Everything just seems so out of control. The US seems to be tearing itself apart. The world is on fire. We seem to be going backwards when it comes to freedom and human rights. We’ve turned our backs on each other. How do you cope with all this without just giving up?
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Don’t spend all your time reading news, they are purposely negative because it generates more interest and money, don’t take everything you read as truth.
99% of these problems won’t turn into anything other than a faded memory.
End of the day, nothing you can do will change what’s happening half way across the world, so why let it change you?
Also, a large part of it I’m assuming is driven by the upcoming US presidential election and a certain ongoing conflict in the world. There is at least one country that benefits from an increase in general chaos and uncertainty in the world. It divides Western military attention and increases discontent and anxiety in Western countries. Alot of our recent problems all lead back to Russia being a general force for chaos in the world, they stand to benefit the most from it.
Not just news but social media (yes that includes Lemmy). Generally anything that invokes some strong emotions will get up votes.
Lemmy is fairly shrilly political, but can be curated if you’re willing to axe a lot of communities that shouldn’t be political at a glance, but… still are. And some users with an axe to grind or chip on their shoulder.
I scroll lemmy. Apparently we are about to go to war with Texas.
We can never preach our values to the world again. How can our allies trust us?
The United States has been overthrowing democratically elected governments for a hundred years. The CIA has exported terrorism, trained gorilla soldiers to terrorize and torture civilians, and promoted fascism over democracy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change
We have a war on drugs that is really a war on people, an excuse to target people of color. We have a for profit prison system run by private corporations that lobby politicians in what is effectively legal bribery. Our entire economic system, capitalism, allows those with wealth to exploit those without, and to use their power and money to “lobby” politicians. People are never going to get a fair shake.
Edit: The US has amazing people and so much potential to survive and overcome our problems, but there’s a darkness that motivates people in power, maybe it’s fear of communism or fear of powerlessness, idk
It’s greed, mate
What values?
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This is why I only use social media (ie. Lemmy) for memes.
That will never happen.
Focus:
Exactly as Stephen R. Covey pointed-out, in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families”
https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Effective-Families-Revised-Updated/dp/1250857775/
You have a Circle-of-Concern: all the things you attach your awareness on,
and you also have a Circle-of-Influence: all the things you actually can alter.
Since the bigger your Circle-of-Concern, the LESS life-energy you have for your Circle-of-Influence, therefore you need to deliberately reduce your Circle-of-Concern, in order to expand your Circle-of-influence.
That’s it: it’s that simple.
Deny awareness-vampire processes your lifeblood.
Own your own self, more, & use that self-owning in order to make your portion of the world more-healthy.
Just because mass-media did all it could to make one boundaryless, helplessly stuck in consuming-trance, bedazzled & led-along like steers the industry is bringing into the abbatoir, doesn’t mean that you or I agreed to our lives doing/being only that, does it?
We never agreed.
It is our right to break the “agreement” that our childhoods were signed-into, before we could do any considered-reasoning.
Either we have the guts & gall to do it, or our-lives are consumed by the “machine” that exists only for sake of its own transient profit-sensations.
Owning one’s own life is a right.
_ /\ _
Very well put, thank you.
I think it’s time for me to read Covey again.
I gave up on everyone: I’ve packed my shit and moved back to the EU, to a middle of nowhere, population 50. Closest neighbor is a 10 minute walk away. Started a large garden, learned some blacksmithing and basic carpentry. Still working remotely for the same company as before, but now when I go outside I have fresh air, I can see the stars and I can hear nobody.
That sounds… very pleasant.
It mostly is, but it has it’s drawbacks:
- if I don’t feel like cooking I don’t have an option of ordering a pizza or eating out - I’m outside of delivery range of everything
- closest town has limited choice of everything. I have to get everything shipped or drive for 1.5h.
- anything but essential services is more than half an hour away
also you end up thinking weird thoughts few people have before: e.g. “how do I stop moose from trampling my garlic?” I mean how many people throughout human history had pondered that? ;-)
possibly many people before the industrial revolution
How do I cope? Poorly
Exactly what I was about to post
Pot helps, for a little while at least
This was my answer. Blaze it 420 till the earth kicks us off.
By helping people nearby.
I’m 51, I grew up with media fear mongering of the Cold War, the hole in the ozone layer and AIDS. I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where there hasn’t been a threat in some form or another, and I sleep like a baby. We aren’t going backwards, it’s just another day at the office.
