How do you cope with the state of the world today?
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?
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?
End of the day, nothing you can do will change what's happening half way across the world, so why let it change you?
I beg to differ. Here are a few things you can do. I agree these won't make an impact, but if enough people are willing to do these, it could work:
In my opinion, this kind of mindset of "you cannot do anything, get used to it" is a very demotivating and harmful piece of advice. Because that's what's been going on all this time; everyone being ignorant, while evil people never stop doing what they're doing.
So why can’t ordinary people step up and upvote, share, publish, and promote factual information?
They can, it just doesn't work terribly well. Persuading people is not necessarily about actual facts or rationality, even at the best of times, without even involving any strong feelings, or identifying with outcomes, or other interests of conflict.
Facing profit motives, politics, power dynamics, organized propaganda, and bad faith argumentation in general, it's even more grim. Russia and the other troll farmers are making a concerted specific effort out of this. The numbers, resources, and, sadly, human psychology, are on their side.
Making up some bullshit about 5G mRNA causing steel beams takes 10 seconds, maybe add another 5 for calling you a sheep once you rightly ask what the fuck whoever's been smoking. If you wanted to debunk the actual claim, you'd spend orders of magnitude more time and effort than they did, only for them to refuse to even glance at your arguments and studies. Assuming the entire belief isn't fake just to fuck with people, "facts and logic" certainly weren't involved in arriving at it, and are unlikely to budge the actual reason for that belief.
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
What values?
Hey, we trust you!
About as much as any other international terrorist organisation anyway
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:
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? ;-)
Pot helps, for a little while at least
This was my answer. Blaze it 420 till the earth kicks us off.
How do I cope? Poorly
Exactly what I was about to post
By helping people nearby.
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.
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?
How attached can you be without undoing your own mental stability?
Figure that out, then apply it. Please, the world needs you.
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 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 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.
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 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.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
A golden fiddle seems like it would help....
On average the world is better than it's ever been. Higher life expectancies, less war, better quality of life; it's all generally on the up. Would you rather go back to the last financial crisis? When the ozone layer was being depleted? The interment threat of nuclear annihilation? Race riots? Women not being able to vote? High infant mortality? etc, etc
There is less war, but that's not always a great indicator. Depending on how you define "war" you could even define Ukraine/Russian war not as a war.
Life expectancy is going up because of 3rd world countries finally catching up. It's going down in America.
The "world" is also getting richer. But the average person is getting poorer.
Also ozone layer isn't doing great, there are race riots still, there is threat of nuclear war with Russia existing in its current state, a lot of rights are threatened and a lot of people want to return to a time before women's suffrage. I haven't looked up anything on infant mortality, but I imagine with abortion band happening that will also change for the worse.
The only peace I've found is action.
This is such a short-sighted and USA-centric response. Your life expectancy seems fine, and even if there were a blip I'm sure it will continue to increase on average. Wealth is not an objective measure of quality of life. The ozone layer repaired itself. Even in America you've got a lot less lynching than you used to have. Speak to anyone who lived through the cold war and tell them you think nuclear war is just as much of a threat now as it was then.
Some people argue that humanity was never freer, happier and healthier than before the agricultural revolution. Everything has gone to shit since we decided to settle down on a small plot of land.
On average the world is better than it's ever been
Of course, certain groups of people have been trying to reverse these trends in the name of...money? Tradition?
The newer generations are no longer becoming smarter (I believe it was the Flynn effect). Education is being defunded at all levels.
The cost of living in many parts of the world has been outpacing wages... especially now, but for decades. Yet we have more wealth hoarded into fewer hands.
Anti-vax and anti-science movements have been reintroducing measles and have been making it hard to fight other diseases.
We are seeing the effects of these things in action, and they will only get worse over time.
Less war?
There's a genocide going on in the middle east right now by settler colonialist fully backed by the western powers to destabilize the region and I'm sure you know that, it's just irrelevant to you.
