---
title: "What on earth are you dooming about?"
slug: what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about
url: https://listedarticles.com/articles/what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about
canonical_url: https://world.hey.com/dhh/what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about-386cc1da
content_type: opinion
language: en
published_at: 2026-10-05T13:30:45.000Z
updated_at: 2026-10-06T20:19:28.503Z
author: "David Heinemeier Hansson"
authored_by: human
publisher: "DHH on HEY World"
publisher_url: https://world.hey.com/dhh
topics: ["Opinion", "Culture", "AI"]
license: all-rights-reserved
word_count: 403
reading_minutes: 2
citation: "David Heinemeier Hansson, DHH on HEY World. \"What on earth are you dooming about?.\" 5 Oct 2026. https://world.hey.com/dhh/what-on-earth-are-you-dooming-about-386cc1da (all-rights-reserved)"
# The full text follows. The web page shows an extract and sends readers
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---

# What on earth are you dooming about?

> David Heinemeier Hansson argues that most material measures of human life have never been better, yet incessant dooming about climate, inequality and AI is everywhere; he says rumination over things outside your control makes you miserable and achieves nothing, and urges readers to stop dooming and bloom instead.

Paradise is not lost, the world is not ending, and most material metrics of humanity have never been better. Yet the endless, incessant dooming about the climate, the inequality, and AI is everywhere. We may have [killed God](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/22827-god-is-dead-god-remains-dead-and-we-have-killed), but we clearly didn't bury the devil's anxieties with him.

Yes, we're born with a negativity bias to keep us safe from starvation, saber-toothed tigers, and rival tribes. Good! But you don't have to let your caveman instincts run your whole life. The [gift of fear](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198) — when the threat is credible and immediate! — is a key survival mechanism. This vague, fuzzy dooming about everything outside your control is not.

In fact, nothing will make you more miserable than ruminating over climate tigers, other people's wealth, or thinking machines. Because [rumination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumination_(psychology)) will break your brain and render it unfit for the purpose of living.

If it turns out that The Terminator really is coming to get you, you'll have gained nothing from the upfront neurotic fretting. And if The Terminator fails to appear, you will have squandered your precious time missing the intelligence boom and the creativity abundance that AI has and will unleash.

Likewise, if the climate really is doomed, you're not going to stop that spiral by planting another windmill or choking on a paper straw. Game theory has already seen to it that rival superpowers will accelerate their quest for power. None of the climate doomer nonsense Europe has wrung it hands about in the last thirty years has managed to curb the growth in global emissions (but it did wreck the continent's economy!).

Finally, envy sits among the seven of deadly sins for a reason. Because freeloader thinking is also a primordial survival tactic, and it sneaks into your psyche when your disappointment with the outcome of your efforts overcomes your rational mind.

There have always been "winners" and "losers", and most of history had the majority of humanity live in abject poverty. The [mystery](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oqmF2hIs4es) is not "why are some people poor" but "why are some people not". And you won't find the answer to the latter in grievance soups of sorrow and self-pity.

This is not the time to doom, baby. This is the time to bloom. Intellectually, spiritually, and productively. Put down your anxieties, arrest your neurotic impulses, and [decide to be happy](https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness-ebook/dp/B078MDSV8T/) about the present, the future, and your own ability to make something of yourself and this world.