Taleb was peak post-modernism. We're beginning to reacquire our taste for monumentalism.

I want trains and Mars missions and a cancer cure and presidential speeches from balconies and less irony.

And maybe that's why I overuse this meme:

It's usually used in response to a leading question. "You couldn't possibly believe...," "Surely you're not saying...?"

I'm basically a sincere person, not because that comes naturally to me, but because I find sincerity to be woefully undersupplied.

https://twitter.com/Pragmatictakes/status/1315205193840164865

This thread is closely related. The zeitgeist isn't actually utopianism. It's laughing about things that supposedly can't be changed.

I have nothing against that approach when there genuinely aren't any good alternatives, but we should at least try and exhaust possible alternatives before we resort to laughter.

The zeitgeist is learned helplessness.

And this isn't me judging other people or society in the abstract. Personally, I'm rather prone to defeatism and despair, which is a big part of the reason I find those qualities so hard to stomach.