I feel like we’re living in a Billy Joel - We Didn’t Start the Fire song 2.0 (Fall Out Boy did a 2.0 version of the song where they used more recent events.) 3.0 and the events in the song are happening at 1.25 times the speed of the original.
Honestly? I think if you had access to social media for any time in the last 100 years you would feel overwhelmed. The nature of the beast is there is ALWAYS something happening. There’s ALWAYS something to be angry about.
I feel overwhelmed by how the world apparently went today
Hoping to get into numismatics professionally. That or teaching. My SO is a teacher and there’s a shortage hereabouts, has been for years.
Nope.
There’s nothing I can do to change it apart from trying to do good in my own little neighborhood, so that’s what I do.
All i know is i didn’t start this fire
Someone … or a new artist should just release a new version of the song with new lyrics every year
But to your question … I’m Indigenous Canadian, so from the day I was born, I’ve always been overwhelmed by the world because most of it, especially living in northern Ontario was a government that either actively or passively just wanted us to either disappear, assimilate, go away or just die.
I’ve always seen the world as falling apart. I remind my friends when we debate this stuff that the human species has been around for about two million years, a species that looks like us was around about 100,000 years ago and the most modern ancestor that could think, act and be like us is about 50,000 years ago. We’ve only just started our technological evolution about 200 years ago. So when you think about it, we are more designed as prehistoric cavemen and cavewomen who are easily scared of shadows in the dark or what happens after we die. We have only just taken our first step out of the cave we all used to inhabit. It’s going to take us a few more thousand years to get to the point where our brains can process and live with the modern world we created … that is if we last that long. In the meantime, we’ll just fumble along trying to become temporary Masters of the Universe on our tiny speck of floating dust in the galaxy.
To put things into perspective … listen to Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot
Or watch the cartoonist Steve Cutts A Brief Disagreement
The thing that is pissing me off these days is not so much that the world is falling apart … it always has been for me … its that we are accelerating the amount of danger we are putting all of humanity … and for what? a little bit of profit and for a small group of people to say they can rule the world?
An evil person will burn down the kingdom to rule over the ashes.
the thing is, current societal structures have outlived their usefulness. For much of our history we have been groping in the dark, as you said, only within the last 200 years have we really started to understand the world around us as it is. Prior to only just recently, we did not have the technology or knowledge required to ensure that everyone had enough, and we didn’t have the connection with other people thousands of miles away that first radio, then television and movies, then the internet provided.
Nowadays I firmly believe there is enough for everyone (if not for fuckheads with multiple yachts), and we could do some amazing things if we all worked together, but the power structures of hierarchical society and capitalism refuse to die gracefully.
Without selective pressure our brains won’t change, and definitely not on the timescale of thousands of years.
We have selective pressure. It just selects psychopaths.
So survival of the fittest, become one or find something more useful to become.
I almost bought this until I read your username
This will probably be the calmest year of the years to come.
Russia, the US and EU are failing slowly, with Russia and the US kicking around in the process. The EU doesn’t really know what to do except follow suit to the US, no matter the stupidity.
Aside from these three China seems to be emerging for now, but is running into huge demographic issues that the others already have.
Neoliberal Capitalism is destroying the very foundations of society and leading to a new rise of Fascism as it is ideologically way too deeply entrenched to overcome itself and the mantra of eternal growth and eternal capital accumulation at the top.
On top of all this the climate catastrophe is picking up intensity every year and the effects will cause more and more disruption.
Meanwhile any attempts at spearheading a better world, one of sustainable economies and basic human rights are disrupted by the forces of old, who employ ever more gruesome weapons and tools of mass surveillance while refusing any social innovation.
To answer your question: Yes it is overwhelming and it will probably get a lot worse.
Some days I really deeply contemplate just getting a canister of helium and an exit bag.
Today’s tumultuous reality will be the “good old days” of tomorrow.
Yes, so I am overwhelming myself with good stuff so I don’t have as much time to let that stuff bother me.
I joined an animal rescue that I work at every Sunday and busy my butt there. I also started participating in community events with other people through my music teacher, so I’ve always got new songs to work on. These national protests also have a more uplifting vibe than I’d expected, so I’d like to participate in more of those too.
So I’m feeling better about my own actions, developing more skills, helping my environment, giving entertainment back to my community, and seeing hundreds of other people that also want this place to be a bit better.
Sure the news is still a total buzzkill, but I can only dwell on it so long. I put off doing these things for so long saying I didn’t have time or energy, but now they are wonderful healthy distractions, and even if we do pull out of this tailspin, I’d love to keep doing all these things anyway.
