Sometimes I feel nothing will change for the better and I feel frustrated about it.
Sometimes I feel nothing will change for the better and I feel frustrated about it.
Yeah, because everything was fine and everyone got soft and complacent.
Like it or not, we’re coming to the end of that, we’ve not even scratched the surface of how bad it’s actually going to get. The people and communities that smarten up will (sometimes) survive, and more and more, the ones that do not will not.
There has never been a time in history that wasn’t “the worst time ever”, and those problems are long forgotten.
From my parents time: a scary unstoppable new killer virus called HIV, cold war and nuclear arms race, rising violent crime, the disappearing ozone layer, etc, etc.
Not underplaying anyone’s difficulties now…life is certainly hard for a lot of people. But there’s reason to be optimistic. These problems will pass, and then there will be whole whole load of really shit new existential problems…and the cycle will continue.
To quote an absolute idiot who would mistakenly say smth wise (Quayle), ‘The future will be better tomorrow’.
Look at all we have done to make this world. We live in a better world than ever before
It could be worse.
You could have lived through the 80’s and 90’s when we were on the verge of global thermonuclear war, but at least the music was great. Imagine living through that and now having to deal with this shitty dystopia with even shittier music…
70s and 80s yes. Not so much the 90s. Those were the salad years. Glasnost, the end of the cold war, the Internet… Everything was looking so positive. Hell, even the music was happier (although that might be selection bias).
The 70s and 80s were terrifying by comparison.
Don’t let the hopium commenters and the ‘it was worse a thousand years ago’ crowd gaslight you. Your intuition is correct, give yourself credit. You are correct: nothing will change for the better. Fragile ecosystems on the verge of collapse, climate catastrophes, rampant fleecing of the population via unchecked corporate greed, genocides, starvation, crumbling infrastructure, and most alarming -humanity turning inwards, rejecting science, embracing fascism across the globe, and unable to grasp the ramifications and importance of the plight of the world.
You are fully justified in feeling hopeless. Hopium is humanity’s reaction to the hopelessness (religion isn’t cutting it anymore).
Your best bet is to just make peace with it. Find happiness in the collapse. Think about the nice new shiny transparency effects in iOS 26, or the sale Target is having on imported plastic lawn ornaments.
You are a witness to the end of it all. And that’s a special place in history; a front row seat if you will.
I recommend some John Green and Hang Green and vlogbrother videos. Remember the news reports on the catastrophic now… Not the slow incremental progress required to improve the world. But good things are still happening and good people are still working to make those good things happen.
Chances are (forgive me if I’m wrong as this obviously doesn’t apply to every person) you are fed, warm, and sheltered. You can reach out to friends and family across town or across continents and connect in real time. As much as everything FEELS like the world is going to end… ignore what you need to in order to be your best self. Help where you can, give money to the things you care about when you can, and remember that humanity has done some really cool things.
The way I see it, no matter how bad things are, it won’t distract me from the fact that every good thing matters. If not for me, if not for other people, then people who will come after. I’m only one person, but at least trying to do my part and being grateful for the things I have and receive, be it friends, a bed, food, a roof, a fun moment. And I can still accept the terrible state of so many things also.
Or in the words of David Graeber: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
It’s very important to understand that the people we are currently giving power want us to feel doomed, hopeless, powerless, disassociated, angry, hateful, and disconnected from the rest of humanity.
The people in power want to dominate every aspect of the human experience — putting us all into bubbles. They want us to be divided like how language once divided us in the past with their strategies and techniques (e.g. algorithms that dictate what we see, partisan media, anti-science denialism, and the use of religion and spirituality as a vehicle to manipulate broad groups of people).
The people in power aren’t winning, but they are convinced they will survive a societal collapse unscathed and in power — don’t let them believe this and rest easy with your defeat and doomerism or in other words: your passivity, and subservience.