How do you deal with the world getting hopeless everyday?
I am an introvert, I hang around online most of the time. But, I've cut off most of the social media in past couple of years, now my online presence is reduced to whatsapp, tildes, youtube and sometimes reddit. I take in news from well respected sources, although most of them are left leaning.
Even after significantly limiting myself from news and social medias I cant help but feel world is getting worse everyday. Climate change, Increasing support for far right politics, increased consumption of fake news/propaganda etc..
I am going through some personal job related issue myself, I don't know what I am working towards. Why the hell should I waste my energy and time if I can't even see a better future? I don't think I am depressed, I am sad and frustrated that I dont have anything to look forward to.
Surely there are people in here who dealt/ dealing with this. How do you cope with this? what do you tell yourself when you see another fuck up from the world?
P.S: English is not my first language.
If we're going to get philosophical about it, I am a big fan of David Chapman's work-in-progress on Meaningness. (He has also gotten pretty deep into Buddhism too, on a separate site, but his science background keeps him from getting too far into spiritual woo.)
I was literally just sitting here thinking deeply about what OP said and having the same feelings. It is putting me off deeply.
This is an incredibly helpful and insightful comment, greatly appreciated.
I already follow PhilosophyTube and ContraPoints I will check out others. As someone who has been red pilled by alt right pundits (I think I even posted something over here from one of their sympathizers) for sometime, Natalie wynn has been a great help to bring me back to my senses. But their videos only further my concerns regarding the future of the world.
Decide if any of these things actually impact you/your life. Is climate change going to have a measurable negative effect on you during your lifetime? Unlikely. So do your part (which is minuscule in the grand scheme), if the conversation comes up encourage others to do the same, otherwise know that as an individual it is utterly out of your hands. Is the consumption of fake news/propaganda by others having a measurable negative effect on you? Unlikely. I don't know any white supremacists, nazis, and barely any conservatives; it's incredibly easy to avoid these groups as they are so small despite media attempt to portray the contrary. Of the conservatives I do know, it's not how they define themselves and we have a mutual agreement to not discuss politics. If you know someone that cannot carry a conversation without these subjects then they're not worth having in your life. Assess the actual value of the individuals you interact with, if it's a net negative say goodbye. You are the person primarily responsible for your own happiness and well-being, it's maintenance just as you would have on a vehicle or home.
I realize that I have a limited amount of time in this life. There is nothing after it. So I focus solely on maximizing my positive and minimizing my negative impact on those I care about while doing all that I can to achieve as much personal happiness during my lifetime. The future after that does not matter. The general state of the world, the overall slipping level of common sense and intelligence, and any other factor that can be seen when viewing the outside world has so little chance of having any conceivable consequence on you there's little reason to give it a second thought. You have an advantage being alive right now. Either the world at large will act to preserve humanity or they won't, but that decision (or its effects) will be made after you. It'll be the next couple of generations that either herald in a new world order and prosper from it or decide to remain on the same course and head toward extinction. The planet itself doesn't care, another species blipping in and out of existence as millions upon millions have done so already and you won't be here to see the result. So just concentrate on the 60 or so years you have left, make the best of them, and ignore the rest.
Oh, and while being an introvert makes it difficult to see this, do keep in mind that the online world is not the real one and media thrives on providing bad news, not good.
There is a sense in which "there's nothing I can do about it," if you squint a bit, can be interpreted as something other than fatalism: this is mostly not about individual effort. Here is an imperfect metaphor I like to use.
If you're serious about climate change and unsatisfied by being on the sidelines, it would make sense to figure out what jobs there are in that area and how to gain the qualifications that will make you a useful person for that kind of work. The rest of us should support their efforts with publicity, funding, and so on, along with a bit of volunteer activity and minor individual actions (like making good buying decisions and voting the right way) that might help if scaled up.
Also, maybe look into sensible disaster preparedness? It seems useful for all sorts of big problems.
Capitalism is based on and adapts to rules and we could change the rules. It is one of these things where the experts have told us what needs to be done (carbon taxes) but there isn't the political will to do it.
The alternative energy industry is also based on capitalism. Making alternative energy more efficient and increasing scale is really important. These industries need capital too.
