Everything Is Awesome! But

There has never been a better time to be a human. Compared to the 110+ billion humans who lived before you were born, the average human today has more wealth, more security, more lifespan, more comfort, more health, more wealth, more luxury, more freedom, more rights, more choices, more information, more entertainment.

Did I mention more wealth and longer life? 

Every Doomer in human history – and they have been there since the invention of language – has been wrong. Very wrong. Cruelly wrong. 

Pragmatic, practical, piecemeal efforts have, over time, made things unimaginably better for the average human. 

You are one of the most fortunate collection of atoms to ever exist. (I say this as the most fortunate collection of atoms ever.)

Given these objective facts, I want to be appropriately happy. I want the same for you.

But 

To be clear:

In terms of the average conscious creature, the world has never been worse. In terms of the number of feeling individuals being actively tortured, the world has never been worse. 

I spent nearly all of my life making this worse. First by eating animals, then by promoting a net-negative, self-centered message. 

Maybe I'm still making the world worse for the pigs and chickens who are being brought into existence only to suffer a lifetime of torment. But I'm not the only one.

The choices of nearly every human being in developed countries drive the torture of these individual beings. “Environmentalists” actively make things worse. Carbon Cultists actively make things worse. And most “Effective” Altruists ignore today's torture in favor of absurdities and/or improbable hypotheticals that they will have zero impact on.

Humans vs. Non-Humans

I have spent more time than I can tell you trying to come to terms with the terrible tension between: 

A) Human thriving.

B) The torture of other animals. 

I am not even close to closure. 

And yet

I want everyone reading this to be blissed out by their infinite wealth. (You can be happy and still make a difference.)

But even more so, I want everyone to take actual serious suffering seriously – the torment of creatures we breed to brutalize. 

We humans are rich because real-world-focused individuals pursued practical policies that made things better. You and I could do the same. 

Our focus needs to be on making a real difference for those beings being brutalized. Fantasies about the future are, at best, distractions from terrible torture today.

Created by Q, who isn't torturing anyone.