On pessimism and BookTok – Ross Douthat in NYT:

‘BookTok is to literature as OnlyFans is to great romantic love.’

(…)

‘Pornography is worse than sex, but it gives you a simulacrum of anything you want, whenever you want it, without any negotiation with another human being’s needs.’

(…)

‘The result is a landscape where national politics seems incredibly important and local politics irrelevant; where English can seem like the only language worth knowing and an American presidential election feels like an election for the presidency of the world; where the life of small countries and local cultures seems at best anachronistic; where the celebrity influencer half a world away takes the place in your mental space that friends and neighbors used to occupy.’

(…)

‘Nothing I’ve described is universal: Unless the true A.I. doomsayers are correct, in the year 2100 there will still be nations, families, religions, children, marriages, great books.
But how much survives will depend on our own deliberate choices — the choice to date and love and marry and procreate, the choice to fight for particular nations and traditions and art forms and worldviews, the choice to limit our exposure to the virtual, not necessarily refusing new technology but trying every day, in every setting, to make ourselves its master.’

(…)

‘Small nations will survive only if their 21st-century inhabitants look back to 19th-century nation builders, Irish nationalists and Young Turks and the original Zionists, rather than to the end-of-history cosmopolitanism in which they’re currently dissolving.’

(…)

‘As the bottleneck tightens, all survival will depend on heeding once again the ancient admonition: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.’

Read the article here.

Survival is going back to the 19th century.
Also, the empire tired of being empire advises small nations to survive for the sake of beauty.
American tourists should learn German, so they can order beer in the language of the locals when they visit the Alps on their way to Italy.

And the best sentence: pornography is worse than sex.

Sex is bad, pornography is worse. Just procreate. And learn to drive.

What else is there for humanity to do?

But imagine that Jesus gave us AI because he couldn’t make it on time.

Jesus would not be pleased with Ross Douthat, not at all.