How do you guys cope with the fact that the world isn't getting any better?
I'm really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I'll coast right through it. I'll also accept "I don't" and "very poorly" as answers
I'm really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I'll coast right through it. I'll also accept "I don't" and "very poorly" as answers
I realize that it is materially better than it has ever been and it continues to improve, despite very obvious issues and inequalities.
It does, but it's accomplished that over the past century by prioritizing short term growth, long term consequences be damned.
As those debts are starting to come due to collect, while it is still accurate to say that there's been an unprecedented good run, that doesn't mean the fast approaching wall ahead that has everyone else worried is a mirage either.
Both can be true.
Overshoots a bitch. Soon the land will be unable to feed the people and our artificial fertilizer will no longer work. It was fun while it lasted!
We’ve had market corrections. We’re coming up on some global population correction for sure in the next century or so. I guess we’ll all find out if that’s the Great Filter, or if it’s something else we haven’t found yet.
In the past we could say that humanity is still doing terrible things but becoming better in the larger picture.
Back then it was hopeful to think like this because the things we did were terrible but not long lasting.
The problem now is that the terrible things we are capable of are now world changing and can affect us globally .... climate change, nuclear war, AI technology, biological experimention (or even biological warfare)
50 years ago we had the capability of making decisions or choices that could cost the lives of millions ..... now our decisions and choices are capable of affecting the survival of our species on this planet.
and while things might be getting worse in the smaller scale, the general trend is improvement
ex. A lot of the current issues are related to a little global pandemic we had recently
The pandemic is still on. It isn't over yet.
You might think that if you listen to Steven Pinker, The World’s Most Annoying Man.
Yeah, I liked that book but I'm not sure I should believe anything that comes out of his mouth.
A friend of mine had an interesting basis for dismissing Pinker.
They saw a discussion panel which included Pinker and noticed that in all the discussion and Q&A he didn’t express a single thought that wasn’t already in his book or speech.
The basis is that any person intelligent and thoughtful enough to be an academic let alone a public intellectual has myriad thoughts and ideas that don’t make it into publication and should spill over in conversation. They reasoned that Pinker is just a clever nerd that got lucky in academia, and I’ve always figured that they’re right (having never thought of that way of thinking about it myself).
Incidentally I’ve seen Penn (of Penn and Teller) reason similarly about how dumb Trump is.
I also rejoice that the largest generation of terrible people will all be dying off in the next 20 years, and the millennials will be taking over control.
Every generation has its psychopaths and psychopaths tend to pursue power. I wouldn't put my hopes in millennials any more than in boomers. I'm happy to be wrong on this though.
Yeah, this is exactly what’s wrong with constantly demonizing boomers and attributing every shitty thing they’ve ever done to leaded gas and paint chips. Populations tend more conservative as they get older and they have for centuries. Even if a minority of individuals actually change their minds, people who were politically apathetic when they were younger tend to be more conservative when they do start voting when they’re older, skewing the whole generation more conservative. There’s already plenty of conservative millennials out there, and even more of them among the ranks of the non-voters.
Remember, boomers are the generation of hippies. Actual, literal hippies who, despite whatever imperfect motives you may ascribe to their movement, achieved greater social revolution in their time than any attitude shifts that have occurred during millennials’ peak social years. And that was only with ~30% of boomers participating in the movement. The rest of them went on to vote for Reagan and kick off helicopter parenting and satanic panic and music censorship and the whole bit.
Anyone who thinks millennials will be somehow immune to this pattern is in for a rough next few decades.
There have already been studies showing that this gradual swing to the right no longer holds for millennials.
The original premise that psychopathy affects a proportion of any population is true though.
That is just not true. They do get more protective of their possessions and the status quo as they get richer and hold positions with more influence in society. Currently millennials and younger generations do not get richer in the same way that boomers did though.
Fewer millennials ate lead paint chips as kids, I know that much.
Boomers are a problem because they took power early and refuse to let go
That's the thing with self-organizing systems like democracy or capitalism... You need constant churn, because if it stagnates, the worst kind of people entrench themselves.
I just don't expose myself to the 24h news cycle very much. My life is good, the life of the people around me is good, and nobody is helped by worrying about things I can't change.
This.
News are the reason your mental health sucks ass. The world is doing okay actually if you just look around instead.
Or if you ACTUALLY care about real news:
CRIME is at an ALL TIME LOW in all western world
China and many other countries have taken a billion people out of extreme poverty
Communist dictators are loosing ground in south america
Inflation is back to normal levels
Solar panels and infrastructure IS becoming CHEAP
Etc
I don’t think inflation is normal here. It’s still about 8%.
I wonder whether these positive comments come from those that are well off.
The economys still fucked though. People are still underpaid.
The economy’s always been fucked though. People have always been underpaid though.
Absolutely the way to go. Everyone in my circle is doing better than they were 5-10 years ago. My outlook could be better if my country decided to nope out, uproot itself and settle somewhere sub-tropical, far away from the Russian border we now share, but since I am considering emigrating after finishing training anyway, I don’t worry about that too much.
get into areas like solarpunk that hold out hope against the dystopia
Solarpunk is amazing
say more words about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI61GHNGJM
Andewism has a ton of great videos about it I suggest watching more than just this one to get an idea. That video I linked is a good introduction but its 3 years old so some of the more recent videos have a more evolved view on it.
At the moment Solarpunk is a somewhat small and not very well defined movement, but it's slowly growing and coming into its own. It started as a call to writers to write more hopeful fiction about the future as a response to the disproportionate prevalence of dystopian fiction, chiefly cyberpunk.
Here is a more comprehensive write-up about it. Solarpunk imagines a future where humanity finds a way to live in balance with nature, technology, and each other, with a heavy focus on being realistic, grounded, and attainable. Politically it's very socially progressive, environmentalist, anticapitalist, and anti-authoritarian.
It's getting harder every year.
I remember well the constant fear of nuclear war in the 1980's.
I remember the wonder we felt when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet Union collapsed. A hope of a tomorrow free of fear.
I remember the dreadful recession of the early 1990's and the steep economical rise that followed it.
I remember the amazing advancements in technology and the standard of living in the late 1990's. And at the same time, it felt like the world was coming to it's senses.
I was 21 in the year 2000. The world was full of promise, technological advancements were just pouring in, old mortal enemies were finding common ground and it seemed that we were slowly heading towards a Star Trek - like post scarcity utopia.
This age of hope eneded by the finance crisis of 2007-2008. Russia tried the waters with the war in Georgia. The general atmosphere of the world turned towards gloom again. And the downward spiral just seems to keeps going and going....
Yet I continue the work I started when I chose teaching as my profession in those golden years of hope. The kids are very different today, any class from 20 years ago would be a piece of cake compared with the problems they have now. But if a change for the better is to come, it will come from the kids. My generation is hopelessly lost in consumer greed and watching mindless "reality" shows that they somehow feel more important than real life.
I alone cannot be the change we need, but I CAN educate a few hundred kids and with good luck, maybe a dozen or few of them will have a some effect for a better future.
Idk sounds to me like you are the change we need. You're investing your energy into the future without asking for selfish repayment. You're good people. From my perspective you are still keeping that hope of a better future alive and burning, nurturing it in the hearts and minds of the young, allowing it to grow strong in a protected environment. You are EXACTLY what the world needs right now. So thank you Internet friend.
Here in Finland, the under 25s are much more conservative than Millennials or even Gen X. The most popular party of that demographic in our last parliamentary election was a right wing extremist one – and I do mean extremist: they have multiple literal neo-Nazi politicians, and our Speaker of the Parliament who's from that party has publicly fantasized about murdering gay people.
I've given up any hope of things getting better in my lifetime. I'm actually somewhat thankful I've got a medical condition that means I've only got about a 50% chance of even being alive in 20 years; dying from multiple organ failure is not something I look forward to, but it seems much more attractive than where we're heading
By realizing that it IS getting better. We live in a world now where information has exploded out of control. What this means is that we now know exactly what's going on everywhere, and it turns out that's a lot of shit.
That shit was still happening, but until fairly recently it was just out of the picture. The average person didn't know about any of it , couldn't do anything about it anyway, and thus it didn't really impact them.