So that rounds to "change the rules," which will be hard enough. We don't have an emergency backup alternative financial system ready to go.
This is a weird question, why do you argue like this? I'm in favor of reform and against revolution. I think UBI and a carbon tax would go a long way towards fixing things without starting from scratch.
Hmm, when I said changing the rules will be "hard enough," I mean that it is still challenging, but doable, and much easier than starting over. (It's hard for political reasons like winning elections, not fundamental reasons.)
By contrast, I don't see any feasible way to get to an alternative financial system, which is why I said rounds to "change the rules". I can rule out the other option right away.
Sorry about that, I was unclear.
I heard you out and still can't help but conclude that your reasoning is anything but reductive, and relying on post hoc ergo propter hoc faulty logic. If you're going to attempt to blame any single thing as the root cause of global warming, which IMO isn't helpful to the begin with, it should be industrialization, since regardless of the political/economic system that could have come to dominate the planet, we would likely still be in the same shitty situation in terms of greenhouse gas emissions due to them all historically trending towards reliance on industrialization, and the mechanization, increased efficiency, and military might that it provided.
Now, with that said, I 100% agree with you that strict regulations are going to be required if we want to tackle global warming, and all that we lack to accomplish that seems to be the political will to do so.
IMO it's simply the basic requirements of building and maintaining human civilization that leads to the former, and human nature (laziness, greed, difficultly thinking/planning long term, etc) that leads to the latter, and those would likely hold true no matter the economic system we were currently operating under... at least until such time as things either get too bad to allow human civilization to keep functioning as is, or a new technological development occurs to allow otherwise (e.g. the singularity, fusion/free energy, or something else unforeseen). So agree to disagree, I guess. ;)
This leaves out the impact capitalism directly has on the environment.
You're completely right that industrialization would eventually get us here regardless of our economic system. But consider how much money the petrocarbon industry has put into manufacturing the climate change "debate", going back decades.
Consider how hard it is to enact policies to protect the environment when large financial interests strongly oppose expensive regulations and have almost total control over the political system and therefore government. Control they can afford to buy because late stage capitalism includes as a feature the consolidation of wealth at the top.
Maybe it's not fair to say that unchecked capitalism is completely at fault, but it's the bigger part of the problem.
And the number of people that will be impacted by those rising sea levels? 630 million as of 2100 (under worst case scenario) of 8 billion or so we're about to hit (10B if you follow projections to 2100) or 0.7875% of the population. Less than a percent is "unlikely" by any measure.
Only a Sith speaks in absolutes, nothing is 100% applicable to everyone all the time, but most people most of the time do have control over this as they have the ability to walk away and not interact with those people. They just make excuses about why they don't or say "it's not easy"...
Didn't say it didn't matter.
If they happened overnight, sure. But it won't, it'll happen over the course of nearly a century. Can you point to any natural disasters from 80 years ago that you can directly link to current economic effects? How about 50? 30? 20?
So we're moving the goalposts from "people's politics" to actual politics now?
As someone that has worked in both government and healthcare, there are procedures in place to prevent gaming the system and change is difficult by design. Like with many laws, policies, and procedures the difficulty undoubtedly annoys those that follow the laws in order to put the maximum barrier in place to stop those that don't. Ne'er-do-wells are persistent little buggers, but can get tripped up on details and so the setup tends to be long. With all that said, and without knowing what you're doing or not doing, I can say from experience that by and large if it's not getting done it likely has little to nothing to do with "people's politics" and everything to do with something not being perfect in your paperwork.
It's less wild than you think and for many it's probably more difficult than I found it to be, so let's just say there's a middle ground where we're both wrong.
Source? Because I can't find anything that states this, not wikipedia, not even La Jolla's historical society.
You stated your issue was with...
...in how they interact with you. People aren't politicians and don't make policy.
So do I. And of course you can, doesn't mean there's any incentive to do so.
Congrats, you've encountered an asshole in the wild, it's part of life and no one has a right to never encounter one just as they don't have to put up with them when they do. However to misrepresent my point because it didn't fit some specific encounter you had doesn't invalidate it.
