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?
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.
Honestly? I have no idea. Probably spite. Why should I kill myself? It’s the world that sucks.
My Factorio engineer can’t keep the thing going without me.
What else are we supposed to do?
Edit: that’s a rhetorical question, don’t come at me enumerating the alternatives
I deleted all my social media the day after the election, except for my lemmy account. Mostly because I forgot about it. Now I just read a few news headlines and solve a crossword every day. And WHOA - talk about having bountiful free time now. It’s kinda scary.
Am I less stressed? Meh, maybe a bit. But I’ve decided I’m going to find beauty and amusement in the utter self destruction we are about to witness. I’m going to stand over here and watch the fire while I drink my beer in peace.
Most of the stuff you read doesn’t matter. What matters is how you treat people. Eat good food and smile, enjoy the rays of the sun which burn us all equally. Bask in a hot shower. Go outside, where you can’t see any other people for a few hours, and listen to the sounds.
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 🤷♂️
TL;DR focus on the things you can control and do literally anything to try to improve things
The thing that causes trauma isn’t the bad event but the helplessness that accompanies it.
The main (and sometimes only) tactic that we are taught for dealing with problems is to find an intermediary who can do things on our behalf; seek the nearest authority who will take up your cause. Viewed that way, the fact that institutions and authorities are failing is disempowering; the problem is impossible because the schools/cops/companies/non-profits/politicians/media/etc aren’t helping. The only option that perspective leaves you is to take the blows and hope you’re strong enough to last until a better intermediary arrives. That shit will wear you down real fast.
We need to unlearn the dependence on intermediaries. We can’t stop the bad events from happening (and boy are they happening) but we can combat the helplessness. The antidote to helplessness is exercising agency and feeling control over our actions and their consequences. Find a way you can make things a little bit better and then show up and do it. Anything is fine, if there’s a cause you’re passionate about then do that, but if there’s not then pick something you’re kinda sort of good at. Write, draw, make phone calls, create memes, cook, drive, listen, etc. Any skill, no matter how small, can be leveraged to improve the world around you if you’re clever about it.
The fight is the point.
Taking action to control what you can is powerful. Maybe you’ll succeed and maybe you won’t but taking action is where you’ll find resilience. If what you do doesn’t work then learn from the experience and deepen your understanding. You’re not failing to solve the problem you are building up your capacity to tackle it and that shit takes time. Pursue this as vigorously and as passionately as you are able but also know that it’s okay to take breaks and step away sometimes.
Also, humans are social creatures so if what you do involves other people that’s even better.
Honestly, the fear of screwing up suicide and destroying any opportunity of improving my life. It’s the only reason I’m alive today :/ if only I could just sign some papers, go to sleep, and never wake up.
So now I try so many money making schemes so I could rent an apartment without roommates who insist on doing chores in the dumbest way possible and blaming me for being unable to do anything other than housework after work.
That there’s no evidence of the existence of an afterlife. It’ll be like that time I had eye surgery but without having to wake up afterwards - merciful oblivion.
I think I may still be riding the hype of things like the JWST, and fusion energy breakthroughs. Our societies may be back sliding at the moment, but our species is still doing some amazing things.
Look, If I’m going down, I’m going down kicking and screaming.
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.
The alternative is certain death. If I were satisfied with that outcome, I’d already be dead.
Jack Smith dropped the charges without prejudice so they can be re-filed the second he leaves office.
Dude won’t make it that far. Or much further than that.