Fast forward to today you hear of tragedies ALL THE TIME. Bad shit happening to good people for seemingly no reason. The difference here is that you just happen to know about it. The objective truth is that bad shit happens less today than it did at any other time in history. We just see every instance of it, not just our local community instances.
When all the bad information from the news begins to bombard me, I think back to March 2020, when the pandemic hit full swing. That might seem odd to some because many would argue that was the spark that set of the series of events that got us here. However what I see now, years later, with a bit of perspective, it was an amazing time. For the first time in human civilization almost our entire species focused in on one task and overall succeed. An existential threat to our entire way of life emerged, most people got on board and we avoided the absolute worst.
We're not meant to process all the bad things that happen in the world every day. Our primate brains are meant for small communities, not international events. Perhaps the pandemic isn't OPs thing or yours to think about, but I'll bet that almost everyone has some memory that gives them hope. Think about it, hold into it. A hopeful thing happened once, it'll happen again.
This is definitely true. A lot of people fucked around during COVID and made aspects of it worse, but they would have probably done that anyway. Overall, we did a very impressive job worldwide in managing the crisis.
If you ever think the world is shit, disconnect. Turn off the news, get off social media, spend a week interacting with your local community only. You'll see people can be pretty awesome, and you can make a very real impact in the world by helping your local community.
Well as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Honestly, I think its healthy to takes breaks from the news and social media if world news is getting you down, just focus on the things that you can control in your life.
I use to think like that in my 20s. But the truth is right now, it's definitely not getting better. I teach in college/univ and the amount of ignorance and entitlement I've seen in the past couple of years is alarming. Elon Musk and Andrew Tates are the role models for many young men now, there is a masculinity crisis and it's affecting everyone.
Maybe it's just because of the people I'm around, but it feels like society's concepts of both masculinity and femininity have continued improving. There are of course the Tate acolytes, but they seem as much like the gasp of a dying ideology as anything. Not sure about Musk, that particular brand of personality cult prosperity gospel never seems to really go out of style.
If you consider serious, global issues with empirical data, such as disease, poverty, hunger, the world is indeed improving, and has been for a while, see e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs
I"m aware of that and I do agree some things are getting better. That was exactly my mindset in my 20s. But I believe you could use other data, like wealth repartition, environnement, consumption, media concentration, etc. to demonstate the opposite. The simple fact that we did more damage to the planet in 200 years that we did over 40k years is making me really worry. But yeah, I guess it depends on how you perceive certain things.
That was already around. You had the toxic masculine movie stars of the 70s-2000s. Soldiers and fighters have been glorified since the times we've had soldiers and fighters. The only difference there is a wider audience. You also have an increasing number of reasonable voices out there reaching a broader and broader audience too. Violent crimes are consistently down, we just see all that there is.
Many people in here arguing things "have never been better". It's true to an extent; things are pretty good in terms of poverty, liberties or world peace (for now). It's not great, it's never been great, but it's a decent bit better than it's been in the past. Overall.
We are, however, in an era of unstability and unrest, where it feels like things are constantly on the cusp of changing for the worse (and in some cases, are indeed already changing for the worse, like abortion or LGBT rights in the US, for example). Violence and discrimination are on the rise, global peace is being threatened, democracy is in jeopardy (not just in the US mind you), the 1% are getting WAY richer way faster than ever... To top it all off, climate change is objectively, unarguably as bad as it's ever been, and it's getting much much worse, much faster than even experts can keep up with. Like, we're headed straight for extinction and we keep accelerating toward it.
You have every right to be worried. Yes, it's easy to forget and take for granted the things we have now that we didn't even a mere 60 years ago, but many of them are very much under attack at the moment. Just because shit maybe hasn't quite yet hit the fan doesn't mean everything is fine.
And to answer your question, I've found some refuge in art, both experiencing and creating it. Reading books, watching movies, playing games, etc, especially those that echo that sentiment of fear and uncertainty for the future (or present). Trying to use all that as inspiration for my own work, I think it'd help to express my feelings this way. I am indeed doing very poorly still though, it's a lot to deal with, on top of my own personal problems.
A lot of weed
Same
I'm going to address your question in two ways it may be read.
The world is worse than it was
I completely disagree, I think the world has never been better. Look back even 70 years and you have the threat of cold war, other wars (Korean War, conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Middle East, ...), much more poverty, starvation (China's Great Famine), illiteracy, a lot more nasty pollutants that we've since moved away from.
To go a bit more US-centric, although much of this is mirrored elsewhere to varying degrees, you had much, much higher crime rates (possibly due to lead in gasoline), women could be raped by their husbands and had minimal rights, gay people were persecuted, black people were killed for fun (lynchings) along with other deplorable treatment, etc.
Right now you live in a world where practically all information is available at your fingertips at minimal cost, where most people will at least tolerate your presence even if you don't fit neatly into their ideal world, where we've made a lot of progress on limiting and reversing environmental damage (ozone layer). We have more medical cures & treatments, longer lifespans, greater nutrition, more education, incredible entertainment options (Netflix, Steam, YouTube, etc.).
The world is better than it ever was, but the pace of improvement has slowed / gone stagnant
Yeah I get the anxiety, things do seem more unstable than they were 10 years ago. I'm super thankful to be living in our so-far-the-best age but I don't take for granted that it can stay wonderful. Much of the benefits we now enjoy were hard-won victories that required hard work, and I suspect that to keep making the world a better place it'll require us to pay it forward by also working hard. But don't take it for a given that we're due for pain and conflict; human events are too complex to follow simple narratives and it's possible in 5 years we'll all be relaxed and thankful that these current problems fizzled out.
I just accept our fate.
Humanity will probably realize we seriously fucked up around 2050 and near the end of the century mass migration will lead to a death count much bigger than WW2 or the chinese civil wars.
The only grace is that most of us reading this thread will die from various reason before the second stage.
I will still do my part by reducing my CO2 footprint but unless we find some miracle technology producing nuclear power plant levels of energy for the cost of a charcoal power plant, shitty world leaders and corporations will ruin everything for fake wealth.
I play videogames
Same tbh
Try this: Don't Believe The Hype
(DarkMatter2525 - Is Society Collapsing)
TLDW: No, things are getting better, some things aren't, but it's not an easy answer because there are 8 billion perspectives to consider. We are living longer and enjoy more technology, so there's that.
Bookmarked for later watching
I'll watch later. I hope it isn't the same thing as Steven Pinker's "things are better than ever".
I'm also going to disagree on the "things make us happier" argument as well. Because if you're only getting things because they flaunt your wealth, it isn't making you happier.
Like so:
We can’t capitalism our way out of what we capitalismed ourselves into. It’s socialism or barbarism.
Be the change you want to see. I switched things up and took a job where I work to feed hungry people. It's pretty great and I feel good about myself and what I do. I'm not gonna fix the whole world, but I am making a difference for those who I reach.
You shouldn't do that! Why don't hungry people just eat some food?
(/j)
I avoid the news, if it's important one of my friends or family will tell me. Also, if something is going on but isn't actionable (I can't do anything about it) I try not to let it occupy much of my headspace.
That's probably the healthier approach.
Fascists took over my country, and now they use a devestating attack as an excuse to start a total war that might evolve to world war, while the rest of the world sees our country as a "faschist genocide machine" our own citizens oppose it, and suffer from it, but still being fooled by propaganda.
I'm teriified. That's the truth.
I feel like a spectator at this point. Fully aware of how the system operates and powerless to affect change without grave consequences. Materially, I'm secure. Not reproducing, so I don't have offspring to care about their future. Fuck this timeline, maybe I'll get to return at a cooler time.
I don't cope, I go out of my way to *make it better: I volunteer my free time to hand out food at any of those food shelter events locally, I walk trails with a trash bag and collect trash, I care for my elderly neighbors by visiting them a few times a month without warning and insist they find me a job to help them around their house and refuse payments (but suggest I accept a piece of candy as compensation), I use my turn signals 100 meters before I make my turns when driving, I call my old friends who live abroad just to remind them I care about them if they aren't feeling good and they can always talk to me. Etc, etc.
Everyone should just ignore the eternal dumpster fires around them and try to make better as much as they can within their local vicinity.
This is it! Even if the world going to shit is as certain as entropy, you can still make things just a little better around you while you are able.
