Am I projecting? What do you think, fellow lemmings?

  •  golden_zealot   ( @golden_zealot@lemmy.ml ) English
    39•2 months ago

    Our wealth is taken, no one does anything.

    Our health is taken, no one does anything.

    Our privacy is taken, no one does anything.

    Our voices are taken, no one does anything.

    Our citizenships are taken, no one does anything.

    The reason is apathy, which feeds inability, which feeds apathy, which feeds inability to do anything.

    When our lives are taken, most people will be both ultimately unable and unwilling to do anything.

    Even if people don’t know it outright, they feel it.

    More than this, we feel a disappointment and a shame in our bones that can’t be shaken off because it is that outrageous and primal fear of losing anything more that drives our inaction, and so we feel ourselves to be cowards at our very core.

    This is what grinds away at our souls daily.

    When you eventually decide to do something, you will see you are no longer apathetic or unable. Your fears will begin to heal, and in this way it will save your soul. This is the power of courage. It is something you have to make for yourself, but hope is what drives it and hope is given.

  •  IninewCrow   ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English
    38•2 months ago

    I keep having this and similar conversations with my wife and my friends and family …

    The majority of the world has always been in a bad mood because 90% of planet has always been poor, struggling, doesn’t have enough, live in poverty, are hungry and are generally not happy.

    The only difference is that us in the rich west have been recently affected and are facing a near future where our comfort and freedoms are going to be affected. We are starting to feel what the rest of the world has been feeling for a long, long time.

    I say all this from the perspective of an Indigenous Canadian because I grew up poor and in a circumstance where me and my family were always made to feel less than the rest of the Canada.

    •  eureka   ( @eureka@aussie.zone ) English
      20•2 months ago

      The majority of the world has always been in a bad mood because 90% of planet has always been poor, struggling, doesn’t have enough, live in poverty, are hungry and are generally not happy.

      On one hand, there is absolutely harsh struggle around the world for the vast majority of the world.

      On the other hand, it’s not as if most people are never in a good mood. Australia’s state broadcaster (ABC) had a show where people in small or disadvantaged groups answer anonymous questions, and when it came to Sudanese Australian refugees, a few were saying that life in Sudan was often happier despite their material struggles. IIRC a main part was that they had a collective culture, in some places outside of the cities even a communal village culture, and where good fortune was cause for celebration. Some contrasted that with our largely individualist, money-centric culture here.

      All that to say, money doesn’t buy happiness, poverty doesn’t guarantee sadness. Money and other resources really really help, but it’s far from the whole picture.

      •  IninewCrow   ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English
        8•2 months ago

        True there are different types of poor and different types of people that see life as completely normal in any circumstances. We are all very adaptable creatures in whatever situation you place us in.

        I grew up poor and I didn’t know it for about the first 10/15 years of my life. We had enough food but it was just that … enough … we never had extras, no snacks, no guilty pleasures. I have good teeth because I didn’t have the opportunity to eat a lot of junk food when I was younger which then led me to not really want it when I got older.

        A lot of people around me were the same or similar … it was just the way things were and we were more or less just happy and content with it all. It was normal so there was nothing too upsetting about it. Unfortunately, not all families were as capable as ours. In a community full of people in the same boat, about half couldn’t do it and they fell into extreme poverty, addictions, bad health and just generally miserable lives. Then in my life, I started venturing out into the world and saw how wealthy everyone else was and I wanted to do the same but as a brown skinned Native person, the entire game was rigged against me … I couldn’t get schooling, I couldn’t find work, I wasn’t wanted, I wasn’t needed and I was just different. I had to work really hard to get anything. People also claim that my school could have been paid for but it only works when you work the system and are connected to everyone and everything in that system … I wasn’t and I had to fight my own leadership, my own community and the non-Native government about everything in order to get anything done. I barely scraped by and found work on my own, made a bit of money and barely made it to become an adult. Of all the family and friends I grew up that were like me … I think only about a quarter of us made it to something, a handful got post secondary and became lawyers and doctors or something important and the majority of the rest just ended up at home in varying levels of poverty from just getting by to literally living on the streets with small children. All in a situation where it is believed that we Native people get free money and have the world handed to us.

        Money may not buy happiness but it sure helps and no matter how you frame it, poverty makes everything harder to do.

  •  samus12345   ( @samus12345@lemm.ee ) English
    21•2 months ago

    Climate change is getting worse and the world in general is sliding into fascism. The odds of things getting better in our lifetimes is very low. I’m only happy when I’m focusing on what’s around me and not the big picture, because the big picture is bleak.

    •  fine_sandy_bottom   ( @fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de ) English
      3•2 months ago

      I agree that things are bleak. I also try to focus on practical, local things on which I can have a positive impact.

      I’d like to think that some things will get better, and others will be less bleak.

      Climate change is occurring quicker than we had hoped, but we are making progress towards mitigating the worst effects, even of that progress is slower than we had hoped.

  •  greenskye   ( @greenskye@lemm.ee ) English
    19•2 months ago

    I’ve spent an astronomical amount of effort trying to remove as much depressing and outrage content from my feeds as possible. It’s a sisyphian task with new things constantly slipping through the cracks. Which has made me mostly check out of all but a very small list of online spaces (and even then ads and other impossible to turn off ‘recommendations’ show up).