There're too many neoliberals on lemmy, I can't even deal fam
There were at least 2 other genocides in progress the last October when this mess started. You only care about this one because you have been told to.
Neoliberalism is really an economic philosophy. It doesn’t really have a lot to say about how a nation ought to position itself toward foreign wars. It’s not an all purpose slur for people who disagree with you.
Don't read/watch news. That's the only advice I can trully gie you since news are made to purposfully make people restless.
I started therapy a year ago.
I enjoy walking my dog (usually) and sitting with my cat.
I spend way, way more time exercising than is normal or mentally healthy probably, but it's been my coping mechanism for years and I leaned into it.
I try to invite friends over when people have time. It's not often. I'm that age where people are starting to get married and have kids and move away.
I'm miserable most of the time. I try to ignore the shitty politics, the news, the cost of housing, the cost of food, the quicksand it feels like we are all slowly sinking into.
I've decided I'm never having kids. They don't deserve to be forced to exist in this.
The only consolation I've found is an answer to a similar post to this on Reddit a couple years ago - someone in their 60s or so was explaining that for what it's worth, the world is always on fire if you only focus on that part. They grew up in the cold war, doing bomb shelter drills and hearing how they were going to get nuked by Russia. The economy has its issues then. The government has its issues then. I think those issues are worse now, but honestly who knows. You have to look for moments of brightness and try to avoid focusing on the morass of terribleness that everyone is trying to shove down your throat. It's not easy. But the alternative is worse.
Like this:
Log off. It's that simple. Your stress will reduce linearly with reduced screen time
Best advice I have is to reach out in your local community to help where you can.
Doesn't matter if it's a municipal food bank, a church running a shelter, a charity helping battered spouses, or some kind of a mutual aid group getting people caught up on the bills... just working with others to help fix what you can does an amazing amount for your mental health. Volunteer to help shelter and feed migrants or the homeless. There's after school programs for kids in single parent households or who's parents have to work too much to be there for them. Cities across the US have citizens councils where local problems are brought and attempts to solve them are made.
I know it all sounds cliche and it's all a bandaid on the bigger picture's problems but, in terms of your own mental health it can do wonders... plus I guarantee groups local to you need an extra set of hands on a regular basis. When bad things are going around, we start to worry... when the bad things are enormous and out of any semblance of our control we think we can do nothing. That's not true, you can do something, just on a local or regional scale. Reach out and offer to help in any way you can.
That's all I can think of.
Copius amounts of alcohol.
How do you cope with all this without just giving up?
By making it personal.
No but seriously, in my country (Germoney) a terrible plan of the far-right fucknuggets got revealed and the people are taking it to the streets in response. During this week, I activated quite a number of co-workers to BE there this weekend. You can change people, you can change them with respect, words and your deeds. I'm a firm believer of "do good and talk about it". The process is a bit grindy though, ngl ;)
I just don't read news and I try to focus on my own life instead. Try to put social media to minimum/
Weed
Accepting this is what my species is like and that this is the world we've made for ourselves, is the hard bit.
The good bit is that it will be over soon.
The rest is depression.
Keep in mind that American news is not really news. It's strictly entertainment and you should treat it as such. FOX, MSNBC, CNN are all for profit enterprises and they are completely focused on that and nothing else. That asshole fuck face that owns FOX even admitted it in court under oath.
So instead of informing the public, these entities present "news" in a way that is designed to make you emotionally react, give you a dopamine hit, instead of actually informing you of anything. Are some worse than others? Yes, but all of them do it to some degree or another. I personally believe that the down fall of this country will eventually be tracked to the elimination of equal time laws and the limits of entities owning media outlets. It used to be a single entity could not own more than 11 broadcast stations. Those laws need to come back and it's an absolute emergency that they do.
