleged magical properties.
I very much enjoyed your comment. I am 67 and I wish that more people my age had your extremely reasonable attitude towards dealing with our problems.
Well said. Only 3 years younger here. IMHO our generation blew it. When I talk to younger people (especially when I travel in Europe or Canada) my spirits are lifted. The kids “get it”. Most of the people plus or minus our age (minus my university friends) have closed their minds. It drives me to sadness.
Walter, if you’re ever in Austin, Texas, look me up — I’ll buy the first one.
sereneseal: hang in there. These are tough times.
IMO, most younger people in the US are guilty of the same thing. There is definitely a lack of communication between generations that has led to some of our current social issues. I’m continually astounded by the number of young people who totally blow off the opinions/interest of older people (I believe the whole “ok boomer” meme is indicative of a deeper underlying issue). There’s hardly any real discourse, just a bunch of political echo chambers that solidify more every day.
I’ve heard that people in Canada and Europe are more open minded, though unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to travel… so for now, stuck here…
Yes, you should really travel to Canada (or Europe if you can swing it), people are no where near as divided and angry as they are in the U.S. Start with Montreal, if you can 🙂
I’m from Sweden, and I’m just 30. Here we have people of all generations both of the open-minded and the close-minded variety, and some in between. Many are different degrees of open- or close-minded depending on the subject at hand. However, just about everyone agrees that US politics are far too devoid of nuance.
I have a hard time dealing with people that are close-minded. This has eventually caused me to shy away from industrial workplaces and keep to academia. At university it seems nigh impossible to find anyone being close-minded about anything other than their workflow. I’m not entirely sure of the reason, but I enjoy it.
Since ancient times there have been disconnects between the generations. “The youth of today” is a never-ending subject, but to see it discussed as promising is not that common. I’ve seen it a few times the last few years though and I agree. My personal theory is that the internet, in spite of all the echo chambers and the problems, by the simple fact that it will eventually connect just about everyone globally will eventually unite humanity enough to save ourselves – and we are seeing the beginnings of that, especially in the youth of today.
When I feel especially optimistic I dream that the internet will eventually bring everyone to a more open mindset. Academia has been a greatly cross-cultural endeavour for centuries, global for at least the last one, and that might just be all that is needed. But if so, that will take at least a century, and we have some major global hurdles to overcome before then.
I caught up on this comic faster than I thought (after not reading it for two weeks) Catching up on this comic took me about one minute. >U<
Following Daisy through Death Course does not seem like self preservation.
For my 2¢, I look at “climate change” as an unstoppable, cyclic force which has been happening since Noah’s Flood.
If you look at daily temperature records for as many years as they’ve been kept, you’ll notice an 80-year cycle. The average temperature will rise for 40 years, and then decline for 40 years. I’ve seen the records once from one town. The records went back through the 1800s or 1700s; I forget which. And the records showed exactly that 80-year cycle.
So, the data shows that “climate change” is actually a thing, but it’s been going on for as long as we’ve been keeping records of it. It’s not something to fear, and it’s not something we need to stive to change.
Stay with me, though, for just another moment, because now I’m going to talk from the other side of the issue.
Yes, pollution is a thing we should be concerned about. Globally, the world can take care of itself. BUT! Locally, we can do a very high amount of damage. Factories can, locally, poison rivers and air. Landfills can, locally, do the same. Deforestation can, locally, damage the air quality. Factories can, locally, create smog.
All of these issues are local, and it’s the responsibility of the local populations to fix their problems. And yes, those problems can be fixed. Landfills could, in fact, be emptied. The bio-waste from landfills could be made into fertilizer. The burnable waste could be used to power steam turbines for power generation. The ash could be superheated and turned into cement for sidewalks. Etc.
Is this stuff cheap to do? Actually yes, if enough people get involved. A man with a shovel and a wheelbarrow can do quite a bit of work in one day. The money earned from selling fertilizer and burnable fuel could pay for the landfill workers.
That’s just my 2¢.
Right, nature always finds a way to adapt to disasters — it’s people that are putting their own future at risk by not living more sustainably. We spend a lot of time fighting over why climate is changing, but the fact is that it’s changing, and we are not doing enough to safeguard against that future.
Cities like Phoenix, AZ and Dallas, TX are experiencing life threatening heat waves, yet planners still want to spend billions on new highway expansions that will increase driving, increasing the demand for surface street widenings and new parking lots; all this pavement will worsen the urban heat island effect, making the city even hotter, while air quality worsens due to the increase in vehicular emissions.
