There’s so much doom on social media right now. The environment is collapsing. The economy will crash. Civil rights are ending. Democracy is dead.
What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us?
By avoiding social media and living my life through memes and video games.
Is this social media?
Not by my definition. I don’t friend people or follow people on here.
Over the past few weeks, I realized that I wasn’t reading the news to “stay informed,” I was reading it because I was bored. As a form of entertainment, it’s pretty awful. 99% of what I read will have no direct impact on me or my family, and just sitting there and worrying about it without doing anything to fix it serves nobody.
Also, I’ve learned to be skeptical of basically every headline good or bad. I saw a headline this week about how upset Trump supporters were with his cabinet picks. Comments in the thread were talking about leopards eating faces. The article was a collection of 8 tweets from supporters showing disapproval.
This news site was just preying on people’s hopes and making a story out of absolutely nothing.
So I started focusing on some personal hobbies and have tried to re-teach myself how to focus by reading some long form fiction.
This is so true. MY eyes are now a commodity and I’m going to choose who gets them more wisely.
Find a small corner of the world you can improve and focus on that. Can only effect what you can. Not worth worrying about the other stuff.
As hokey as it sounds 🤷♂️
Study of history.
People have been prophesying the end times for millennia now, for this reason or that reason. I think that ultimately they just don’t like the basic fact that change of some sort or another is inevitable in the world, it will not remain static and no system or institution will last forever. This does not result in any concrete end, however.
To quote Morpheus, “I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.”
There’s also a fair bit of profit-driven exaggeration in just how bad things really are in certain arenas. Bad news makes good clickbait, good/neutral news less so. So the ratio of bad to good news we receive is not actually representative of the full picture of what is happening in the world.
Jack Smith dropped the charges without prejudice so they can be re-filed the second he leaves office.
My Factorio engineer can’t keep the thing going without me.
You have to automate his job so he can’t feed his family.
I don’t have any. I’m just taking care of my family until I run out of living relatives to give a shit about, then I’m out. Peace.
What else are we supposed to do?
Edit: that’s a rhetorical question, don’t come at me enumerating the alternatives
I drink. I shouldn’t, but I do.
Touching grass. It’s important to remember that the entire world isn’t online and the world isn’t as dire as all of us chronically online doomers would have you believe. Things are chaotic-shift-in-the-status-quo bad, not civilization-ending bad.
The wheel turns, right now it’s in a muddy rut and the people on the bottom (sexually active women, people of colors, and the queer community) are drowning, but all the little people on the outer edge are eventually in the dirt. Fuck the world, fuck the country, the people you have personal relationships with are the only thing that matters because all we have is each other.
Personally I have been trying to be more proactive, which has helped me have a sense of agency amidst the chaos. Everything I own fits in my car in case I need to leave quickly because of a climate disaster or the legalization of hunting trans people. I haven’t bought a new thing (used, diy, or do without only) since lockdown because it’s significantly cheaper and makes me feel like I’m doing my part to fight final form capitalism. I’ve also been exploring alternate ways to support myself and live that are more sustainable.
It’s easy to say that when you aren’t about to lose medication you rely on, when you aren’t wondering if you’re going to be denaturalized and thrown in a camp, when you aren’t left wondering if you are going to lose people you love and the community you’ve built around you, when you don’t live in fear of losing your job and in turn your health insurance.
Honey, I haven’t worked in two years because of mental illness and I haven’t had insurance in three. I’m trans and live in Texas as well so Trump’s election feels a lot like a death sentence and I’ve already lost most of my old friends and family to bigotry. Just since the election I have had four strangers clock me and yell slurs, one guy even followed me 40 miles and finally gave up when I stopped at the police station near where I am staying. I am so afraid that I get physically sick whenever I leave the house. If I didn’t have family who could take me in and support me while I try to put my life back together I would be homeless, or more likely dead.