Don’t let jerks keep you down. We can’t stop all of it, but we can all find some way to be useful and successful, and other people seeing you carry on will keep them motivated too!
I’m just doing my small part by raising kids who will act like adults when they grow up
It’s not about how we feel but what we do about it
No, not really. I’m more overwhelmed by the fact I knew very little about the past. I deep dived into couple of things and now wonder the sanity of humanity.
Also the fact that people just do not learn from the past. People rather ignore all the things and repeat it again, again and again.
I have even become more pessimistic about humanity than, I already was. Because of this, I tend to avoid the news a bit more to at least keep my mental health in check.
Also the fact that people just do not learn from the past. People rather ignore all the things and repeat it again, again and again.
I’m going to guess you’re not a parent? Because I can watch that shit happen in real time. I have so many painfully won lessons I’d like to share with my kids, but they can’t grasp the value without experiencing the hardships, and so they don’t listen. I suppose to be fair, not every lesson I’ve learned still applies because the world changes.
If I’m lucky, when I’m dead they’ll wish they’d listened more, wish they’d thought to ask more questions when I was around. That’s how I feel about my grandparents. My parents are more like object lessons than fonts of knowledge… (I wonder if they felt the same about my grandparents)… but I’ll admit I’ve learned quite a bit from that as well. I aspire to be more like my grandparents.
It seems like most humans honestly are not that interested at all in things like history, the value of community, involvement with others, social and emotional support, and are generally just selfish living-perpetually-in-the-moment idiots that willfully ignore the implications of anything they do and endlessly play the victim.
It’s honestly a drag to realize how many of our species continue to be backwards knuckle dragging slack-jawed yokels who get positively furious when anyone calls them out on how absolutely fucking stupid they are. How dare you call them stupid and hurt their feelings! It’s their right to be a an absolute fucking idiot and you’re the one out of line for calling attention to it! They couldn’t possibly try to not be a mendacious fucking moron! You’re the person who is wrong for noticing!
Well… Yeah, that’s just how empires collapse. Anti intellectualism isn’t normal, but it comes up historically
I think the capacity is there to function at a higher, pro-social level; but it is severely compromised by societal systems that at some point were shaped by scarcity and real world dangers but have just become obsolete and out of control. We’re living a traumatic legacy that we can’t shake and just keep dumping on successive generations
I’d like to believe that, but some people I have met who are not struggling for resources and had kind and loving families are still somehow just some selfish motherfuckers. I don’t know where they got that trauma from that made them want to hurt others so badly.
Of course we are all individually somewhere on a continuum of capacity. But I think that the overall system in which we live accounts for much of what you describe (see: messaging in our entertainment, commercials, social media, how they shape people). And also, perhaps that a kind environment like these people had is not a sufficient condition for pro social behavior, if it doesn’t teach them perspective building for instance; or exposure to, and legitimization of, alternate lifestyles and realities.
idk. All this coexists with the inherent flaws of the human organism. Selfishness is one of our qualities. It’s biologically built it in. Ideally our environment nurtures the executive functions to override and temper it. But, again, a capacity being there is not a sufficient condition for it to emerge
Im just curious, would you be willing to share what topics sparked your interest?
Of course. It’s not the path you want to take. But I’m old enough to remember similar times and the future isn’t written yet.
You have many parallel selves that didn’t make it. Wonder how many more selves you have left
If you really believe in Everett’s many worlds, infinity.
Listen here you lemniscate, I don’t want any more analemma’s out of you!
As many as I have days to live.
(Not the OP but an old dude myself ;))
May your quantum eraser never run dry
I mean as a Canadian, I knew that was coming since early last year if Trump would win. I couldn’t know where we would land on the spectrum between nothing changed and Armageddon. What I did know was that, without fail, I would hear what stupid thing Trump did just about every day in the news, and it would be overwhelmingly exhausting.
I have three pieces of advice. First, connect with the people around you offline, reinforce your ground truth. Second is keep your eyes on the ball of what you want to be better in the world so that you can keep going after it. Lastly, don’t let right or left wing online propaganda, or the despair from crises the US, Israel, Russia, China or North Korea stir up paralyze you from taking action on those two things.
anyone that’s paying attention is likely in the same place you are
Honestly: no.
There are only so many things I can focus on at once and I’m quite good at not letting the others affect me.
Work, kids and friends take most of my time. My «crisis» of choice to stay updated on is Ukraine. Everything else I read on now and then, when I feel like it.
I quite enjoy just touching grass and being in the moment instead of stressing about things I have no control over.