If you're in healthcare you should know you have the right to choose who provides your treatment, demand a different nurse, inform the management why you're demanding a different nurse, and/or go to a different hospital (also known as walking away). Being in health tech you should also know that the hospital is a business, likely even a for-profit one in practice (if not on paper, example being one of my local "non-profit" hospital systems that has made $1B+ for several consecutive years now in cold hard net profit), and if a business isn't providing the level of service you want, you can take your business elsewhere while letting everyone know why. Which is one of the beautiful things about capitalism, you leaving is money walking out the door, and no matter the personal beliefs that people hold somewhere along the chain of command above that lowly little nurse is someone that values the thousands that you're worth to their bottom line more than their beliefs or that nurse's attitude and will proverbially slap that nurse up side the fucking head or put them in the bread line. I've fired nurses for less.
Huh? Did I miss our new AI overlords or something? Even if everyday people you meet aren't politicians in the halls of power, aren't their opinions, i.e. their politics, supposedly represented in a democracy?
"People" are the people, pedantry will get you nowhere.
By definition they're represented, in reality we all well know they are not.
Far from being pedantic, my point was that political discourse, like any other aspect of culture, reflects the society from which it springs, and thus necessarily the people. How representative it is of the majority within any given example is up for debate but to divorce political policy wholesale from the sentiments of the populace, as your quote does, is misguided at best.
That's fascinating. I had no idea that California fires had such a big effect that far back in history. I wouldn't mind reading more.
It is very discomforting for me to accept this, I wish there been other ways. I'm jealous of the mid 20th century young people, they saw fall of authoritarian regimes around the world, they saw people landing on moon, they saw segregation laws getting outlawed.. they didn't have to care about climate change crisis,etc... It must have been nice to be able to think you can make a change.
My dad is a conservative, conservative is a bit gentle for his world views. He have regressive views about the world, for example he supports a bill which have religious discrimination (CAA). He constantly berates about how the left parties let the "Muslims" taking over the country (he is a Hindu). whenever I say something progressive ( I try not to but sometimes it just spills out) he would try to brainwash me with his regressive views for hours. I cant just stop talking to him or abandon him, he had done so much for me, he saved up money for my education etc.. he is not a bad father. I am trying to work something out with him, but it is hard to talk to him.
Born to late to discover the world, born too early to travel the stars.
[Emphasis mine]
Then you've done precisely what I do. You've assessed your father's actual value and determined that he's worth remaining in your life despite ideological differences. Add in Indian family dynamics and it becomes more difficult to find a common ground. My suggestion would be if you don't wish to invite the confrontation between your views and those of your father then learn to change the subject. Pivoting a conversation away from one topic and onto another is a skill that you'd likely find extremely valuable. An easy starter method is to cut the conversation off by seeming like you weren't listening to what they were saying and asking a simple, but open ended question. Ask about something they like, a hobby, sports, or (the easiest one) if they're hungry. Food almost always shuts people up and gets them on the discussion of what to eat, where to get it, which is best, etc.
I highly recommend you read Factfulness by Hans Rosling, it's a statistician explaining in great detail how despite all the negativity you hear day in and day out the world is rapidly improving in almost every aspect. It was the only thing out of all the bullshit self help books that actually let me start being happy instead of worrying about the world. I keep myself informed with the going ons in politics but I don't let it consume me, focus only on what you can change and you'll be a happier person. If you really think you can specifically change something really important go for it, but nobody can change everything. The effort you'll expend trying to know and fix everything will spread you too thin to have a fufilling life.
RIP. He genuinely changed my perspective from that of being a hopeless pessimist to that of a wary optimist, so I wholeheartedly second the recommendation, @intuxikated. And to start you off, here is the 'In Memoriam' playlist of his TED Talks, if you want to get a taste of what Mr. Rosling can offer you before diving into his book:
https://www.ted.com/playlists/474/the_best_hans_rosling_talks_yo
Thank you... I will check it out.