    Outrage and depressing content fuels the web and it’s best to recognize that. I’ve been a lot happier in my ignorance so far and would recommend it to anyone who’s privileged enough to get away with it. It’s not like being informed and engaged did fuck all for me in the last decade except give me a variety of mental issues.

    •  Scrubbles   ( @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ) English
      11•2 months ago

      It helps me to remember that informed voters 50-70 years ago were people who read the papers. Not even regularly, just those who knew what was going on in the world on a regular basis. It is not normal or healthy to have a constant barrage of news and input - and more than that it’s not wrong to take a break from it. I had to learn that the hard way, that it’s okay to take a break, it doesn’t make you a bad person, that online is making you anxious. I folded in on myself, I had panic attacks, I couldn’t function - and I got help. That help helped me realize that I don’t have to shoulder this alone, I do not have to keep watching and listening. I’m informed, I know what’s going on, I know what happened today - but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn my filters off either.

    •  stealth_cookies   ( @stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca ) 
      6•2 months ago

      Yeah this is pretty much what I’m doing. My subscriptions are pretty much spaces about my interests that post positive content, and even then I filter out keywords for the bullshit that leaks in. Trying to spend more time reading books and unplugging from the internet. It still feels so hard to avoid the depressing bullshit though.

  •  zephorah   ( @zephorah@lemm.ee ) 
    17•2 months ago

    We felt it last year. A building up of something. A sense of impending doom. Feelings of grim.

    Things are worse especially with Trump making noises about using the American military to take resources. I don’t know who put the Panama canal and Greenland into his head but here we are. He is a guy who would do it too. Making us axis and not ally this go. That’s grim.

    Pick and choose your outlets but don’t stick your head in the sand.

  •  PresidentCamacho   ( @PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee ) 
    15•2 months ago

    Over 20 years ago I started to see the many problems with the world. Over the course of those ~20 years I saw more and more problems begin, none of them are ever resolved. There was a point where I believed I wouldn’t live long enough to see the full ramifications, but now it seems like those problems are compounding faster and faster.

  •  MonkeMischief   ( @MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ) 
    13•2 months ago

    All honesty, I tend to be optimistic to a fault and try really hard to be cheerful.

    Everything starts to crack once socioeconomics comes up. The news lately is all about how everything is about to get worse. “This is collapsing, that’s more expensive, getting a slice of diminishing wages is going to be even harder now! They’re cracking down here and forcing ads there.” Etc etc.

    When I’m knee-deep in fixing up my servers or making art or being with my people, everything is just peachy!

    But yeah, “How next money tho?” Usually starts the mental downward spiral.

    I love living, can do a ton of things, love learning, but I don’t get along with churning out a repetitive task for increasingly worthless currency.

    The world outside of what I’m choosing to do feels entirely impossibly out of our control. So I try to balance being informed with staying sane.

    Like damn I don’t need much, can’t folk just be left alone? Lol

    Wonder if a lot of people feel like I do?

    •  Jentu   ( @Jentu@lemmy.ml ) English
      4•2 months ago

      I feel this. Though I don’t tend to be optimistic in general about the state of my little place in the world , it definitely gets worse when I think of the big picture stuff that I have even less control over. I really wish I knew how to help, but I guess all I can do is relate and hope that you’re doing okay. At the risk of sounding insincere and acting weirdly intimate to a stranger online, we might never see each other in our lives, but we are fighting and suffering a reality that was forced upon us together. Hopefully things get better, but even if it doesn’t, we aren’t alone in this.

      •  MonkeMischief   ( @MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ) 
        2•2 months ago

        Hey friend, I really appreciate it. :)

        That sincerity and love can change the world, and you’re all the more courageous for it. Even if things suck, I’m glad we’re not alone and there’s people like you here by our side, figuratively or otherwise. :)

        I always come back to a few sources of timeless wisdom in the face of all this nonsense. A lot of it found in the Bible, which I know won’t get great reactions thanks to current events.

        As a Christian anarchist, I’m also trying to do what I can to combat against the most evil cult of greed, hate, bloodshed, and misery that has become the American state-sponsored religion. It’s a lot of grief and pain to watch the Gospel of selfless love be trampled and peddled by fascists, and the reactionary hatred of it from the oppressed in turn, who’ve only ever known its perversion against themselves.

        But I digress. Here’s a some wisdom I keep returning to, etched in my soul. Perhaps it will empower you as well. :)

        I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

        J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

        For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

        -Ephesians 6:12

        “Do not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”

        -Bruce Lee

        And lastly , I’ve posted it many times before but damnit if this doesn’t remind us why we’re still here in the face of all this madness:

        FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.

        SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

        FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?

        SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

        –Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (film version)

  •  davel [he/him]   ( @davel@lemmy.ml ) English
    11•2 months ago

    Not the whole world, but definitely the neoliberalized imperial core and its neocolonized vassal states.

    This isn’t a case of viral, grassroots bad mood/fascist vibes. It’s the predictable result of grinding, late-stage/finance/monopoly capitalism, of zombie neoliberalism. Even the incorrigibly liberal Chris Hedges saw this coming fifteen years ago in his book, The Death of the Liberal Class.

    The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. — Antonio Gramsci