Nihilistic garbage lecture, that is my first opinion. On the other hand, he could have intended the exaggerated pessimistic outlook, to spur into action.

But my bias remains, I don’t like his defeatist attitude.

Indeed, it makes you wonder how prevalent this psychological malaise is in the world of teaching and academia.

I don't want any future children of mine, to have self loathing/pessimism or "woe is me" feelings taught by teachers or lecturers.

Self reflection yes, abstract and critical thinking yes, expressing feelings yes.

No - "sorry the world is burning, I think you should be sad about this and maybe reconsider being an Engineer".

I was reading an interview with Peter Thiel and he put it pretty well even if you don't like Trump:

>The Trump administration is trying to pull off an extremely difficult thing, because the red pill is that America is no longer a great country. But you have to make sure it doesn’t become a gateway drug to a black pill, where you become nihilistic and give up and you’re destined to eat too many doughnuts in a trailer park.

>...we don’t want to just get blackpilled from that. And then the question is: where are the places that you have some agency to get out of this straitjacket?

I have been nihilistic in the past but took action where I could in life and accepted the reality that there are a lot of problems but you have to look at the places where you can have agency in your own life and focus on that. Thinking more like this improved my life a lot but it can still be easy to engage in doomerism online as it becomes its own form of entertainment.