I try and think of ways I can help solve the problems. For example the problem of litter, I picked up litter around my local library on earth day and wanted while somewhat depressing it was nice to do. I thought about creating an app that divides areas up and assigns them to individuals to clean once a month or however often they'd like to participate. That way as long as people cared, areas could be kept clean while distributing the effort. I know programming and could work on this, but my point is that just the act of thinking about a potential solution is how I deal with the news of the world being in a bad state.
Quoting myself:
Change is frequently accompanied by apparent step backs. Napoleon became emperor after the French Revolution. The Brazilian Military Dictatorship followed the progressive João Goulart. Salvador Allende had the same fate in Chile. The atrocities of the Nazi rule were one the main motivations for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
One should be cautious to extrapolate from their own personal impressions to ascertain what’s going to happen next, because you may be drawing conclusions from a very limited time period.
Yes, everything can go to shit, but that’s not guaranteed (and in the case of global warming I’m not talking about avoiding it, but mitigating its social effects. I think you misinterpreted that aspect of my previous comment).
From a historical standpoint, I believe humankind will probably improve in the next 100 years, both socially and politically. This is not to say that we are fine and dandy, but Universal Human Rights do exist. In most civilized world, democracy replaced absolutism, slavery is illegal, children are educated instead of explored for labor, women have more freedom than 50 years ago and being gay is not a death sentence. We also have plumbing, antibiotics, and modern medicine.
We must improve these in a number of ways, but we are doing a bunch of things better and it is quite possible that we’ll continue to do so
I joined up with my local DSA chapter. Sure, it has its flaws, but it's the united states' biggest socialist org and it tends to take a big tent approach to coalition building so it's not constantly splintering as much as other left groups usually do. The people I've met through it help me remember that there can be a better world if we fight for it, and that no matter how bad it gets we'll be there for each other.
My logic is that the act of doing something needs to be as pleasurable as the finished object you're doing.
Also when I feel like crap I always think of my personal favourite hero/villain:
Thomas Midgley Jr .
Thomas was one of those people who where motivated to help others, like many of a practical, technical mindset he saw problems and wanted to apply his knowledge to improve the lives of everyone around him.
He is also one of the singular humans credited with killing the most number of humans ever, and with the most negative impact on our planet.
His first invention was to help car engines from "knocking" and breaking up. Making them safer for all: so he invented leaded gasoline which is seen as one of the biggest factors in early global warming, smog and smog related deaths in large cities. (he was also kinda full of himself at times and drank a bit of leaded gasoline to "prove" it was safe - this is part of what landed him in a wheelchair later on)
Now his first invention had some criticism, that would later become even bigger as we know, but undeterred he saw another horrible thing he wanted to fix. In many large cities families and especially children died sudden deaths, in their sleep, due to unsafe running engines in their home to keep their fridges going. Thousands died from these things yearly and he wanted to fix that: so he invented freon in fridges! It was safe, no carbon monoxide deaths, and the numbers of people who died from that dropped almost instantly.
The uptick in freon usage is seen as one of the largest early starts to breaking up the ozone layer causing global warming. The deaths that was caused by global warming are still rising as wars, famines and more are caused by it.
But Thomas had one more invention in him that would land him in the history books, of sorts. This invention was actually without horrible repercussions sort of... See later in life he got Polio, some claim that it was exasperated by drinking leaded gasoline (I have no idea, but it ties in nicely) and being bound to a wheelchair at times he needed to get up from bed, and he didn't want to rely on others to help him:
So he invented a pulley system with which a person in a wheel chair could hoist themselves up from bed and in to their chair - an invention that is still used today (if somewhat modernized and modified)! It has made life better for thousands and thousands of people who can be more independent in their daily lives.
While testing it though, Thomas managed to get entangled in the ropes and by mistake hung himself in them at the age of 55 landing him in lists of "inventors killed by their own inventions".
Now this sounds kinda grim right? But it's not. Thomas to me encapsules the best and the worst in humanity. Our inquisitive nature and tendency for short-term solutions makes us capable of incredible fuck-ups with horrid repurcussions. At the same time our empathy, hardwired in to us, pushes us to try to make solutions for all. The faster the action the less time our right supramarginal gyrus part in our brain don't have time to catch up, to connect our empathy in to the options available. The effort to de-humanize others is so great that it takes basically either isolation from them, a cult like system of brain washing, or an entire societies grand effort to be able to keep it up. And even then the effects are so shaky that they can be broken by meeting one single other human of the group you need to de-humanize.