Stoicism, move somewhere else, get active, make the small world around you better and stop reading national/world news.
This is my approach as well. If I can't change it I don't let it occupy my mind. I focus on actions I can take to make things better/mitigate problems for myself and the people I care about and that's it.
With some ways of looking at things, the world as a whole is getting better, rather than worse.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190111-seven-reasons-why-the-world-is-improving
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-goalkeepers-report-poverty/671415/
I'm pretty sure long covid and climate chaos will put a stop to that soon enough but we'll see. For now, some stuff is getting worse and some stuff is getting better.
Who should listen to oligarchs like Bill Gates? Philanthropy Is a Scam
He's also the first one to be somewhere to lobby where a government decides to move away from windows, because it's gonna hurt his stock value
He was also a major factor in denying the global south the IP-free vaccine production they had been promised.
I really hope we make sure to record in the history books that we absolutely had the capacity to save a heartbreaking number of human lives if we waived the vaccine IP and let India crank up production but instead we listened to murderers like Bill Gates who argued we had to protect intellectual property….
Pathetic is the only word for it.
Let's create a Wikipedia page :)
Is it getting worse? How do we measure the goodness or badness?
One measure of economic indicators suggests we are relatively stable.
I'm sure there are a variety of measures that are up and down.
I would argue that most measures are generally trending upward, and have been for a long while. The big difference is that now people spend their lives looking at negative ragebait articles.
Drugs, BDSM, and the smug satisfaction that I was always right.
Read the last paragraph on page 3. Things are not getting worse. Your perception of the world around you is cynical as a by product of our evolution and saturation of news/media.
This is 11 years old. There has been an objective uptick in white nationalism, going beyond trajectory to repair climate, consolidation of wealth, "inflation" inflated prices for less goods through record profits, irrelevant and biased unemployment data from gig economy and partial employment without healthcare, debt, renters, etc There's data on every one of those. Don't gaslight people, these aren't feelings or biased perceptions. The industrialized West has the (massively significant and impactful) benefits of creature comforts from bread and circuses. But as those dwindle, a population losing their mind from the current level of discomfort (and snowflakedom) is going to full on implode. They're electing autocrats around the globe bc they're scared of getting injections, wearing masks, and the feelings in their pants when they look at sexy members of their own gender.
Exactly. Look at any graph from the last 50-100 years from live births to life expectancy, from crime rates to living standards: life is objectively better and better, at least in the Western world.
Stop feeding yourself with negativity all day long. Grab a beer, watch a movie, go hiking with your friends etc. Do this regularly without reading too much "news" and you'll feel it soon enough.
It very much varies depending on where you look, but your timescale is skewing your comparison. If you were to look at the Japanese economy today compared to the past 50-100 years, it would look like everything is amazing because of the massive economic boom in the 80s. But that only lasted about a decade before stagnating for the past 30-40 years, and that stagnation has become so bad that Japan is very much at risk of deflation destroying their economy. The life expectancy in the US has fallen several years in a row since COVID.
There have been major improvements in society in the past century, but that means little to the man who can't afford insulin anymore because the pharmaceutical company decided to increase the price by 1,000% because the US government won't do anything to stop them, or the millions of Americans saddled with absurd amounts of college debt that will even follow them through bankruptcy - the only form of debt that does - because they changed the laws in the past 15 years to ensure that it does. In the US, generations post Baby Boomers are objectively doing worse than their predecessors across many aspects used to measure quality of life - largely those related to finances in any way, shape, or form. I just watched a video about the infantilisation of Millennial women that spent a long time talking about how the entire generation's inability to hit the same metrics considered for "success/adulthood" in life compared to their parents has given rise to stuff like the use of "adult" as a verb instead of a noun (adulting - a thing you do on occasion instead of a thing you are).
Noteworthy quotes from the video relevant to this discussion:
The rest of the video isn't really relevant to this topic, but it's an interesting watch with a good perspective on the experience of Millennial women so I'll link it here. It even has stuff like a section about how all this affects queer women specifically and how the LGBTQ+ community has a different sense of time compared to cis/hetero people due to the environment they grow up in.
This whole comment is great! Thank you for typing it all out and sharing it with us.
This part especially helped me a lot:
Thank you.
Also, I'm looking forward to watching that video when I'm able to! It sounds super interesting and I'm kind of excited about it, honestly! Lol :)
Also, as an elder millennial (I'm 36 but hang with a handful of late 30s early 40s peeps) we're pushing 40 or are beginning our 40s, but we're still stuck in effectively entry level work. All the meaningful or well paying positions that aren't being gutted or automated are still being held down by our parents and in some cases grandparents. We can't move up because our parents destroyed the concept of retirement to support eagle fucking corporate freedom.
I see alot of shit talk about millennials still doing "silly" stuff like drinking and video games or whatever instead of building homes and breeding - it's all we can afford and we can't get those jobs that make you FEEL like an adult who's ready to "step up life."
Meanwhile, they're trying to automate all the artistic and creative work so we're stuck with only menial low paying work to choose from.
Burying one's head in the ground is a terrible response. If everyone were to do that, nothing will ever get better. We need to be aware of the things we can change and work towards that goal.
Also, living longer is not always better. Go visit a memory care facility or a person who has been brought back from the brink of death only to prolong his suffering.
I do communist things.
The world is getting better in a lot of ways but this is despite the US, the primary state agent of death and destruction. What we can do is organize together against that while also building local class consciousness and support structures so that as that violent apparatus turns more and more inwards, our neighbors will be (1) less horrible to one another and (2) safer overall.
So yeah, the USA isn't the world but if the place you live in is falling apart its understandable to shrink your worldview down to the that which affects you most or that you witness the most often.
Don't feel like you have to stare into the abyss all the time. This is just self harm. Its like habitually looking at entries on the old rotten.com website. Nothing good will come of it.
Do something, anything, that you can do alone. Plant some flowers, pick up trash in the neighborhood, read a manual about combat first aid or small engine repair, pick a country at random as far away from the USA as you can point to on a map and start learning about its history and culture.
Find somewhere to do something, anything, with other people. Internet book club, see if any local groups/orgs need help feeding the hungry or helping the unhoused, probably some groups not too far away that exist to support one minority group or another that could use some help in research or outreach.
Also, the world is a complicated place with lots of different actors. China is doing some pretty cool and good things. There's a lot of scary situations that probably will lead to positive change in Africa and South America right now.
The knowledge that it was always bad helps me. The only difference is that in generations past- we didn’t have such easy access to everyone on the internet screaming about all the different ways the world will end.
I look at the long arc of history and see that progress is not monotonic (always increasing or decreasing). We are experiencing setbacks to overcoming our challenges, as have those who came before us. But while we can read about years passing in a paragraph in a history book, we have to live and experience those years. And with all the challenges comes new technology and drive and awareness to solve problems. As unfortunate as it is trouble breeds innovation and commitment to change far better than comfort and easy times.
Depends on perspective. Ask my grandma who lives through the second world war whether it is better or worse. Our modern problem seem trivial to her comparing having no non-bombed house, very little food and very little way of taking care of her family.
I deliberately avoided having kids and I don't have any particular existential dread, so I'm just sort of sitting back and bemusedly watching it all play out. I just read the latest bit about one or another obscenely wealthy and/or powerful blatant psychopath doing or saying something gibberingly insane and I marvel yet again at the fact that the world is run by literal lunatics and nobody seems to even notice.
And when it stops being cynically amusing, I shut it off and go do something else.
Some very good replies here. I share some of your worries, but with some recent issues I have also gotten a lot of practice seeing the good in things. Consider these 2 angles:
First is the Louis CK routine that includes “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.” I think it comes down to humans getting used to things that work well and taking them for granted. Compared against most people who have ever lived, we are genius magical wizards who live in luxury. Unfortunately some of our magical technologies let us see the bad shit all around the world (and close to us) that our brains haven’t evolved to deal with.
Second is how absurdly unlikely and unique the existence of our consciousness seems. We are a collection of atoms forged in inconceivably massive exploding stars billions of years ago, aware of its own existence. We are literally the universe experiencing itself.
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
I mean, I can’t disagree with the comparison OR be insulted by it!