If you find yourself worrying about events on the other side of the world then you need to switch off the news and focus on what you can control in your own life. Sure, WW3 could be around the corner, Covid 2 Electric Boogaloo could be more lethal or the icebergs could melt, but we can’t do a goddamn thing about it, so what is worrying going to accomplish?
Worry about paying the mortgage, making sure your family are fed, and stay safe.
Isn’t this a mindset for complacent people, though?
Don’t get me wrong, I think exactly like you. But sometimes, I feel that by thinking this way, I’m just taking a shortcut. It seems like an easy way out for issues that should be tackled by humanity (of which you and I are a part), and instead of contributing, we’re just letting it happen.
Think about activists, for example. To do what they do, they can’t just turn off the news and be oblivious to what’s happening. They might not be directly solving the problems, but they are doing something within their reach, even if it means feeling overwhelmed, like OP seems to be feeling.
Does any of this make sense?
Agreed. If enough of us look the fuck up instead of taking what we’re fed… maybe it doesn’t have to be “another day at the office”? I was in middle school when we had the ill-fated assembly in the cafeteria to watch the first teacher astronaut go up, but that didn’t kill my dreams of exploring the stars (the realization in my teens of its extreme unlikelihood did).
If the “best advice” is just to keep your head down and focus on your work, then that’s more about accepting your fate as an infinitesimally tiny cog in someone else’s cash engine. Fuck that.
How attached can you be without undoing your own mental stability?
Figure that out, then apply it. Please, the world needs you.
Part of it is the mantra “out of my control, out of my concern.” Or “not my circus, not my monkeys.” That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I do what I can do, and try not to despair about what I can’t change.
How do I cope?
The media sells the idea the world is on fire. By a lot of measures, humanity is the best it’s ever been:
Things do seem bad, things do need fixing. My advice is to pick one singular part of the world you want to improve and figure out how to fix it. Something like abolishing prison labor or environmentalism. It needs to be something you can make a noticeable dent in, where you can see your own contribution to the effort.
Don’t change tack every time something new like Isreal-Hamas or the scuffle at the US-Mexico border happens. You picked that one thing to fix, remember? And unless you plan on going down to the border with a gun, how do you plan on making a real difference? If you can’t make a difference, why let it bother you?
This depends on what you’re measuring and where.
Also it’s good to have perspective by comparison but life happens in the moment to moment. If people are reporting feeling worse then that is current state and that is what matters.
I’m saying that their moment to moment is being influenced by being bombarded with nothing except negative news.
That leads to an “everything is awful” mentality that bleeds into one’s personal life.
Either turn the news off or do something about it i.e protest, donate to the ACLU etc.
Watching the news and not taking any tangible action is a recipe for depression and is thoroughly pointless.
I see you’ve met my father-in-law. Quite the party pooper
I’m trying to enjoy things while they last and appreciate how precious they are, especially nature. Sometimes I wonder whether I should be preparing for the brutal future that is to come, since there is no avoiding famine, draughts, mass migrations and wars that the climate change will cause. But we don’t have enough information about what exactly will happen, and since humans have an unbelievable ability to adapt, it can be left for the future. so the only thing I can do now is create memories and spend time with loved ones so I’m not full of regrets once we lose everything
I don’t doom scroll.
I read a copy of my local, still-Independent newspaper free every morning with digital access to my library.
I vote in every local, State and Federal election.
I vote Progressive in the Primaries and Democrat in the General.
I say ‘Yes’ to any/all referendums that Tax the wealthy.
That’s about all I can do without financially impacting my family or my career. If it was feasible I’d maybe even start attending my Town Hall meetings just to get a barometer reading on my local Council Members.
Crazy thing is I’m 36yo, and sanity checks have required me to act like a 60yo from the 90s… minus the ‘got mine’ Boomer attitude.
I browse Lemmy & Reddit for 12-16hrs per day and eat out of bean tins. I shower once per week before meeting my probation officer.
That’s about it.
Favorite brand?
Of probation officer?
Of shower.
Normally I just get what the food bank gives out but my faves are Branston. :)
Huh, haven’t had those. Will check it out!
Damn thought you were asking them their favorite band. Hold my beer, I’m going in.
I was listening to a podcast about the scientists responsible of monitoring potentially world threatening asteroid collisions with the earth. They are constantly reminded that the whole world could blink out of existence in an instant. But they continue their job because that’s the part they have control over. I worry of the things I can change. Wether they being small or big and wether my impact is small or big. If I have no control over, I acknowledge it and move on.