And no matter HOW crap the past is, as with Thomas, we always have the hope that NEXT time it will be better!
... and in the end, its often our smallest inventions and creations that has the best effects overall... even if they kill us.
That's an interesting take on him.
Also how did you connect existential crisis with this story? My brain does not work like that, when I get into these kind of situations I will completely freeze or find someone to blame or as you said find short term solutions. How does people like you come up with such compassionate solutions to things?
Oh you should work with me in a creative projects! I have three superpowers and skills I take pride in:
Number 3 was when I met my husband over a decade ago. He really made me accept that I am an ok person, and others think so to - it made me reconnect with my family and friends in a whole new way. I didn't have to hide #2 on the list because even when I said something dumb, I could laugh that off and move away from it. And even though I can, at times feel sad and angry about humans, I can always bounce back - with the help of my friends, to #1 on the list and realize that humanity as a species do dumb shit - we need to laugh at the stupid things we do, try to fix them, and make a future that is as good as we can do it.
Of all the other insightful comments I got, this I think is the less depressing one. I mean I know other people said the same thing but the wording made it easy to accept thank you..
Also I'd love to work with you .. :)
As for your other comment,
You are right "extroverted" people can be annoying, like they could have an hour long conversation even over the phone without me saying a single word, but I like them... My point is I have a couple of extroverted friends and they are nice people and they like me. But when subjects like these come up they would get really defensive and instead of listening they would deny everything. They are still struggling to figure out how I can keep myself from being bored without any companionship. They don't like to know that the world is doomed, and they think I am smart (I know.. in my defence the bar is very low ) so they dont particularly like to hear it from me. I don't know other extroverts who would like to hear me rant. :(
Oh posting one more!
Introvert or not - talk to someone AFK. I am the worlds worst introvert myself with my happy go-lucky tendency to swing between melancholy/tiredness and insanely high energy and focus and preference for acting out constantly - and what can annoy me with introverted friends that while they need the same level of care as everyone else. The hugs, the presence of another, the safety of knowing that others always have their backs - they can be crap at saying it out loud AND many seem also to slip in to this self-isolation where they also can become obsessed with the idea that no one cares of them. Which is patently, and in my experience, absolutely untrue.
So give a call or something to one of your friends or family. Someone who is a bit lovey-dovey and too much for you at times and tell them how you feel. Even if us huggy-annoying-bastards are annoying for introverts at time - we often KNOW we are - please use us when you feel down and let us know you think of us and you will hear we think of you. Ask us if you need a bit of personal time, we tend to be up for it.
Call your favourite extrovert and talk to them is my other advice basically. :)
I was stuck in this rut for a while too. What I did, to "fix" it for me was to set goals for myself, and work to accomplish those. Those mattered, to me.
I wanted to go wilderness camping, so I prepared for it, and did it, by myself.
I wanted to hit a sub-30 minute 5K, so I spent time on it, and did it.
I wanted to do bike touring, I prepared, and did some.
A lot of that was alone time, spent in my own head. Especially the sub-30 training, and bike touring. The wilderness camping had so much to do, and I was so exhausted at the end of it, I fell asleep immediately. The bike touring and long runs are just doing cyclic movements, for multiple hours on end, with large portions of it just you, and your thoughts, and eventually you run out thoughts and you think nothing.
But, those mini-goals created purpose for me. Other goals I've set are larger, but I'm striving for them, because I make them matter to me.
Don't know if that helps, or is just useless advice? Worked for me, ymmv and all?
Paraphrasing from the book Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Live as if you are living a second time and as if you are about to act as wrong as you did on your first one.”
I think the idea is that you realize what is your personal responsibility at this moment. Nobody else is in your unique situation and there is something that life asks of you. What can you do this moment that nobody else will? So then you ask, but what should I do? But by looking at the present as if it already happened once, and as if you were not satisfied with your original action, you realize there is something you can do.
I’ve just started to try this but I thought you might find it useful too.