Look, it's a mess out there and you can react to that mess by deciding everyone else is a moron or you could react to it by deciding most people are trying to get by with a different context than yours and start working the problem. Those are your choices pretty much, can't choose "no mess"

To be clear: you can have grief about the mess!! Grieving the mess is also a human response. But you'll feel a lot more alone if your default is "I'm the only one who Truly Understands The Mess" and a lot less alone if your default is "my fellow humans must also be in versions of The Mess" and guess what

The default is a learned skill.

@grimalkina What I see is... a little more complicated, I think, than either of those options:

  • Many people clearly do have a decent grasp of what's going on, and are at least withdrawing their participation to whatever extent they can. (Many are actively working to fight it.)
  • Many people do not really understand what's going on, and would be horrified if they did; they're more the victims of misinformation-structures than they are participants.
  • A very few people, typically those operating from positions of power (often not the most visible, though) know exactly what they're doing. Some of those may honestly believe they're doing what's right, but many (most?) of them suffer from an inability to look much beyond their own near-term gratification.

...and since I've rambled this far: my focus lately has been on "how can we help the first group to be most effective at maximally reducing the harm done by the last group?" ...or something along those lines.

TLDR: Good exists. Find it, and help it to prevail.

@woozle this was a very condescending way to reply to what's obviously a succinct social media post. You can engage with my larger work in social science to see the "complicated," but don't talk down to me
@woozle especially when your tldr is indistinguishable from my original post