To sum up the above: You are constantly being manipulated by the media you watch to make you feel that things are a lot worse than they really are, so some asshole somewhere can make more money. Yes, your feeling of things being out of control is only because some fuck face is making money from you feeling that way.
My suggestion is do not watch TV for your news. Read. If you want to learn about American politics, read a foreign newspaper that comes from a country that really doesn't have a lot of skin in American Politics. Better yet, get involved in your local political scene and make yourself a part of the news cycle.
I'd argue that the only fairly accurate source of news, in America atleast, is non-profit, publicly funded. PBS, NPR, etc.
For example, NPR will do a hit piece on Amazon, even though Amazon is an underwriter for NPR.
I'm going to be honest, this will sound silly, but... Watching Avatar The Last Airbender really helped.
Nihilism. And drugs I guess
Pretty much this...
Nietzsche, Camus, and a whole bucket of popcorn to watch it all.
Regular consumption via "addiction" or therapudic instables of irregular incidences you document changes and benefits of?
That's the neat part, I don't.
Giving up isn't so bad, but for myself I limit how much social media and news I consume and do my best to plan life ahead for any upcoming tragedies when I do get my periodic doses.
Not much we can do about the truly terrible things happening, but we can make existence a little less shitty around ourselves.
You and I are not the center of the universe, it's okay to just exist.
Honestly I dissociate, focus on myself and people I love, the world is a lost cause - probably won't have kids
Making memes and lexapro.
Dude, you make lexapro? Asking for a friend.
It's perfectly fine to withdraw a bit from the angrier politics, news and doomscrolling, even more so if you're noticing that it's actively bringing you down. It's an easy pattern to fall into. Turns out fear, annoyance, distrust and anger are pretty engaging. They are also extremely easy buttons to push for fun, political power, and, above all, profit.
We weren't built to deal with every one of a zillion things wrong with the world every hour of every day. Still, that is what happens when a combination of blind machine learning optimization (for profit, of course), sensationalist greed, and some rando's political opinions decides what you see. In the long history of the human race, borrowing more and fresher worries from all over the world has never been the norm.
I tend to go out of my way to eliminate politics from my life, aside from voting, pretty much. By all means stay informed enough to do what little you can as a random individual, but you can do that without wallowing in every fecal particle of political drama.
I compartmentalize. Focus on things at a smaller scale, and work through them one by one. Try not to distract yourself too much on the things that are out of your control. Prioritize the ones that you can actually control. Then identify the short term and long term ones and further prioritize based on that.
Going solarpunk
I accept the fact that like every era before us, the news tends to sensationalize shit. it’s how they make money. As long as you’re outraged, (the left) or terrified (the right), you’re tuned in. And if you’re tuned in- they’re banking.
But… unlike previous eras, we have the internet where people like to spread the sensationalized bullshit polarized views to the four corners of the world.
I like to think that life exists within the grey areas between the polarized black-and-white idealist bullshit. And that while things aren’t great- things are not all that bad.
…. And then I feel much better.
How do I cope??? I don't read the fucking news or political posts. The world is damn good.
Ingenuity: The helicopter drone that flew on Mars for the last 2.5 years when it was expected to fly just a few times. It is the embodiment of human achievement. Of our minds in this great unknown. I get so wrapped up in politics and war and social issues, then if I think of Ingenuity it scales all these issues down and makes me feel like a fool for that last period of time I’ve been lost. Science and engineering to further the incredible human story of understanding is everything and that is how I am able to reset where we are in this and where we can go.
Well, I like to remind myself that the only constant in the world is change, and that mostly, we aren't watching the world crumble, we're watching it change.
And I recognize that change is hard and that it's mostly an unpleasant process. But I also know that in aggregate, the change we've seen throughout history has been far more positive than negative by almost every metric. For example, I live every day knowing that an infection is not going to kill me, I couldn't have said that 100 years ago. As a person of color, I enjoy the amount of freedom I have, I certainly wouldn't have had that in the US 250 years ago. If you look back further, I enjoy more luxuries today than an emperor could have 1000 years ago (hell, I can eat strawberries in the winter).
