Sarah Jacquet‐Ray

Yeah, so we were on a walk and we were just having a regular conversation about the state of the world as you do with your 12-year-old. And she was just really dogging on humans. And it felt a little bit like she was parroting what she had heard elsewhere or maybe in her classes or what her friends were talking about.

Yeah, so we were on a walk and we were just having a regular conversation about the state of the world as you do with your 12-year-old. And she was just really dogging on humans. And it felt a little bit like she was parroting what she had heard elsewhere or maybe in her classes or what her friends were talking about.

Yeah, so we were on a walk and we were just having a regular conversation about the state of the world as you do with your 12-year-old. And she was just really dogging on humans. And it felt a little bit like she was parroting what she had heard elsewhere or maybe in her classes or what her friends were talking about.

Like it was a cool thing to do to say, oh, humans suck and humans are doing such terrible things. And I thought to myself, she was really absorbing that message from whatever places she was getting that message from, feeling despairing about how humans are hopeless, that there's nothing good humans can do to add to the world.

Like it was a cool thing to do to say, oh, humans suck and humans are doing such terrible things. And I thought to myself, she was really absorbing that message from whatever places she was getting that message from, feeling despairing about how humans are hopeless, that there's nothing good humans can do to add to the world.

Like it was a cool thing to do to say, oh, humans suck and humans are doing such terrible things. And I thought to myself, she was really absorbing that message from whatever places she was getting that message from, feeling despairing about how humans are hopeless, that there's nothing good humans can do to add to the world.

And it made me concerned a little bit about the potential for her own nihilistic tendencies. Yeah.

And it made me concerned a little bit about the potential for her own nihilistic tendencies. Yeah.

And it made me concerned a little bit about the potential for her own nihilistic tendencies. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When people's prefrontal cortexes are not developed and they can't figure out gray areas, they're in this black and white thinking mode, which is also really perpetuated by a lot of the media we consume and the ways that social media algorithms work. You know, we live in these black and whites, and I think it's really easy to slip into humanity is terrible.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When people's prefrontal cortexes are not developed and they can't figure out gray areas, they're in this black and white thinking mode, which is also really perpetuated by a lot of the media we consume and the ways that social media algorithms work. You know, we live in these black and whites, and I think it's really easy to slip into humanity is terrible.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When people's prefrontal cortexes are not developed and they can't figure out gray areas, they're in this black and white thinking mode, which is also really perpetuated by a lot of the media we consume and the ways that social media algorithms work. You know, we live in these black and whites, and I think it's really easy to slip into humanity is terrible.

And a lot of environmental teaching also leans in that direction. Many of my students take classes where even the title is called Human Impacts on the Environment. National Science Foundation grants, will give special grants for people to measure human impacts on the environment with no nuance around what that category of human even means or whether it's all bad or some bad, some good.

And a lot of environmental teaching also leans in that direction. Many of my students take classes where even the title is called Human Impacts on the Environment. National Science Foundation grants, will give special grants for people to measure human impacts on the environment with no nuance around what that category of human even means or whether it's all bad or some bad, some good.

And a lot of environmental teaching also leans in that direction. Many of my students take classes where even the title is called Human Impacts on the Environment. National Science Foundation grants, will give special grants for people to measure human impacts on the environment with no nuance around what that category of human even means or whether it's all bad or some bad, some good.

The stories that we hear about what good humans can bring to the planet are very limited and rare. And so there's a huge negativity bias out there on portraying stories about whether humans can do anything good or not. And mostly, for the most part, It's really easy to get pretty misanthropic about what the fate of the possibility of humans doing anything good.

The stories that we hear about what good humans can bring to the planet are very limited and rare. And so there's a huge negativity bias out there on portraying stories about whether humans can do anything good or not. And mostly, for the most part, It's really easy to get pretty misanthropic about what the fate of the possibility of humans doing anything good.

The stories that we hear about what good humans can bring to the planet are very limited and rare. And so there's a huge negativity bias out there on portraying stories about whether humans can do anything good or not. And mostly, for the most part, It's really easy to get pretty misanthropic about what the fate of the possibility of humans doing anything good.

I asked them to cast themselves forward about 10 or 15 years and close their eyes and think about the sounds, the smells, the sights, all of the things that their body would perceive if they were in a world that they desired, the world that actually had come to manifest all the things that they hoped for, the things that they'd come to college to go fix about the world.

I asked them to cast themselves forward about 10 or 15 years and close their eyes and think about the sounds, the smells, the sights, all of the things that their body would perceive if they were in a world that they desired, the world that actually had come to manifest all the things that they hoped for, the things that they'd come to college to go fix about the world.