What gives you hope to keep going?
What gives you hope to keep going?
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?
Almost none of the crap going on will directly affect your life. Just live, enjoy, don't read the news. You'll be fine
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.
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 preying 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.
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.
Spite and a need to see people get their just desserts
Not much but snark
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.
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 more important 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.
Hope? I have none. I continue on through the power of avoidance and denial. If I stop to think about things it turns into suicidal thoughts, so I just do my damnedest not to think.
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.
What’s hope got to do with it? You survive. That’s it.
But for real, because my people have endured persecution before. As I look at our incoming persecution I see that we got further this time than in a long time and so we must endure and survive and go further again.
But no matter what you survive
Why not?
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.
I have no hope, only fantasies that people will come to their senses someday. Hope? Nah.
Easy. The world isn't ending. Ignore the doomers. Problem solved.
I wouldn't say I'm completely hopeful or doomed, the world is filled with terror and beauty. There are no gods or kings it's just people. Historic and scientific education can help reduce anxiety about the unknown, change your own beliefs and behaviors to improve the situation locally before joining organizations looking to make broader changes. Learn what your fears are and face them, otherwise it will cloud your judgement and influence your decision making process.
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 .
Gaming with the homies. I ought to be able to get a couple dogs one day. I'm getting better at cooking. I meet new and amazing people every now and then.
I do my best to steer the world in the direction I'd like to see it go, and I try take pride in the effort, not in the results. The destination might look dark now but you can still enjoy the journey. I hope that makes sense.
TL;DR focus on the things you can control and do literally anything to try to improve things
The thing that causes trauma isn't the bad event but the helplessness that accompanies it.
The main (and sometimes only) tactic that we are taught for dealing with problems is to find an intermediary who can do things on our behalf; seek the nearest authority who will take up your cause. Viewed that way, the fact that institutions and authorities are failing is disempowering; the problem is impossible because the schools/cops/companies/non-profits/politicians/media/etc aren't helping. The only option that perspective leaves you is to take the blows and hope you're strong enough to last until a better intermediary arrives. That shit will wear you down real fast.
We need to unlearn the dependence on intermediaries. We can't stop the bad events from happening (and boy are they happening) but we can combat the helplessness. The antidote to helplessness is exercising agency and feeling control over our actions and their consequences. Find a way you can make things a little bit better and then show up and do it. Anything is fine, if there's a cause you're passionate about then do that, but if there's not then pick something you're kinda sort of good at. Write, draw, make phone calls, create memes, cook, drive, listen, etc. Any skill, no matter how small, can be leveraged to improve the world around you if you're clever about it.
The fight is the point.
Taking action to control what you can is powerful. Maybe you'll succeed and maybe you won't but taking action is where you'll find resilience. If what you do doesn't work then learn from the experience and deepen your understanding. You're not failing to solve the problem you are building up your capacity to tackle it and that shit takes time. Pursue this as vigorously and as passionately as you are able but also know that it's okay to take breaks and step away sometimes.
Also, humans are social creatures so if what you do involves other people that's even better.
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.
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.
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.
I work in disability support. Some of the kids I am working with have gone over the last year from non speaking to using sign and are making real meaningful progress in their self care skills. They can keep going in the face of difficult times, so my problems don't seem so hard.
Also, in Australia we have the NDIS, a system for funding disability supports in a socialised manner without restricting what options someone uses too much. While all governmental systems (or any systems with money) are susceptible to grift progress is being made on catching fraudsters and prosecuting them while also closing the loopholes they exploit. The NDIS will be around for a long time to come and will help Australians with disabilities determine their own futures and make them a reality. There are problems with it but honestly it has been a game changer and I think it is a model for the rest of the world to aspire to.
Most of the stuff you read doesn’t matter. What matters is how you treat people. Eat good food and smile, enjoy the rays of the sun which burn us all equally. Bask in a hot shower. Go outside, where you can’t see any other people for a few hours, and listen to the sounds.
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.
Look, If I'm going down, I'm going down kicking and screaming.
I don't know what will happen. It is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for me, but that very same uncertainty is why I keep 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 creatures chase you all the time.
Or being in a dystopian futuristic world where every newborn is implanted with a mindcontrol chip.
Like nobody knows what happens.
Thats the only reason I haven't killed myself.
When national politics goes to hell, think about your local community. If you and many of the people around you can do okay in your lives, that's not so bad.
Another thing is to consider the comparison point. How are you doing compared with the average person living in Mali or Vietnam or Switzerland? Billions of people all over the world survive in situations that are definitely not ideal, and many of them are happy with their lives some of the time.
Tone down social media use and do a little prepping. Learn how to use mylar bags and properly store away rice, beans, lentils, pastas, etc.
Prep as if the internet is going down for a prolonged time, maybe even electricity in general.
You can stress about things after you've gotten your shit together for a prolonged emergency.
Understand that this isn't the end of the world, just the end of the world as we know it. Humans are notoriously lazy and selfish, it will take a worldwide calamity before we get our collective shit together and do what's right.
The people in charge have failed us for their own selfish interests. There's nothing else to do except prep and make a better tomorrow.
Fuck doomerism.
Oh I gave up like 15 years ago.
My friends, family, drawing, having a nice home to live in, good food and fun stuff to do ❤️ I try and avoid negativity by searching for things I'm interested in to engage with, such as art, nature photography, cat photos, and videogames. Some websites let you tailor your feed to your liking!
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.
Basically it's self fulfilling if say that. You can believe all that i do too but I don't say it becomes a forgone conclusion as that will make it happen for sure. My thoughts on it are. if it's going to happen im gone to make it as hard as I can for the people that are making it happen and the closer we get to it happening the more radical my actions will become. I will help my community where I can and do my best to make the people responsible pay for their actions. I would read about community network building.
Also there is a YouTube channel Beau of the fifth column that has a lot of great advice. I know the name makes it sound like a crazy person but it's not. They put the news into perspective and talk about ways to help your community. When the government and other social structures are gone.
Also if you want to talk I would be happy to be your penpal.
There is this video that reminds me that there is no natural law that determines that things will only get better. Yet we have to find purpose. I am not hopeful, but I am happy for everyone that tries to do the right thing. We're in this together even if everything goes to shit.
I think I may still be riding the hype of things like the JWST, and fusion energy breakthroughs. Our societies may be back sliding at the moment, but our species is still doing some amazing things.
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.
My partner and her cat
Strike that. Reverse it.
My lack of motivation prevents me from ending it all.
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.
Antidepressants
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.
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.
Honestly, the fear of screwing up suicide and destroying any opportunity of improving my life. It's the only reason I'm alive today :/ if only I could just sign some papers, go to sleep, and never wake up.
So now I try so many money making schemes so I could rent an apartment without roommates who insist on doing chores in the dumbest way possible and blaming me for being unable to do anything other than housework after work.
That there's no evidence of the existence of an afterlife. It'll be like that time I had eye surgery but without having to wake up afterwards - merciful oblivion.
The alternative is certain death. If I were satisfied with that outcome, I'd already be dead.
I beat the factorio DLC, right now that's all I got and I'm clinging to that bad boy
I have to provide for my family. they must survive because without them, I am nothing.
And nothing is more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose.
The fact that my family would be upset if I stopped living. That's literally it.
Once my older family members are gone I can finally go too. I have no interest in seeing how terrible the future will be as a perpetually single factory worker schmuck with no income potential to keep up with the exploitation of our economic system.