I don’t think about us a shared consciousness, or anything else spiritual that we can’t really verify. But we are indeed ancient star remnants experiencing consciousness, kind of like our computers are rocks that can do math. :)
Bill Hicks
I got the reference, that’s why I couldn’t be insulted!
I was just clarifying the differences I see between the two statements.
Being the history nerd I am, I tell myself that this has happened before. Think of the Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of Rome. For people who lived back then, it probably felt like the end of the world. But after many generations, they still managed to rebuild. I must keep going in order to document as much history as possible for future generations in the case that humanity survives all this crazy shit that is going on.
We still don't really know what caused the Bronze Age Collapse, just that it happened and that we survived it, though it took several centuries to rebuild. The Fall of Rome happened so slowly that it was nearly invisible. Hell, there are still a few countries out there claiming the "Emporer" title and all are valid successors of the title.
This thing that is happening now is different. We know what's causing it. We know how to stop it, we're just not. And it's coming at us. Super fast. Who knows if we will survive this?
Friend, we are nowhere near the Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of Rome. Continue to document away, as that is a noble pursuit, but we are far closer to a Great Depression or Great War than total societal collapse. Yay!
Focus on the things you can control. My emotional state has significantly improved when I decided to do this.
How do I cope? Poorly
Your perspective is distorted, things are incredible and getting better by most metrics.
While we certainly have our challenges to overcome, like climate change, wealth inequality, and social problems, let's not forget how good we have it.
The snark it is strong, I can't hold it in today. I have to say, yeah, and the world economy, particularly the U.S. housing market, was incredible in 2006. Okay, that out of the way, for perspective:
All in all, I agree that we have had it pretty good for the past 70 years, and we should not forget that. But let's also not breezily dismiss the looming disasters we face, because if the world were a Titanic metaphor, we've just hit the iceberg. The buffet is still laid out, the band is still playing, the lights are on, and the champagne is still bubbling, but it'd be ridiculous to dismiss fellow passengers' anxiety.
I agree with all of this whole heartedly. I particularly like the titanic metaphor.
It seems absurd to me to say that "things are going great! we have abundant food & water!". Science is telling us very clearly that water scarcity is going to be a huge problem in the near future.
We're presently living through a mass extinction event also - very concerning as regards food stocks.
Don't forget accelerating global warming that will get catastrophic in just a few decades, even if we went carbon negative right at this second
While we certainly have our incredibly massive, systemic challenges to overcome, like climate change (ha!), wealth inequality (ha ha!), and social problems (hahaha!), let's not forget how good we (when you say we, you certainly mean your ingroup) could have it if we tore down this corrupt edifice and built an efficient, sustainable, just world.
Facts
This is a great outlook. It's important to not lose sight of the problems that do exist and try to work towards solving them, yes. But don't lose sight of the positives, either.
My answer to the question asked would likely be, I've been depressed my whole life, what's another problem. Lol
But we do have to recognize that in spite of all of the bad we can list, there's a lot of good as well.
I'm doing good. I'm doing things that I enjoy, and I strive to improve. I believe we'll sort most of our shit out, it will never be even close to perfect, because we're dumb, materialistic, belligerent apes by nature, but it will be enough.
I chose to leave after Trump got in office—& it took like two years of planning/saving. It’s had real ups & downs but overall the best major life decision I’ve made.
Not really having the option to not cope. Or not knowing how to actively choose to not cope. One of the two. For what it's worth, Tolkein genuinely was on to something with this one.
I find great comfort in history personally. Dan Carlin (a favorite podcaster of mine) always says we must grade history on a curve. Sure, to us it looks like everything is falling apart and existence is pointless. But by very real measures things are better than they have ever been. My favorite is violence against children has been normalized as being bad.
Within living memory it has gone from being completely socially acceptable to beat children as being the preferred method of parenting to people getting thrown in jail for that behavior. What does it mean that previous to 100 years ago all of society could have been considered battered children? We are extremely aware of the negative effects of violence against children and for the very first time we are seeing a generation raised in an environment that kind of behavior has carrots and sticks motivating parents to behave properly. Of course all manner of horrid things still happen, but I call it progress that it have become widely condemnable to beat a child with a stick or take them to public hangings. It's a small victory, but it gives me hope for the future. That we may yet still build a better human being capable of taking on the heroic task of fixing this world.
Further, history has shown to me low points that I am glad to have missed. I never knew how ghastly WWI was. I am currently in a warm bed and not in a trench filled with mud, flys, dead body parts, with shells exploding constantly, seconds away from needing to charge out into near certain death. But my great grandfather knew that feeling. He watched as whole generations of young men were gassed to death and blown up uselessly. The numbers who die in war are less now. Still tragic, but less. Again, we must grade on a curve.
Death, despair, and hopelessness may be in 8K live streamed constantly now, but I assure you the analog version was something to behold. Not saying the horror of the past makes living any easier now. It is not to minimize your own pain. I just find hope that others managed to break the back of an unshakable world and hope for a better one while surviving a suffering I have not yet known. I am made of the same stuff. That gives me strength.
This kind of thinking feels like just cherry picking the good things to focus on, which sometimes isn't the worst coping mechanism to have but in this context I think it just leads to complacency. The fact is the general trajectory of the world isn't good even though some progressive ways of thinking have been normalized in some places, we could be doing much much better, we just choose not to.
You can either count blessings or curses. Both you can probably count endlessly if looked at hard enough. I cannot deny that threats loom over my life such as climate change, totalitarian thinking, gun violence, and a whole host of other ills that I feel completely incapable of impacting. Consider me the boiled frog. I cannot live my life in constant anxiety and fear. I have good things, good things happen to me, today I can breathe, today I can walk. I woke up in my own bed with a healthy body. Tomorrow I am unlikely to be blown up by an artillery shell or to executed by some brown shirt goon of an evil regime.
I can hold both the evils of the world and the good of it in my mind at once. I agree one must not grow complacent at the things that go on. But I also must not become paralyzed by the overwhelming number of things going wrong. At least that is me.
You kind of stole most of my answer! Thanks for sharing.
I fully embrace the fact and wonder what will be ruined next.
It sucks that it's like that.
What do you mean "the world isn't getting better"? It definitely is. I mean, just look at, well, uhh... well uhhh... nevermind.
I just stopped caring. I just want a meal a day and do stuff to not be bored.
I mostly just pretend that thing's can get better, if I just communism hard enough. Also sex and drugs.
god I wish I could get sex and/or drugs
Sadly, I have taken moves to grow as much as I can, tend to chickens for eggs, and start just pulling back from my community because they are really terrible. Really, I should be building the community and mutual aid but the amount of people that care about nobody but themselves around here is just too high.
Much the same for us. The toxic attitudes here in Appalachia are shocking. We've sure tried to give back and make ties, but authentic ones have been exceedingly rare. Something awful in the zeitgeist here now that makes it nigh impossible for folks to get along for the simplest tasks/clubs/gatherings.
I cope with the US falling further by not living in the US, unfortunately I'm just privileged like that, sorry.
I have a few friends over there, and the state of things absolutely breaks my heart.
The world is getting better. There are some setbacks, yes. But there are lots of normal people making the world a better place, like the guy who figured out how to make artificial glaciers with river water in India, or the guy who recently built a forest on arid land by refining local techniques in Burkina Faso. Things will be okay!
It is getting better though. We are all just facing the issues of our era's.
Tech keeps going up, we are slowly making progress on climate change, the space race is back on, and superpowers don't directly fight eachother anymore. Hell, we've proven to beat once in a century pandemics in a few years with relatively speaking barely any deaths. Life's good
Yes, we have squabbles in the middle east and Africa, but that's par for the course and not an indicator for human development. The only thing that has really gone backwards is that war has been brought back to europe
Yeah, this one shouldn't be underestimated. The world powers, not just superpowers, just don't have much of an appetite for head-to-head war anymore. Most wars are civil wars with the occasional proxy war thrown in. World War I killed 17 million, World War II killed 80 million. We just don't have wars at that size anymore. For that matter, there's a generous smattering of multi-million death wars through the 19th and 20th centuries, both civil and between nations. But as you get to the 21st century, that just doesn't really happen anymore.
Even my much maligned city, with its poop piles, tents and opiate zombies, is so much better-off than it was when I was a kid.
