Submitted 1 month ago by NineMileTower@lemmy.world to [deleted]
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?
Running on hope isn’t substainable, you gotta run on spite!
I think you just helped me realize what’s keeping me going…
Learning to harness that anxiety helps, too. It’s my fuel and my brakes at the same time.
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.
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 🤷♂️
That’s the most healthy way to have a positive impact on the world, imo. Thats what the human mind is best designed for.
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 praying 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.
Honestly? I have no idea.
Don’t die for your code of ethics…- Patton or something, idk.
Donald Trump will die (don’t care if from natural causes or not) at some point in the near future. Just want to be alive to celebrate.
Reasons you can get banned permanently from reddit for $1000.
I want to watch him die. just to make sure the piece of shit is actually dead.
got my hopes up when covid got him. fat greasy mcdoublefuck still pulled through.
I thought I was devastated then.
Good thing this isn’t Reddit then
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 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.
I keep hoping that everything is exaggerated and it won’t be that bad. That he’ll be out in 4 years and not become a dictator with no more term limits.
If it helps, humans are really really really really really bad at predicting the future. We don’t know what’s going to happen until it does and even then knowing how that changes what comes after is still unknowable.
For example many of the promises Agent Orange made on the campaign trail would have disastrous consequences for everyone, which might be enough to shift the balance back by the midterms.
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.
What else are we supposed to do?
I drink. I shouldn’t, but I do.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At first I thought it was the lemon-lime goodness of Sprite that gave you hope, but I read it wrong.
I have a teenage son - a wonderful kid who keeps me going.
Not sure what I’m going to do in my dead marriage after he moves out.
Keeps me going? drugs and food. Life right now is just like a zombie from 6:00-15:00, and later From 15:00-3:00 life can feel good in rare occasions.
Almost none of the crap going on will directly affect your life. Just live, enjoy, don’t read the news. You’ll be fine
Why not?
I’m sticking around to witness the collapse, in the hopes things go full mad max. Because that would be a better existence than the one I’m currently living in.
I’m not sure if I’m half joking or being entirely serious.
Prozac.
Maybe it’s Sertraline.
lol “maybe she’s born with it”
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.
In general, humanity (at least in Europe?) developed positively over the past few centuries. There were of course setbacks, but they didn’t last too long and sometimes even lead to great progress. Nevertheless we must fight for progress and shouldn’t give up just because the world once again seems to get even worse. Even more important when it comes to problems we have just a tiny period of time to fight against like climate change, we need to act now and can’t waste ten years being (ruled by) facists.
That’s the crazy thing about all these echo chambers online. Everyone sits around convincing themselves that life is worse than it has ever been, when in reality it’s better in almost every way than it ever has been. Through constant struggle, our ancestors built us a world that is vastly easier to live in than ever before, yet many of us look at what is still left to improve and instead of facing that challenge, just complain loudly about the injustice of it all.
My dog can’t feed herself. My family seems to like having me around.
Get off of social media. Other than here I really keep my news to computer stuff that interests me
The alternative seems really boring.
Spite and a need to see people get their just desserts
Not much but snark
Curiosity, so I observe. I believe we have control over nothing and that free will is an illusion. Consciousness is a mystery, as much my own as the one I suppose others have. In the middle of the chaos, I sometimes see glimpses of beauty, in many forms: music, images, people’s behaviour, fiction, maths, nature… So I observe , I try to find patterns, to understand how things work, why others do what they do. I have found beauty in the very little things, what used to be chores I now enjoy, they were chores because “I thought I had better things to do”, I wanted to be “later” but now I know what matters is to live in the moment, and I’ll be living the next moment later.
Social media, the news, they are trying to grab your attention and project you to the future, what is the next threat, when are you likely to die or suffer. The truth is: we are all going to be dead eventually, it can be for many reasons, it can be in the next hour, or in thousands of years, we cannot know when, but we all know it will happen, doesn’t really help to worry too much about it.
Don’t waste your life trying to prevent your inevitable death. Enjoy it while you can. The rest is mostly out of your control anyway.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 month ago
By avoiding social media and living my life through memes and video games.
ReanuKeeves@lemm.ee 1 month ago
There is a theory that natural human psychology wasn’t made to handle all of the world’s atrocities. People experience a “bad news burnout” because some of us constantly feel disappointed in humans as a race by hearing/seeing sociopathic behavior on an international level every day.
NineMileTower@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think I just hit that wall. This thread is fucking depressing. There’s happiness and hope out there, but it seems you won’t find it on social media, I guess. Negativity bias seems more prevalent on Lemmy than others.
NineMileTower@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Is this social media?
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not by my definition. I don’t friend people or follow people on here.