You’re right, I don’t live in fear of losing those things because I have already lost them. From the other side of those fears, you can lose everything and life still goes on, I promise.
Personally, I turn to activism. I realized that regardless of how horrible the future will be, there’s good to do in this world.
The world is full of people who are as scared as you and I are. I can make their lives a tad more positive.
The environment is collapsing? Educate and organise, think about how to build mutual aid systems and how to sustain yourself small scale.
The economy will crash? Help others, people who got thrown to the curb by the social system, homeless people, orphans,…
Civil rights are ending? I’m trans and scared. And there’s so many other trans children that are counting on me to be the representation that I wish would have had when I was their age. I’m not going down without a fight.
Democracy is ending? Let’s focus on preserving what we can and try to rebuild. It won’t be over forever.
People being nice to and helping me often makes my day in an otherwise miserable time.I want to be that person for others.
What keeps you going? Why do you still get up and go do what needs to be done when the world seems to be ending around us? For me it’s my family , my own goal like playing gta 6 (even I don’t think I will play) but for me big reason I have friends I like to talk with them and enjoy with them. Because nobody like loneliness even iam introvert guy I still like to share my thoughts with others and knowing thier thoughts.i think it’s enough for me keep going .I wanna suggest you to search about absurdism or watch the movie everything everywhere all at once .
Thank you!
Spite and a need to see people get their just desserts
Hope? I have none. I continue on through the power of avoidance and denial. If I stop to think about things it turns into suicidal thoughts, so I just do my damnedest not to think.
I work in disability support. Some of the kids I am working with have gone over the last year from non speaking to using sign and are making real meaningful progress in their self care skills. They can keep going in the face of difficult times, so my problems don’t seem so hard.
Also, in Australia we have the NDIS, a system for funding disability supports in a socialised manner without restricting what options someone uses too much. While all governmental systems (or any systems with money) are susceptible to grift progress is being made on catching fraudsters and prosecuting them while also closing the loopholes they exploit. The NDIS will be around for a long time to come and will help Australians with disabilities determine their own futures and make them a reality. There are problems with it but honestly it has been a game changer and I think it is a model for the rest of the world to aspire to.
That at any time I want, I can opt out.
I don’t have to stay here and put up with the bullshit if I don’t want to.
That’s also a possibility where I could do something useful by taking someone else out with me, if I can manage to get it done.
You have no idea how freeing it is to be okay with death. When you cease fearing it and look at it as a welcome friend, everything changes.
Now it is important to realize that this is not a desire to die. It’s simply accepting that death is inevitable, and that it is possible to choose when and how I die, if that’s something that seems useful. Life isn’t inherently sacred, there’s no special glory in not dying, there’s no particular benefit to sticking around other than more of the same that’s already happened.
This means that every day is a choice. It’s something I own. I have alternatives. We all do, but I’m aware of that fact in a way that makes even the truly horrible much less impressive.
Again, this is entirely different from wanting to off myself, it isn’t depression. It’s just the way I see things.
Hunter S. Thompson carried a revolver on him for most of his adult life for that exact reason.
… He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn’t know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don’t know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that’s OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that’s even better. If you wonder if he’s gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks …
— Some friend of Thompson’s after his death whose name I forget and am too lazy to look up (I have the quote unattributed in my notes on Thompson). But it’s quoted on Thompson’s Wikipedia if you’re not as lazy, lol.
I dig that idea too. His reasoning might be different, but it’s the same basic spirit.
Are you familiar with Project Semicolon? It’s an anti-suicide thing and they use the semicolon because it is unnecessary and using it is a choice by the author that there sentence could end, but they have chosen to continue. Your top level comment has very similar vibes to some of the things that the group advocates.
The founder did eventually decide to end their story and they kind of faded out, but the message is a good one.
I agree with you about the power accepting your own mortality grants. All human stories end in death, pretending there is any other option is delusional.
I’ve run across them a time or two :)