There are a lot of good news all the time. For example: I'm pro veganism and always heard that vegans make up about 2% of the population. Recently I heard that specifically in my city about 8% are vegans. That's amazing!
I really hope veganism becomes more widely adopted, or at the very least less derided than it is today. Animal agriculture is one of if not the biggest contributor to so many global issues.
I just hope no wars will be started over here (western Europe) in the next ten years, so my sons won't get drafted.
the netherlands doesn't have a draft bill now does it?
When I turned 18, I got a letter saying I would have gotten drafted if a war would break out while I was still under 30.
I take comfort in getting older and getting closer to being dead.
I can barely wait. The comfort of nothingness is a great help.
Just trying to be a lamp in the darkness.
shrug and say that things will have to get worse before they get better
I just try to enjoy each day as I can without making the world any worse than I can help.
I've put an ocean between myself and the US.
Life's pretty good here in Australia. No neighbours on the border causing problems, weather is generally good, lots of wide open empty nature to get out of the city, average salary is $93k and unemployment is low, crime is low. Inequality is a problem although our Gini coefficient has actually lowered recently. There's a lot of life to enjoy, and really the endless stream of negativity is only experienced through the media, not in real life, so I switched off the TV and just focus on what's going on around me, enjoying the people, places and activities that I like, and things feel quite positive.
Turn off the news, it's bad for the psyche.
The average salary is around $68k source
edit I should say median, not average.
I'd say median is generally more telling.
There's plenty of bad shit here too.
The country voting to not recognise that the traditional owners deserve a voice.
Our government continuing to fuel the climate apocalypse.
Housing affordability is locking basically every young person out of the market.
A lot of my friends are losing their jobs because the economy says they aren't profitable enough to employ.
Federal and state governments enacting policies to make it harder for independents to challenge them by restricting funding.
Fucking NIMBYs everywhere.
Detention centres still exist for some fucking reason.
...
Isn't Australia facing a significant housing shortage / pricing bubble?
Well I eat quite unhealthy, so I'm thinking I'll probably die earlier then most. Sooo I guess I got that going for me.
Nihilism and cannabis
Absurdism and cannabis, but basically the same thing.
Absurdism is fun nihilism
Nihilism can be fun, what about call of chuthulu?
Pretty well. The resistance lives. We are all part of it.
I'm spending the holidays with close and extended family. Most of them don't give a fuck about the climate crisis or gaza. They're very worried about migrants and wokism though. Feeling pretty alone right now...
Personally I am not really worried. Maybe I am in denial but I think a lot of the negative stuff is way over exposed with 24/7 news cycle and crazy social media.
Bad news and anger drive engagement metrics the best so that is all you will hear about.
So everything I hear I just automatically assume it is way over blown and I should lower the worry factor.
If it is getting overwhelming I would recommend you unplug yourself for a little while and do something you enjoy.
2023 has some amazing games come out maybe pick on of those up and give it a try?
I'm not in a position to affect change in a powerful way. So I try to stay educated and informed, I vote at the ballot box, I vote with my wallet, I donate what I reasonably can to places where I think it will help, and I speak out when it's appropriate to do so.
I try my best to understand it better and change the little things I can. I know that won't change the world much so it isn't very fulfilling. Anyways I often think "at least it wasn't my fault and I tried".
In the same position as you, I'm quite privileged living here in Europe, if it all goes to shit I will be fine. I hope I can make the world more fair for everyone anyways.
Many good things have been said. I would add that what give me comfort is that in the present moment, it is really, really hard to tell signal from noise. You often don't know the impact of people or events until many years out. We often said in grad school that you can't write history until at least 30 years have passed from the event. So, it seems chaotic and confusing because it is hard to for us to understand what it important and what is not.
The other thing is that every generation often sees the sky as falling in. An ancient Greek philosophy lamented about his parents had it all figured out and his children where going to ruin everything. That same sense of doom is pretty pervasive.
That is not to dismiss any of the real terrible things out there. Climate change is the big problem on the horizon. Nuclear waste is another. But I think on the balance, we are going to muddle through fine. The great blessing of humanity is that we are adaptable. The curse of humanity is that we are adaptable.
Wow. How did you so quickly leap from an actual problem, Climate Change, to one of the most overblown NON-issues there is?
It does serve as a wonderful example of exactly what they are talking about, funny enough.
I don't actually think it's that bad, once you shut out all the noise.
Sooo much noise...
True. Once you ignore all the bad things, you only see good things.
Substance abuse :)
I like to think about the historical perspective. It's not much consolation but systems like these can't maintain themselves forever, cracks are showing and the US really is more vulnerable than people would like to admit.
Once things start changing there will likely be a lot of problems, things will probably get worse in some ways, but I think even if I don't survive to see what people come up with in the aftermath of the US I can get satisfaction from seeing it burn.
When you read history you learn humans are very resilient, humans will not end when the empire does. Maybe the failure of this place will be good for the world.
Understanding the historical circumstances I find myself in and devoting the majority of my effort in to things I can control.
I'm getting a vasectomy and I drink, cheers m8
The world is getting better in a lot of ways but the uplifting headlines don’t garner clicks and views. A lot of people only post the doom-and-gloom headlines.
Lemmy hasn’t been any better than Reddit in this regard.
i post
By believing that eventually people will be so fed up with how bad things have gotten and start a revolution.
I'm not an accelerationist though.
I don't agree with the premise. The world on average is better than it has ever been and it just keeps getting better every year. It's understandable that heavy consumption of news might make it seem otherwise but virtually every metric you'd use to track this shows that things have been improving and keeps doing so.
As an overall metric, but some things have definitely gotten worse. The planet is on fire for instance. That's getting worse and we haven't even gotten into the really bad part.
And we are still increasing the rate at which we are making it worse...
As of 2022, more than half of the US' power was renewable. Within the country, Texas was the state with the 2nd highest solar generation and the single highest wind generation. Even if it isn't perfect, we are making a lot of progress on climate despite all of the pushback and anti-science rhetoric.
This year we deployed a CURE for sickle cell! Cured a congenital disease with gene editing. It’s hard to do and crazy expensive, but the end of suffering from this disease is actually in sight.
The mRNA vaccine tech that got a boost from Covid is now being used to cure certain melanoma cancers. This is a potential sea change in the fight against cancer.
More and more of our energy is coming from fully renewable sources. We are behind (way behind tbh) but humanity is actually moving the right direction at this point. We could honestly be seeing peak carbon in the next few years. The climate will change, probably already has, but we might actually survive this.
We’ve got problems, lots of them, and some pretty nasty. But you are almost certainly better off living today than just about any time in human history.
What about climate change? Murder rates going down is nice, but murders impact individuals. Climate change impacts civilizations.
I feel like every time people say "yeah but it's overall getting better" is missing the first for the trees. Because, yeah, what about climate change? Or the general trends in global politics?
That in the grand scheme of things none of this really matters. In 100 or 1000 or 10,000 year’s time there will have been just as much horrible stuff happening in the world whether I fret about it or not. Just as much rape, mutilation, disease, and killing either way. Historically things have been trending towards better, so I have to assume that trend will hold (despite what the news or the internet makes it seem like).
The only thing I can control is what I personally do or don’t do, so I can at least reduce it by that small infinitesimal amount by not doing bad things. I can also try to make the world slightly more bearable by trying to make people laugh, or at least help them enjoy themselves some, that’s a little bit more help. I also have three kids I hope I can raise well enough that they too try to not do bad things and also try to help those around them. Or maybe one of us will stumble upon something that just completely changes everything and all our problems go away, or it wipes out humanity, or we’re just waiting for Godot.
And while in the grand scheme of things nothing matters too much, we can at least make life a bit more bearable to those around us in the here and now. Because for us, the here and now is what matters the most, that’s all we can really know, this eternal moment until we die.
I do what I can to just ignore it. Sure, I don't have a lot and my life is pretty shitty but I always remember that someone somewhere else probably has it significantly worse. Also, while I know it's morbid to think like this, I know that if things get really bad, there will always be a way out.
Going fishing.
I focus on the areas I can impact. So far that's going OK. As for the state of the world I tell myself that it's probably not as crazy as the media makes it out to be and most of the time that's true. I'm not American so it makes it easier to dismiss American issues.