Or places like Miami, FL that are still allowing billions of dollars of new housing to go up on the low-lying coast and sprawling into the Everglades, even though the city already gets regularly flooded by high tides as a result of rising sea levels/excessive groundwater withdrawal – it’s as if they think ignoring the problem will make it go away.
And that’s in a so called “first world” country, that SHOULD have the resources and will to protect its citizens against environmental disasters…
This is an appealing way of looking at things, but it doesn’t take carbon dioxide emissions into account. The CO2 levels in Earth’s atmosphere have been rising, very recently and as a result of human action, to levels higher than they have been for hundred of millions of years prior. This is not a natural cycle, and the consequences are global and severe.
On the other point: Landfills are contaminated with plastic and other inert or toxic substances, so when green waste isn’t separated from garbage before being dumped, it makes recovery, of energy or other useful compounds, complicated and expensive.
There’s no reversing entropy, and even if we had virtually unlimited energy (from sustainable fusion reactors, for instance) it would still be easier to extract new resources than to try to reclaim what’s been lost and mixed into a pile.
Thermodynamics say we can’t reverse entropy *in a closed system*. But bring in some outside energy and we absolutely can, that is the basic principle of any heat pump. And the earth is not a closed system, the sun is shining!
This is a very good thing, sunlight, because otherwise sustainability would be entirely impossible. But the same basic thermodynamics do lead to the conclusion that if we don’t keep our exergy (yes, that is not the same thing as energy) usage to what we can harvest from the sunlight, we’re most likely building up a debt that is incredibly difficult to pay back. Such as the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Carbon concentration today is higher than they where for a really really long time, like multiple times the existence of humans long) and we know that temperature is connected to CO2 levels. Over 90% (more like 95%) of climate scientist agree, that this is a very bad thing. I’m not saying, that there can’t be an othery explanation for this. But it’s way more likely than not, that carbon emissions will cause huge problems. Why should we take this risk as a species, especially since we have to substitute fossil fuels anyway, because they will run out eventually. Even if you say, that climate change is not guaranteed, what we have to win by not changing the way we produce usable energy compared to what we have to lose if climate change is a thing really isn’t worth it.
It is a rather easy-to-prove scientific fact that CO2 levels are important to the global climate, and that we have let extreme amounts of this gas free into the atmosphere. What happens next is, admittedly. uncertain (the general consensus in academia heavily leans towards bad news, the discussion is merely how bad). For a simple indicator, look at how many of the big oil companies are heavily investing into alternatives rather than disputing the problem.
In any case the earth is only one earth. We’re all stuck on the same giant spaceship. If it goes wrong, we’re in very deep trouble. So I say we should do everything we can to be as safe as possible.
For a much more clear-cut global problem, look at plastics in the oceans. We have to clean that up, there is a plan for how to do it, the plan is underway just help out.
So as our brains developed, the size of a human society was something like 25-500 other people. That’s how many hopes and dreams and problems and fears we ever had to know of or cope with emotionally.
Now we’ve got what, 1.5 BILLION english-speakers instantly sharing every wrong thing they see or feel — overloading our heart-circuits by a factor of 3 million or more? And we’re somehow staying sane?
I mean, I find it understandable that people might welcome the soothing (and empowering) emotional clarity of blind righteousness, forming defiantly angry posses and building ugly strawmen to hate.
But I’m glad you’re surviving without — and I hope you’re contagious.
(Sorry to impose my own little ramble on your page!)
Unfortunately, in my country those who don’t associate themselves with an “angry posse” are labeled “dirty centrists”. It still astounds me how many important decisions are made based purely on emotion.
As for myself, I would by far prefer leaders who are willing to sit down with everyone and truly take their interests into account – not just someone who I happen to agree with on an ideological level (the latter is how fascism gets started!).
Hi sereneseal, I just found this comic and read through the archive in one sitting. I’m hooked! You have a new Patron.
You’ve asked in a previous poll how your readers found you. In my case it was an ad on the Gunnerkrigg Court site so… Kat sent me 🙂 I really like your art style, the characters are great, and the mystery aspects have me intrigued.
I’m an older guy and I appreciate your remarks about the decade and year just ending. As a child of the ’60s I can’t help but wonder what went so wrong with my generation after the promise of those hopeful times. I fear that we’ve screwed up the planet so badly that your generation is in for very rough days ahead. The scale of the damage is so vast and daunting, and the people with real power seem to be burying their heads or deliberately making things worse. I only hope I’m wrong and you young’uns can find solutions short of chaos and extinction.
