I’ve read enough in my life to know that I’d rather be alive now than any other time in human history. I also acknowledge that I’d rather be living where I am than a pretty decent chunk of the rest of the world.

But I also acknowledge that with all the advancements in science and technology things should be a whole hell of a lot better/easier than they are, but they aren’t because of the greed of a relatively small percentage of our species preventing us from accessing those advancements and preventing us from achieving further social progress. Things really don’t need to be this much of a struggle in the 21st century.

There’s no such thing as utopia, but we absolutely have the means to be lot closer to it than we are and that’s supremely frustrating. Especially if you’re like me and accept that you’re not going anywhere other than the permanent void after you take your last breath.

It feels like we’re 2 feet from the finish line but our feet have been nailed to the asphalt by assholes who’ve placed bets against us crossing it.

The bottom line is you have to do what’s best for your mental health so you don’t suffer every minute of every day. The strategy for that is different for everyone. For me it’s keeping close tabs about what’s going on in the country/world during the work week when I’m stressed/pissed about being at work anyway, then totally checking out completely on weekends. No social media. No news. Nada.

Personally, I don’t think it’s right to bury your head in the sand completely. The truth is that if you live in the U.S. we ARE going backwards. Our rights ARE being infringed. Our quality of life WILL decline if we remain on the path we are currently on. But everyone checking out will only accelerate the decline and push us past a point of no return.

Find your strategy. Force yourself to unplug on some sort of recurring schedule so you get the framework of the awful shit happening but maybe not the non-stop gory details. You don’t necessarily need every detail in order to maintain your moral compass. And you certainly don’t need every detail if you want to keep your sanity.

As people have stated, some things are good, some are bad.

The most important factor for anyone answering you is are they even aware of their privilege or lack thereof.

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned, is the fact that based on the wealth and progress of the world, basically none of the issues that remain, should.

This is the absolutely unbelievably infuriating part, and it’s made worse because people will come into forums like this, and say “bruh I have a mini computer that does everything and the 60s didn’t even have civil rights”. That’s a complete false equivalence that means NOTHING.

Unfortunately, right now oligarchy is rampant, fascism is categorically and indisputably on the rise, and a few billionaires are actively deploying all the money and losers they can to keep shit shifting wealth, and power in their direction.

If we do not stop them soon, they will quite literally burn the world down for a fucking dollar.

It’s great to take advice here and exist in a bubble, but society is not a bubble.

In other words “I don’t care about politics” or “I can’t look at it because of X reason” are really great thoughts, but politics absolutely gives a shit about you and it will decide your future with or without your input.

Get a hobby. Find people in your area that share that hobby. Form social groups around that.

You do realize that, as an adult, you can just start a club, right? Why do you think your high school had all those clubs and activities in it? The hope was that you could keep doing things like that as an adult. Every aspect of schooling is meant to serve as practice for adulthood.

Hell, you could start a “third places” club. Get a number of people together. Every Saturday afternoon, on a rotating basis, someone’s home becomes a “coffee shop” that everyone goes and hangs out at. Don’t even need to plan a lot of programming. You don’t need to worry about any kind of business license, as you’re not running a business. It’s just a friend group that holds rotating social gatherings.

The Universe gave you an imagination for a reason. USE IT. Find something that interests you or some need in your community. Find others with that passion or interest. Find something that brings you joy and meaning, something within the limits of your talents and resources. If it doesn’t exist, will it into being.

Build the world you want to see. The labor will buy your sanity.

It sounds like you used the Internet to figure out that your home life sucked and life is better out there. But now the Internet is literally having the opposite effect. My advice at this point is literally spend less time on the Internet. Think of the Internet as the person who helped you to realize there are better things in life. But then that friend starts to drag you down. You get rid of the friend. That sounds harsh, but that’s just how life works.

I don’t know if you live in a big town or a small town, but I would say think of something or some things that you enjoy. Join clubs or groups that do those sorts of things. I saw this comment the other day on another post. It isn’t about quantity. It is an about quality.

One really good friend is The equivalent of 100 average friends or just acquaintances.

I’m not saying don’t have average friends or acquaintances, I’m saying look for the ones who are good friends.

A good friend is the one who you can call at two in the morning and say “ Shit, I just put my car in the ditch, I’m probably legally drunk, And if the cops find me, I am screwed” . That really good friend , he’ll be there.

A good friend is the one who you call when you find out your significant other is cheating on you, and understands the best course of action or at least can help you find the best course of action. Pro tip keying the cheaters car is not the best idea.

Acquaintances will simply say oh man I’m so sorry but then you don’t hear anything more from them.

Look for the good friends in those groups. And yes, I know what you’re saying , It’s hard to find people to hang out with. But that’s why I’m saying find clubs find organizations that do what you enjoy.

Here’s a really good example of what I mean by the Internet can bring you down. People in Scotland were afraid to come to the US because of what their media was saying about the US. What their media was saying how we treat other people. Go on YouTube and look at World Cup soccer fans from Scotland and you will see people who are amazed at how they got treated. How well they got treated.

And that’s going from Scotland to the US. I went from Minnesota to Washington DC a couple of years ago. As a tourist. I was concerned that everybody was gonna be cold and distant. Because that’s what I’ve always been told. That the people in DC are basically cold assholes. You couldn’t be more wrong about that statement. Everybody That I ran across was very nice. And it didn’t matter if it was in a restaurant if it was on the street if it was in a museum, it didn’t matter. People in general were and are quite pleasant.

The media loves to fear monger. And you see a lot of that on the Internet. But the reality is most people are actually very nice.

A lot of what you see online is people making the perfect the enemy of the good, intentionally divisive foreign propaganda, and extremists trying to get you mad about their thing. Houses really are a lot more expensive than they were in the middle of the 20th century but compared to the rest of human history that period was the outlier, now things are just returning to ‘normal’.