There's tons of evidence that the world is getting better. Life expectancies are the highest they've ever been, disease is the lowest it's ever been, globalization is distributing opportunities for relative prosperity to previously ignored or neglected regions. The only thing that's not getting better right now is climate change but the youth care about that more than ever so it seems like we'll make headway on that once the old guard ends their watch. The youth are aldo much more progressive so with their ascent to power, I expect more power to return to the people and more scrutiny to befall the rich and powerful as it once was.
What sort of critical life and death issues are getting worse in your perspective?
life is temporary.
im hangin on to the ride until i get thrown off. its my only shot, even if it sucks donkey balls
i guess my answer would be 'dont sweat the small stuff. its all small stuff'
The Bill Hicks Way.
That’s a very relative and personal question. Because for me the world is getting better. Not everyone lives in the US, here we graduate university with money saved instead of being in debt
Yeah, this is why I've urged so many people to shop around for a country like they do a job. See what country aligns with your values, with your goals, with benefits, etc. and start working to get there. You don't have to stay miserable if you feel like your country is not where you want it to be and you're not the one to help fix it.
Stoicism. Is there something that I can do about it?No. Is it under my control to change this? No. Then I move on and do the best I can be a better person and be more empathetic.
I focus on one thing at a time in my sphere of influence.
Can't change it, don't care about it.
You are tuning in to the Tragedy of the Week Show. Next week they'll have another to show you.
I moved to Arizona, where I can drive 0.2 miles to the weed store.
Drive 300 meters to a store? One of the most american sounding sentences :p
Not the answer you are looking for, but I think the world is generally getting better. What is getting worse is life in the imperial core, which has been rotting for a long time now as western capitalists cannibalize their own states to keep profit growth up. There are dangers associated with this for the rest of the world, and other places where things are also definitely getting worse (western Ukraine, Argentina, etc.), but I think for most of the population, besides the mounting threat of the US starting World War II 2, things look okay.
::: spoiler real answer absurdism :::
I try to remind myself that, in the great scheme of things (i.e, evolution) a "step forward, two steps back" is a common thing in this chaotic universe of ours.
Meteors, dinosaurs, civil wars, capitalism issues, pandemics, murder, genocide, climatic changes... it's all accounted for.
Of course, the answer is different if you are suffering directly from these things (apart from the meteors and dinosaurs) I mentioned above, then things suddenly get VERY personal and provoke impulsive reactions from our end.
Got news for you, if you're working class, being white or male will not let you "coast right through" the inevitable boom/bust cycles that will befall the economies. You'll be under the boot like everyone else.
Using the Serenity Prayer as inspiration (though I'm an atheist and not an addict), I try to accept what I cannot change, and change the things I can.
I also try to keep busy with hobbies such as gardening and woodworking.
I suppose I should probably try to get into some type of activism or community type stuff, but I'm not at all an outgoing type of person.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Worry without action is of no tangible use. If you just worry, ACT!
Ah yes, me, the demigod who can act up on all my worries. Tell me again my plan to get trump to fuck off the 2024 election?
Not to be too sarcastic at you, it's a good sentiment that I do sort of agree with, but it places too much "you can do anything" blame on the observer who literally is already worried. Aka, this runs a major risk of demotivating people straight into doomerism when they're faced with worries there's really nothing that they individually can do about.
Unless I'm wrong and there is some legitimate answer to that sarcastic opening question that I, individually, can do about it, in which case, I'm all ears lol
Did you call your congress critters yet
What have you tried so far? You could:
Call your congressperson
Email them
Heckle them in public
Print and hang posters in public
Volunteer for a candidate you want to support
Run for office
Donate to a charitable organization that does good work
Volunteer for a worthy cause
Organize a bunch of like-minded individuals to do any of the above to magnify the impact
Doing something, anything to make even a small positive impact will help with doomerism.
I think you've beggared (begged) the question.
Not getting better?
What are you basing that belief on?
Still no free blowjobs!
Well, I’m sure if you offered free blow jobs you’d find at least a few takers.
We are now in the "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" stage of humanity. So, roughly around step 5 to 6.
But to answer your question at the moment, nihilism. The sad reality is we’re an animal that thinks itself as the divinely chosen species on the planet, thus absolving us from any sense of responsibility for destroying others and setting it on fire.
By doing things that make me happy.
Alcohol and shitposting
I was sort of in the same boat, although in Canada. We had our own set of different, also serious issues that were not getting any better. I couldn't see any way to do anything about it myself, or even secure myself an OK life in the country.
So, I emigrated. Just like so many generations of my family before me, from their various home countries. I'm not sure if I'm up to the task of making the whole world better, but at least I can move somewhere where I can be productive enough to make things locally better (for myself and perhaps even a few others).
As a Canadian, I'm curious to know which issues burdened you so heavily that you felt leaving Canada was the only option? It is a vast country with plenty of differences regionally, so the option to internally migrate was always there. What area of the world did you move to that you seem to have found what you were looking for?
I'm asking because I am genuinely curious, as someone who grew up in Canada, lived overseas (in a country on most people's bucket lists, but has its own set of issues) and has returned to Canada. I can personally attest to the fact that the addage "the grass is always greener over the fence" rings true initially, but every place has its similar issues.
Well, there's more than one reason. If we're being honest, they're not all 100% consistent -- so prepare for a somewhat meandering story. At the time I was just facing this cloud of problems, and it looked like I could resolve some of the serious ones by moving to a growth market.
Part of it was just bad luck. My industry vanished in a puff of legislation on graduation (federal legislation, so not much opportunity elsewhere). So I pivoted, did grad school in something a bit different, and then it happened a second time. So by pure chance, my profession was largely oversupplied with experts, which kept salaries very low and opportunities limited.
I pivoted again and taught myself various branches of engineering, which I funded by teaching other people (after I learned something interesting). This was what eventually saved me, but at the time, no one would consider me for a proper job without a specialist degree in engineering.
I think at the peak of things I had 5 or 6 jobs, one full-time, and was making under CAD 28k a year before tax. I kept at it for 2 years like this, but couldn't even land an interview for a decent job, and no real prospects for advancement in my main job. So I was really frustrated that I was working and studying so hard, but no opportunities opened up. Starting a company was also just too big of a financial risk. Meanwhile, I saw the medical system starting to fall apart, and rent creeping upward relative to salaries. At that time (~10 years ago) I rented a 4.5 across the street from a metro station for 625 CAD a month. Now it would be over 3 times that.
I guess it was a very boring problem in the end: I just saw no realistic path to increasing my income, and a whole bunch of factors coming that would increase my costs. I had aggressively saved/invested so I had enough money to move somewhere new, if I did it right away without letting attrition wear away at my savings. I was honestly sort of terrified of leading a mediocre life, and it felt like the time to act.
So I started looking for a growth market that everyone moved away from and so had a shortage of engineering talent. Some of my colleagues had returned to China and were doing OK, so I looked into that. However, the immigration process was a bit unclear, I would become functionally illiterate, and it looked like the glory days of growth were nearly over. Vietnam proved a better choice on these points. At the time, there were very few foreigners here, and anyone talented would look to leave (no longer the case) -- this felt like a place I could work hard, and make a name for myself.
A lot of my friends were in a similar situation, and many moved to the USA. However, I don't find the USA a good cultural fit for me. Cultural integration was easier for me in Asia, it was a place where I could build things and have a company, and my savings would last long enough for me to get that off the ground. This proved much more difficult than expected, many terrible things happened, but maybe 18 months ago I pulled ahead of where I would have been if I stayed in Canada, and am now comfortably ahead.
2023 has been a calamity for my health, both physical and mental. The state of things doesn't help. I'm better now. Touching wood.
I think about how things actually were 50 years ago, and how every generation since the dawn of written history has the same exact end times mythology and then correctly conclude that I am merely suffering from the same delusion as nearly every human prior to me.
Also I own a glock and three bullets.
Be the change you want to see man
Have a read of Factfulness. It'll provide, amongst other things, lovely visualizations to demonstrate that's not actually true.
There is a fallacy named after this I'm pretty sure too! The bottom of page 3 of this paper gives a brief explanation as to why humans believe things are getting worse when they aren't.