Uh… that got dark. Happy new year?
Thank you so much for your comment – and I appreciate your support immensely! Happy new year to you as well 🙂
The state of the planet, I feel, isn’t really as bad as the defeatist attitude being taken by those in power. The facts are there, and the technology and resources exist to deal with the problems. Leaders need to wake up and realize that their job is to serve the best interests of *everyone* – meaning, listen to every voice and not just those with the most dollars to back them up.
Also, Gunnerkrigg Court is one of my favorite comics, but… what on earth has been going on for the last few chapters??
Guess only time will tell.
Hi everyone and happy new year! Another newcomer here .
A few days ago, I also saw an ad in Gunnerkrigg Court (clearly it’s not a coincidence). I don’t use to pay attention to ads but I may say, Serenesal, you have made a clever campaign, because some readers of GC may be the target market of this webcomic. What caught my attention most, was the landscape and art style, the combination of wild nature and an abandoned industrial complex. Once already in your webcomic, the criminal background of the protagonist, the council despotism, the mysteries… there are so many interesting plots!
I’m really grateful I have found this webcomic and looking forward to see where it goes! In addition, I really love this little community that has gathered up.
And yes, although I am a few chapters fall behind, GC has turned a bit confusing…
Finally, talking about Europe, although I don’t think there is a lack of communication between generations, there is indeed a lack of communication between politicians. For instance, in my country there was a two-party predominance and now, at the end of the decade, there are over 6 major parties. This is not bad by itself (more political parties can mean more ideas), but this change in the system was also accompanied by a change of politicians. This new generation of politcians is incapable of making any deal, plus they are constantly squabbling nonsenses… We have been without goverment for over 2 years…
I’m glad I saw an ad for this comic again. I hadn’t read it for several months, and forgot where to find it. Beautiful and enthralling, as always.
Life was still pretty bad for me ten years ago, but it felt a lot simpler… like I just had to get out of the rut I was in. Now it seems like there’s no safe place anywhere, and instead of living our own lives to find out our place in the world, we’re fighting for whether humanity will have a place in the universe at all. Fighting with other people who want the same thing, but have incompatible views of what ‘humanity’ is, and what creation requires from us, for us to remain in it. It’s hard to think of anything more scary.
I like the concept of just hearing people out, but I think there are some views that are too dangerous, because they hit just the right notes to tempt otherwise good people into violence and tyranny. Deciding what’s worth listening to and what’s too destructive, though, is in itself political, so therein lies the problem. Maybe if the world slowed down, we’d have more time to make big decisions.
I’m seeing an implied question there: “Have circumstances changed enough to warrant new rules?”
We value “freedom” and “equality,” but we fear the collective consequences, now that our little ant-colonies of puny humans have grown into a giant mass of Humanity, who laughs at the once-great Wilderness and could stomp it out on a whim — by choice, or even by accident.
Should we still value being free to stomp around? If giant humanity’s Right Arm gets mad at Left Leg and trips it up, do we cheer for Right Arm’s new status as Top Limb, like we used to do? Or do we start mourning the barren craters we leave when the giant crashes to the ground.
For my part, at the risk of repeating my earlier post, I say the giant isn’t really us; we’re still the ants, individually. If we try to follow the affairs (let alone influence or control the actions) of all the billions of our fellow humans, we’re just going to end up crazy. That’s “billions,” as in 32 years nonstop just to count to 1 billion.
But.
I can influence at least 3, maybe 12 other people quite a lot, and offer ideas to quite a few more than that. I’d say that’s changing the world, same as it ever was.
And sereneseal here (hello s.s.!) got a bunch of us thinking and talking and aware of each other by making this post. That’s changing the world, internet style.
Knowing how much competition our ideas & suggestions face (especially when people counter with things they “know” from watching their favorite TV propaganda feeds, or worse) is frustrating. Of course! But if my single self can influence several other people, often in a big way, then that’s me having an oversized effect on the world, isn’t it?
That matters. We can all trickle up.
Seems she already taken side to expose.
What an interesting collection of people. I thought I was the only guy over 60 who reads webcomics. Also, guess I better tune back in to GC, haven’t been there for years. Seems like updates got reeeaaalllyyy slow for awhile.