The point I'm making is that in general the world is on a positive trajectory, and has been (for the most part) for all of recorded history. If you consider the context, things aren't really all that bad right now, and history suggests they'll get better.
Constant masturbation, binge watching TV shows and marijuana.
I have a small circle of focus on my own life. It’s working, and my life is getting better.
In my work, I focus on doing the best possible job. If I succeed at my job, then my customers’ lives are better. That’s how I make the world a better place. It gives me a reason to do my best every day.
What I do is design kitchens. I also bridge the gap between the plan and the execution of the plan. There are lots of little details to pay attention to. When I get everything right, people get new kitchens.
With kitchens the way they want them, they eat well. They have peace in their house. They have social space to invite people over. Everything works smoothly, and they have a solid building block to build their own lives on.
If I try to do more, I might fuck it up. This task of making kitchen rebuild projects go well is the perfect balance between my own competence and the needs of the world. It takes everything I’ve got.
Having the match between my mission and my skills, having the mission be just hard enough to take everything I’ve got, is my own personal recipe for not falling into despair at the state of the world. The thing that bothers me the most is if one of my customers has a problem. I worry more about that than I do about Gaza.
Focus on your bright spots.
Also, keep in mind that all the negativity you see is mostly due to 24hour news cycles and other methods of getting instant updates from around the world. And misery-porn sells better.
I stopped worrying after the hamas terrorists attack in Israel. Not because I don’t care and think this is horrible and all people should live in peace. But because it is too much information I can handle. All the media is full of wars and crisis but I don’t think there are more or less crisis then 20 years ago for example. The thing is we are so exposed with social media and news websites and stuff. I can’t even surf YouTube without getting actual news about what’s going on. Sometimes I just want to watch dumb or nerdy stuff or read some which is not related to bad things. Some say this is selfish or ignorant - well I still get enough news from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza - I just stopped reading and watching all the stuff I stumble across. I cannot even change much on the situation so it is kinda human to get used to stuff like that. I cannot even Imagine what it was like to live during the Cold War with permanent threat of getting nuked and stuff.
Unlike most, I don't believe its possible (or even a very good idea) to ignore the news. What I do is limit my news source to two places a day, BBC and The Guardian which I know are not perfect but I believe they can be largely trusted. Other than that, I read the odd link on here but I won't doom scroll.
I also do things that have a tangible effect for people who have it worse than me. Hands on in my immediate locality, and via donation nationally and/or internationally. I have a list of charities that I support and donate to two for 6 months then switch to another two and repeat. Doing this means that most importantly, people are helped in some small way and less importantly it offsets the shitness of life a bit. If I can feel a bit happy that I'm doing something, that's a good thing.
Newspaper scene from Roxanne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW5EiGwi_a8
I just accept that life is absurd. Once you accept that morality, your own desires, logic, all of them are like waves through time, coming and going, changing form, never staying still...you recognize how ridiculous it is to desperately cling to any semblence of a ground beneath you. Just let yourself fall into the unknown, and at least the insignificance of your own struggle against the tides of change is acknowledged.
Or you can, y'know, just scream, cry, and rage about it. I think of emotions like a buffet. You gotta try them all at least once, and often in a wide variety of combinations. But hey, you do you.
For me, personally: Shit's always been out of control, and even though it may seem like human rights are going backwards, we're better off now than we've ever been. Interacting with my own kids and the college students I work with gives me a lot of hope. We really just need the boomers to stop getting nostalgic for the "good old days" when you were allowed to bully anyone who was different from you.
The kids are progress. Support them! Let them turn the world into what they what it to be, and not what we think they need.
Basically recognize that anything beyond a full stomach and a roof over your head tonight is a bonus. Even those two are rare in a state of nature.
Things are far better than they could be.