Drugs...
The only things worth worrying about are the things that you can control. Don’t worry about who wins the election, just worry about your vote. Don’t worry about what you don’t have, take joy in the things you do have.
Find your village, whether that’s the community of your favorite hobby, a group of local friends, or your family and invest in them and not a politician, celebrity, or athlete.
There is always a reason to find joy.
By taking what limited steps I can, and by not criticizing others if I don’t think their efforts are thorough, effective, or sincere enough (nobody likes a smug, judgmental, pedantic asshole). By recognizing that people cope in their own ways, and keeping an open mind. By generally trying to be considerate of others.
A way of life is ending, but life will go on. Frankly I'm rooting for gas to be more expensive.
Lot of good things in here. A couple thoughts. One: Because Lemmy is nice to be on/use. The community generally 'slaps' as the generations below me call it. Two: Also white male USA and have also been deeply concerned for the past several years. I chose to focus on community directly around me while acknowledging the crappy situation everywhere due to asshats abusing power/status/wealth. I take solace that the people I choose to spend time around are generally reasonable people and try to help eachother out when we can and always when needed.
I strive to improve it, at least that way I did all I could
Anger, I simply want to out live my enemies and shit talk them when they die. I'm waiting on Bill oriley, Glen beck, bezos, Bill gates, Rupert murdoch and the other koch brother to croak simply to shit talk them to oblivion and pass this information too my children.
I have several ways I cope:
Satisfaction that the rich are going to get fucked by climate catastrophe and ecosystem collapse just as much as everyone else. The climate change deniers will starve just like the rest of us.
It's been billions of years before I existed, and potentially trillions of years afterwards. I'm incredibly lucky to be aware and thinking, so why should I complain about stuff happening after my spark of awareness has faded?
Earth will continue without humans just fine, eventually getting swallowed by the Sun. Nothing humanity has done will survive.
Celebrate being alive to experience the universe.
This is exactly how I do it. In the long run, none of this shit matters, and nothing will be remembered. The planet has rebooted several times in its history, what are the odds that this particular sentient being would be here to witness it? Enjoy the ride while it lasts, make sure any survivors of the collapse remember who the guilty parties are.
They will eventually... but in the mean time it definitely doesn't affect them the same as the rest of us. When some places start becoming unlivable, they can just move to the ones that will last longer. When food and water becomes scarce they'll hoard what's left. When the air becomes unhealthy to breathe they'll have filters. It's gonna be a long time before they see any actual consequences they can't buy their way out of.
I wouldn't say nothing, after all we've sent a bunch of stuff speeding out of the Solar System and will probably send more in the future.
I've been reading about increasing unionization and strike activity, leading to better deals for large groups of workers. The industry-level negotiations we're already seeing are helpful in isolation; but that's also the kind of energy that can lead to economic reforms that have a real impact on quality of life. Workers seem like the little guys, until a lot of them are pulling in the same direction, and then suddenly their demands become existentially important.
About a century-ish ago Americans were worse off than they are now. That led to desire for change, which led to decades of trust-busting, unionization, and regulation. We got things like weekends off, and a livable minimum wage. And not entirely unrelated, we also got national parks, the EPA, and endangered species preservation. We've back-slid a lot since those advances. But we can get them back, and push the needle even further next time. We did it before, we can do it again.
First, it’s getting better, not worse. We just see and hear about things immediately before any context is added, which makes it seem 10x worse.
Second, I try to make an impact on my local world. I try to be a good leader and impact those lives around me. If everyone made a difference we’d truly be much better off altogether.
How the fuck you lie to yourself like that? Getting better?
The average global temperature this year was highest in last 125,000 years. The US is about to have an election between two pathetic old men that no one likes except mentally deranged or blissfully in denial. In fact, Republicans and SCOTUS might remove Biden from ballots under the CO ruling of 14th Amd. citing "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof"
China is about to invade Taiwan where 80% of semiconductors in advanced products are made, and US only move is to destroy the billion dollar fabs and pause technology with 4 years of no new things like iPhones.
AI is becoming 80% accurate on predicting deaths and will soon lead to insurance companies dropping people from life and medical right when people need it, and also employers will take advantage.
Antarctica is literally falling into the ocean. Oh and don't forget 1T tons of carbon stored in permafrost.
I‘d highly recommend the follwoing book:
The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker https://books.apple.com/ch/book/the-better-angels-of-our-nature/id457552067?l=en-GB
While it might seem that the world is getting worse and worse, it’s actually quite the opposite. We have less war deaths than any centuries before, social justice is on the rise almost everywhere, poverty is at an all time low. For the last 50 or so years, almost every metric of human wellbeing increased, some significantly.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems and we still have a lot of work to layed out for us. But to say that the world is getting worse and worse is just factually incorrect.
What about our inaction on climate change? We've made very small advances and it threatens the fundamental existence of organized human society within a single human lifespan of right now. Everything else is rather insignificant by comparison. Rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic
I wouldn't really call it inaction. In fact in the last 100 years marketing has made great strides towards accelerating climate change through the promotion of senseless consumption and the active denial and obfuscation of the effects various industries had on climate change for as long as possible.
Having kids helps, it's their problem now.
I focus on trying to improve my own little corner of the world, realizing that it may not make much of a difference in the grand scheme. But taking some small actions to help others, reduce my footprint, etc. does help allay some of the despair and dread. I know it's not much, but that's all I've got for you.
By reminding myself that unless some space rock suddenly hits us or the sun decides to explode super early, we're fine. And if you look at our history as a species, we'll continue to be fine. We've endured far worse things than this before and we'll do it again and again. We're good at that. Stupidly good. Whatever rough spots we're facing now is going to pass. It's always passed. Can't be bad all the time, after all. As for global warming causing a potential extinction event? It...more than likely won't happen in our life time, so, worry, but don't, like, believe it'll happen tomorrow or that we're already actually facing The Great Dying 2.0. We're maybe at the crossroads, but not there yet.
Other than that? I do as a few have already mentioned here and try and make the world just a slightly better place. Helping others in my community out, being kind and considerate to the people around me, trying to not get frustrated at drivers out on the road (this is tough NGL), that kinda thing.
Climate change is killing people currently. It's not some far off distant event outside of our lifetimes. It's already happening and causing worldwide problems. We already passed the crossroads. Every year is hotter than the last, every year breaks records in terms of storm severity. This impacts people in poor, underdeveloped nations the most.
A possible extinction event isn't the only thing we need to worry about. The other problems of climate change are already here.
Let me be clear, we as the species Homo Sapiens, have not experienced catastrophic climate change on the level and speed we are now. We have also not lived through a mass extinction on the level we are now. Though we did live through an extinction of megafauna at the end of the last ice age, that is far different than a full scale mass extinction that is also decimating tiny animals like insect populations and the like, which is far more disturbing.
We really can’t say for sure how bad things are going to get before we (hopefully) get old and die but it is likely going to be very bad.
Oh yeah, on the level of Extinction Events, we haven't survived one yet. Hopefully we will in some way, shape or form (hopefully as ourselves), but you never know. That's why i said, or tried to say, "worry, but don't claw your hair off because of it just yet". Because if that punch is coming, there's no sense in worrying about it--better to brace for it as best we can, you know?
When i said "we've survived worse before" tho, it was in response to the OP's worries of the state of the United States. The question itself was kinda broad and they didn't really get specific, but at the same time...i highly doubt this is the worst it's gotten for the States (or any country, really) besides in the area of climate change, but that's not exclusive to the US, that's everwhere.
Statistically people are happier and healthier than any time in history. Even if you don't like politics, the vast majority of policy passed in places like the USA and EU does improve life there. The dictators like Ji Xinping and Vladimir Putin are past their prime by a long shot. The children of the rich vocally hate their parents. People at the highest level of power are being held to high standards and made responsible for their crimes.
The one statistically noteworthy thing there is to worry about is Climate Change, sadly 2022 was a new high for total emissions in billion tons, but the next generation wants to do away with cars, with fossil fuels, with nonrecyclables entirely so if we can just survive that crisis it should be all good.