I’m a bit older and much of my life was lived before the Internet. Social media has changed us all for the worse and you’ll do yourself well for staying off of it as much as you can. And yes, there is much more to life than what you’re aware of right now in your life.

Its weird in many way life is incomparably better than even fifty years ago. The air is cleaner, society is more tolerant and respectful of differences, material prosperity is much greater.

Yet at the same time things are falling apart as the relative decline of US and Europe encourages polarisation and the structural inequality of neoliberal ideology increases hardship especially on the young.

Get off the internet and pay attention to real life. Is this what “touch grass” means? Even politics used to be about reality but we’re in an age of internet politics that’s entirely toxic. Yes the internet can be toxic and we’d all be more healthy with less of it

all of it could just go up in smoke tomorrow.

It always could. The only difference is now you have people shouting on the internet about it and politicians who seem intent on causing it.

But even in the places with the most toxic politics, it usually won’t. Even where the hatred spite and racism is the worse, the reality is your neighbors and commutative more impact.

Column A and Column B. There are people out there where life is doing alright but could be better of all political persuasions. The issue is that the powers in charge are working to making it actively worse for everyone. As people have said form looking through here, organize.

More than ever before, life is truly what you make of it.

The very affluent can live among the very poor. The darkest skin tones with the lightest. The happiest among the depressed.

Beware of garbage in and garbage out.

Your thoughts will become your words, those words will become your actions, and those actions will become your world.

It is truly a blank piece of paper.

(Unless you wear certain tshirts, bring your children to school in the usa, etc)

The world is changing very rapidly, and the future will be a rough ride for many, but the art is to understand that there are things that you can change and things you must accept.

And it’s a rare show. We’ve never had environmental collapse overlap with the fall of an empire before on Earth. Only death is certain (yes, even for you Elon)

Depends. Is your family rich?

All things end. It’s the price of existing. But new good things come. There’s danger, but there’s also plenty good.

Go out, try to make some friends and when you fail try again until you succeed.

There’s good in this world and it’s worth fighting for.

This is long and rather rambling and I have no idea if it makes any sense at all…

I grew up in a home where I was isolated from almost everyone outside my family (it was normal to go days or weeks without leaving my house as a child) and had an abusive parent. I have actual (not self diagnosed) PTSD from it.

I escaped my family to marry too young into what I thought was a good relationship but ended up being to a manipulative person who could be good to me but who treated me poorly most of the time, dismissed my feelings, and gaslighted me until I genuinely thought I was losing my mind (the actual form of gaslighting, not the reddit version). That relationship went on way too long.

I escaped that and had to start over with a few hundred dollars in my bank account in my 30s. Right as I was getting my feet under me Trump 2.0 happened and I got swept up in the negativity and panic.

I felt like I had to be glued to the news all the time to avoid being complacent. I felt like if I wasn’t aware of everything going on I was abusing my privilege to not be aware of things that weren’t affecting me.

My mental health was already destroyed from all the bad things that happened to me and this shit sent me far deeper into the spiral and prevented me from ever getting out.

So I stopped.

I don’t ever want to be complacent, I don’t ever want to stop standing up for what is right, but feeling so crushed by the world that I can’t even get out of bed on my days off isn’t helping anyone.

I only scan local news websites now and whatever global news pops up on Lemmy, but I rarely click on it. I occasionally pop over to propublica because I think their work is excellent.

I started making an effort to have more real conversations with people around me, and not doom and gloom conversations, but conversations like “what hobbies do you have?” and questions about who they are as people and what life experiences they are. I’ve even told a few people “my life has been rough and I never really got to have hobbies and now I’m trying to find things I like, what are your favorite things to do?” It’s led to some really good conversations and some people in the real world really do suck but a lot are really cool people!

My mental health has improved so much. I obviously am less aware of what’s going on in the world because I’m not dialed in constantly to the news headlines, but I don’t feel any more complacent and I still feel completely ready to stand up and defend what I believe is right. I’m still going to go vote in every election, but I don’t need to overwhelm my mind with things I can’t control to the point that I’m useless to step in when there is something I can control.

It does feel like I’m doomed and that one day I’ll end up jobless and homeless, but you know what? Fuck it. I’ll go down swinging. I have a job and an adorable little apartment and all of that is so fragile and I could lose it so quickly but right now it’s still mine and every time I go to bed I’m filled with gratitude that I have a home and food in my fridge and I am doing this myself. I can only control what I can control.

Today I went for a walk near my home and found a turtle. I also found a bumble bee crawling around in the road and I picked it up and moved it before it could get run over and got to take a moment to enjoy the fuzzy little bee crawling up my arm. Enjoy the little moments. Stop and breathe and smell the flowers. Log off and go literally touch grass.

It’s ok to take a break. You need to come first, because if you don’t find your own oxygen mask you’ll suffocate before you can put on anyone else’s. And don’t forget to be grateful for what you do have and maybe some day you’ll have all the things you lack.

You know where you can find people who generally don’t suck and are less likely to be shallow capitalist boogers? Organizing spaces. Find someone doing something good locally. Get into social spaces that are “woke” where people are awesome and accommodating to mental health concerns and generally just want to make the world a better place. Importantly, make sure you find local folks and get out of the internet a bit.

It’s getting two birds stoned at once, you do something good in this world that is, for the most part, going to shit, and you also gain friends, make nice memories, and hopefully start to heal.

I feel much the same as you. I’m quite a bit older too. I’ve lost all faith in our systems and actively hate most of the people around me. The only thing keeping me sane is my small group of best friends. Without them, I’d have snapped a long time ago. Things definitely look bleak and if they don’t change quickly and dramatically I doubt we’ll make it. I wish I could help more, but I know misery loves company.