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?
Setting aside my depressive episodes and a few signals of impending doom, I look out my window and see a world that is still generally okay around me. That tells me I’m still in a position to go out and try to improve things.
For instance, my family and I got through COVID. To me, that’s a kind of privilege, because I certainly know others who weren’t so fortunate. So I’m doing my part to ensure another pandemic like that doesn’t happen again, or at least isn’t so impactful.
The other night I saw the stars in the sky and thought about how little my problems actually seem.
Strike that. Reverse it.
My lack of motivation prevents me from ending it all.
There’s still a bunch of kindness around. There’s good food to be eaten and culture to be consumed. There’s drinks to be had and friends to be made. Dances to learn and skills to master.
There’s a lot of things to be hopeful about, aside from the whole everything going to shit thing. And if you can brighten up people’s lives by doing it, you might even contribute to the world going slightly less to shit.
I think it’s time to recalibrate and focus more on the closer things. Doesn’t mean one should ignore the world, but we’re not fixing it by stressing out, doom-scrolling, and posting about it online either. We tried.
I agree. The thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding community again.
Not sure how many people in this thread are American, but we have a very independent point of view. The “optimal” way of living is leaving your parents, leaving your home, and building a new home somewhere else. We tend to be more independent overall and less likely to look to others for comfort, to our detriment. At least, that has been my experience.
So I think the best thing to do is go out there, find a community that DOES care. Because they DO exist. Look for hobby classes, look for new friends in your interests, look for a church (if that is your thing. I am UU so the people at those churches are often some of the nicest, most leftist people around).
I’m moving soon, and I think the thing that keeps me going is the idea of finding new community after I move. You can also affect meaningful change as a community when you can’t do it alone.
This is what I needed to hear. Thanks! Think local, act local to help the global.
Stupid questions.
Well I suggest you look elsewhere cuz this community has none of those lol
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.
How did murder-suicide guy get an upvote?
For giving an honest, on topic response maybe.
Don’t be a dick
Don’t carry out an extrajudicial killing.
Dude. You are such a fucking prick. Intentionally picking out something that’s damn near tangential to the point, then hyper focusing on it just to try and fuck with someone that wasn’t talking to you in the first place.
Bugger off
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 :)
In these difficult times I find that all I need is spending some time with my loved ones, enjoying my old favorite media and games and sharing them with my daughter, and nightly cuddles from my beautiful monster of a cat while I read web serials to unwind.
Well, those things and also cannabis and escorts. And pizza. Keeps me going.
Fear of death.
Like its either nothing. Which is in itself terrifying.
Or there could be reincarnation, which is even more terrifying. Imagine being reborn in North Korea. Or if time isn’t linear, imagine being some enslaved person in the dark ages.
Or being born in some universe that paranormal stuff are real. And evil creatues chase you all the time.
Or being in a dystopian futuristic world where ever newborn in implanted with a mindcontrol chip.
Like nobody knows what happens.
Thats the only reason I haven’t killed myself.
You don’t enjoy ANYTHING? Like, nothing at all?
Oh, lol I tunnel vision and focused on that.
Well I like watching interesting youtube videos about science and various topics. Movies, TV, reading SCPs. And um… obviously eating tasty food.
But like depression is still persistent throught all that. Like no matter how much I enjoy. Like a dark cloud that just block the sunlight.
I guess to answer your question: the possibility of future technology give me hope to keep going.
Like we got a device that can fit in a pocket and instantaneously communicate to anywhere in the world. Most people in history can only talk to people nearby. I can just pull up my phone and talk to like the entire population that uses the internet, well… at least the people who use the same platform that I use.
Who knows what technology we get in the future.
Like you ever flew a drone? Its so cool to see the world from above.
Like why traffic jams if we have flying cars.
An hour travel can become like 10 minutes, or less.
Endless possibilities.
My partner and her cat
Oh I gave up like 15 years ago.
Easy. The world isn’t ending. Ignore the doomers. Problem solved.
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.
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.
Antidepressants
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
Stop caring and all of the problems go away, as if by magic. The amount of emotional energy that people put into issues that they’re unlikely to ever face is unbelievably wasteful.