Even Gun Violence is just a rounding error probability that it would affect you at all. Something like ~0.00003125% of the total global population died from firearms in 2019, admittedly that percentage goes up in places like the USA, Mexico, and St Kitts, but it's pretty negligible for the everyday life of the average person. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm diminishing the problem here, but I think you can want to fix the problem without worrying how it affects you personally.
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are not really comparable. The PRC is a dictatorship by design, constitutionally, and that will not change just because the current guy dies. Russia has a nominally democratic constitution and it's nowhere near as unthinkable that it might one day become an actual working democracy.
I'm an unremitting optimist who was born in the abyss, and climbed out of it.
Will I one day go back there? Yes.
Will you? Also yes.
However, you'll go there depressed, screaming, full of sorrows, regrets, doubts, and pain, wishing you had just a little more time.
I go there, with a smile on my face, because I'll be going home. I've already lived that, I've had that experience. It doesn't get any worse than the rock bottom, of death's door itself - the murky black sea from which none emerge, king nor beggar.
Absolutely everything between now and then is just extra gravy. Being alive is a miracle.
We're in one of the best times to be alive in history and the world is still getting better in many ways, I just try to feel grateful for that when I see something that's bad or getting worse.
I have lost all hope and am behaving as though we will all be dead within 25 years, and although that is not LITERALLY true, the actual reality is that billions will die in the coming decades and it won't be peacefully in their sleep. The famines, wars and plain savagery will be awe inspiring to witness. The die offs of all life in the oceans and the insects will doom us to a swift death.
I exist and nothing more. I have no feelings one way or the other at this point. If I get hit by a car on my way home, it would be just as enjoyable as if I watched a good movie, although if I were to die in the crash, it might be a bit better than the movie.
I only hope that I can exact some form of vengeance on those responsible before we all perish.
Son, I got comfortable with the fact it was only gonna get worse after '74 and Ford pardoned Nixon.
Sucks being right. points Pass those beer nuts?
Well, I smoke weed on a daily basis. It's my main way of coping with the world.
I do a number of other things but nothing that is going to really change anything.
I watch Carol & The End of The World.
Any good? I do love Martha Kelly.
I do things about it rather than sitting in the false comfort that I'll be unaffected as a straight, white, male.
There is no guarantee that as a white male you get anything.
That kind of thinking is only present in the racist concept that Europeans have always been at the top.
They haven't. Western Europeans weren't the top of anything until the Renaissance(except maybe at being mostly peaceful, having a measure of women's rights and being outright genocided and colonized by the Romans).
There's a lot of "statistically, things are better now than they've ever been so don't worry about it" posts in here, but that's cold comfort for the individual person. While accurate, you might as well be making a Tragedy Olympics comment. Things are better than they have ever been, but in the past 10-20 years, things have gotten worse for a lot of people in their daily lives. There are plenty of ways to cope such as alcohol, drugs, video games, and other addictions, but those only push the feeling away temporarily and do nothing to change your situation.
My suggestion is to look at the things that worry you, from least to greatest and from the ones you have the least ability to affect to the ones you can effectively change. And then look at the ones you can personally affect the easiest that would have the largest and most immediate impact on your life, and make a plan on how to work on those. Feeling like you are making some progress towards improving your life makes a huge difference. Maybe it's taking some time one day a week to prep a bunch of meals ahead of time so you don't have to worry about it after work during the week. Maybe it's making sure to walk every day to get some exercise. Maybe it's talking about the issues in your community right now with friends and neighbors, and working together on a way to help solve those. Whatever it is, even a small step is still a step forward towards the life you want.
As a bisexual trans woman who was in middle school when 9/11 happened, I spent my childhood and teenage years watching helplessly as the country around me became more and more openly hostile to anyone who didn't fit the mold of a cis white heterosexual Christian male. And the bigotry has only gotten worse from there. The first 6 months of this year alone, more than 1 anti-trans bill was proposed every single day. 4 out of 10 trans women in the US will be a victim of sexual assault. The average lifespan for a trans person is 30 years due to murder and suicide rates. However, I live in one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly states in the country and have elected officials at practically every level of government who have made it clear that they will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way, so I make sure to support those sorts of politicians at elections and avoid going to states that are currently a threat to my life while I focus on more immediate issues, like the high cost of living and poor wages/job prospects in my town. I spend some time every week just casually looking at jobs in places I would like to live and working on hobbies and skills I enjoy, as I've found that even if it's not related to a field, just showing that you are willing and able to learn a new skill can land you a job. A company will sometimes hire you more on if they like you as a person than on your actual qualifications. Almost landed myself a job on a government contract that way before a medical issue prevented me from working for several years; simply because the boss and others enjoyed talking to me when I would come to pick up their stuff and I did some due diligence to make sure they were taken care of even if the delivery company dropped the ball (and if I picked up extra hours from them? The delivery company got paid and so did I, so it was a win-win).
And when all else fails, there's always spite. Sheer spite has been a great motivator for me in life, because are you really gonna give up before you have a chance to grab that asshole from elementary school who bullied you and rub his nose in the dirt with how great the life you've created for yourself is? Becoming a happy person is the best way to give a giant middle finger to everybody who's ever called you a loser.
I don't believe the world is getting worse. I believe our knowledge of the world's ills is getting better.
Serious answer? The serenity prayer. Recognize what is in your control and what's not. Accept what you can't change, change what you can.
klonopin
There is no night which never ends. Good times are just as inevitable as bad times. You just have to endure until they come again.
Not necessarily, climate change and nuclear war easily have the capacity to end all life I suppose at that point it stops being our problem but it's not ideal
by plotting to exterminate conservatives
I just keep in mind that the police won't likely get to violate me again before I kill myself. Everyone else can deal with the shit they wouldn't bother saving me from.
Just be depressed and try to distract myself. At one point I thought I could change things by getting involved in politics. I very quickly realized how pointless that was. Of course now even my distractions also keep getting ruined. So... idk.
Philosophy and learning to accept what you cannot control. It's an everyday struggle, but overtime you can form new, more positive, habits. Setting attainable goals for yourself can be one way to help you along this path.
I want to combat all the people saying "um, actually things are getting better"
What they mean to say is "The largely meaningless or deliberately misleading metrics the government uses to make its own report card say things are going great!"
Everybody keeps talking about how the "economy" is so strong. That just means the stock market is doing well and owners of capital are happy.
Meanwhile, the US has the highest rate of homelessness in its recorded history. Worth noting that the way numbers are reported for things like homelessness, unemployment, and the like are very intentionally designed to under-report.
Local, state, and federal government all have a long history of changing the method of reporting/calculating those metrics during a term in office so they can say "unemployment dropped 30% under my watch!" When all they really did was not count 30% of the people previously counted.
Yes, wages are finally rising, and it has nothing to do with the government. It's entirely the work of unions and organization of labor to raise wages, and it's still got a long way to go.
The best thing that anyone can do is vote for better representation at every opportunity.
The best thing that not everyone can do is talk to a doctor if you have signs of depression or other mental illness. Yes, it's possible to have those things brought on by circumstance, and no, that doesn't mean you don't have to do anything about it.
If you can't afford doctor's visits like that, look up non-profit health care organizations. You may be lucky enough to have real, free Healthcare options available through places like Good Samaritan.
And don't forget to let yourself acknowledge the REAL progress of the world. We're seeing rapid development and insight on treatments for cancers, dementia, new vaccines, renewable tech, and computational efficiency.
There are many broken systems to overcome, but even still there are incredible humans building the foundations for an incredible future if we keep working at it. Maybe we can help make sure Gen Alpha gets a fair shot.
Title mentions the world.
Body worries about the US.
Nice US defaultism.
True, but let’s be honest, a) the rest of the world has their own version of the U.S. problems to deal with and b) if the U.S. goes to shit, a lot of things go to shit globally.
We can’t really lean back and say “man you really screwed shit up, sucks to be you” and get on with our life.
There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.
This may sound pessimistic, but try to compare yourself with people who live worse than you.
Weaponized Apathy.
Why care about the world when it doesn't care about me? I'll stick to caring about my small circle that I can actually do something for and rather hands off with the rest.
Not have children.
The world is getting better in many ways. It's just not profitable for media organizations to highlight the good.
For the ways things are getting worse? That's always how it's been. People have always felt that current times are worse than times past.