It feels all but certain that I won’t be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire. All of the wealth is going straight to the top. All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled. All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet. We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.
Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won’t be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn’t exist already.
I myself have disabilities (which I don’t think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job. The problem is that I just can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.
Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it? If so, what snapped you out of it?
You’ve gotten a lot of good suggestions, and this comment might get buried but I wanted to let you know that I was there 20 years ago. The future looked bleak, I had a shitty job that was sucking my life force away… one day as I was walking into work through an alley I saw someone had left a shopping cart there. I had the thought that I could just grab that cart and keep walking… turn my back on my former life and just live my way. I passed that cart for 3 weeks… then I realized that I either need to grab the cart or find a different plan for my life. I then looked at my options, found a career path, and then started working toward that plan. It was about 3 years of very hard work, with very little social life. But I stuck with my plan, got a better job and stayed on that career path. There have been setbacks, but looking back those were just blips.
Log out of social media, go outside, interact with real people. Life is not remotely as bad as all that, it just seems that way because social media has told you to be scared. Humans are extremely adaptable, we will overcome whatever the problems are.
Frankly, in my experience the social media has been unreasonably optimistic
Most of the struggles and worries come from real-life expriences
Meanwhile real people: oh you are disabled? Fuck off, and die alone!
Like, are you describing heaven or something?
Like, are you describing heaven or something?
No, just sane parts of the world.
This needs to be an auto comment on every post in Lemmy.
Humans are extremely adaptable, we will overcome whatever the problems are.
Many die so others get to live. I am sure the dead ones are happy for you🤡
It still gets cold outside. If you don’t work you’ll live there
Many people do work and live out there.
I agree with others that this reads as a person who’s chronically online. Perhaps bluntly saying “go outside” is insensitive, but it would not hurt to organically expose yourself to real people in real life instead of mentally ill people on the internet these days.
You mentioned getting a job - working is a great option, but truthfully nobody likes work, everyone who says so is coping.
However, putting yourself through challenges is what builds your character. You seem lost to me, so I think you should do these mundane boring little detours in life, because that’s where you’ll find what you actually want to do.
Honestly, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time in some online communities that are doom posting about everything. Do things suck right now? Yes, but they’ve literally sucked for as long as human society has existed. Things can always be better, or always be worse. However you can’t just sit around passively waiting for the times to change, or your life will suck.
The single biggest factor in whether your life is good or not is you and your actions. Don’t let things outside of your control convince you to give up. Do the best with what you have, and I promise you that you can find fulfillment and happiness in the life available to you.
Honestly, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time in some online communities that are doom posting about everything. Do things suck right now? Yes, but they’ve literally sucked for as long as human society has existed.
Ah. I was worried for a second he may have been stuck in places that are only pessimistic doom posting. Good to know that life sucks now, and has always sucked. That’s the positive message we need right now.
Either that or a god damned pitchfork…
Yeah… it feels like what my mother used to say when I was a kid. “People have it worse than you in <insert country here>.” Like okay, things suck and have always sucked. Doesn’t really nullify his feelings though that they suck right now and they’re having a hard time. Just feels kinda dismissive. The rest of it is fine but that part just bugs me.
It’s contextualizing, things suck, that’s real and gets acknowledged, not dismissed, they can suck more and probably do for other people, this is also real. It doesn’t make the suck you are experiencing magically better but it does put into a wider context and helps to show that you, likely, aren’t at rock bottom without any hope. Your actions and headspace matter. They won’t magically make everything great, but they can easily be the difference between bad and legitimately “ok” or better.
It sounded like OP wanted practical advice instead of sympathy. In practice you need to make your own luck by playing the hand you get dealt in life. There are many things you can’t control and dwelling on them is almost never productive.
You’re right, I’ve definitely been doomscrolling way too much.
I think the biggest thing holding me back is the idea that it is too late to do anything because my life could effectively be over in less than a few months. I see lots of people dooming about fascist purges and the end of societal function and think, “Well, how do I know for sure that they’re wrong? I don’t know enough about society to make a solid prediction either way.”
And so my brain thinks “There is a reasonable chance that my life is over (or at least the ladder to make any life progress gets pulled up) in a few months. If everything I do is all for naught, then why bother?” It’s a belief that I have no long-term agency.
I think that in order to move forward, I have to disprove the idea of me being targeted in a fascist purge and complete economic collapse happening anytime soon with reasonable certainty. Are those sound predictions, or are they just nightmares dreamt up by a bunch of armchair historian doomers exaggerating how quickly these things happen? Is the theory that the “day one mass deportations” include all known political dissidents actually possible, or are the logistics too insane to work? That’s what I have to figure out, or else I will likely continue to believe that I am helpless.
In other words, I think it’s quite plausible that I’m reading misinformation, but the fact that I don’t know it for sure is preventing me from dismissing it outright.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply!
First off, let me say that I see a close to zero chance that society will collapse in a matter of months or that there will be mobs out to kill disabled people.
America has reached a turning point and is certainly starting to spiral, but these kinds of radical changes you’re talking about take a long time to happen. People revolt violently when they can no longer afford bread, and the US is nowhere close to that.
Quality of life is declining, job opportunities are diminishing, but America is so far away from bread lines that it’s just not going to happen in the short term. Remember the elites DON’T WANT social collapse. That’s very bad for business! They will gamble with our future and with the prosperity of the country for a little more over and over, but they want to keep the system up and held together with duct tape as long as possible or their profits fall too.
So yes, there is real turmoil, but nothing is coming to an end tomorrow, next month, or next year. Keep educating yourself, but stay positive and do what you can to enact change.
I recommend the It Could Happen Here podcasts from after election day. I’m not caught up, but the three I listened to acknowledge the terror of the situation we’re in while also trying to put things like mass deportation in context. It’s going to be so unbelievably expensive. So no I don’t think dissidents like you or myself are on the list, yet.
Just my 2 cents, but the logistics part is substantial. Our jails and prisons are already overflowing (with the highest incarceration rate of the global north) so there’s no quick process that is feasible. We should have plenty of warning as to what’s coming down the works… as for having the means and ability to do anything about it? We shall see.
You’re not helpless unless you don’t take action. Build your community and celebrate the small wins. Find meaningful work(even volunteering) and build more connections to others. Having some of that to fall back on has kept me saner lately, and now I’m driven to focus more on that, least for the short term.
Consider the fact that you can change your life slowly with concerted effort. It helps me!
Yeah this is catastophizing. Sure it’s bad. Does it mean certain death? No. Is it the quest country to live in? Certainly not. Just stay focused. Find the best job you can, and don’t be a slave to them. It’s business, not family. You’ll make it through. While you’re making some money and have some mental and financial bandwidth, think about your next move. Be patient and try not to panic. It’s going to be okay in the long term.
However there definitively have been times that were better before they got much worse, and I’d argue that today is one of those times
On big difference today has compared to, say, 10 years ago, is that 10 years ago there was much more hope for… well… hope. Today? Well, things are going to get much worse before they get better, if they ever do.
There is nothing that says the future must always get better just because historically it for the most part have. Sometimes the most rational thing to do is to indeed prepare for the possibility that things will get much worse. Otherwise you end up with a situation like how people today wonder why more Jews didn’t move out from pre-war germany
People think that problems shouldn’t exist, and that the authorities should have fixed it, and it’s killing their motivation to live.
There is no authority. There is how you want to live your life, and who you want to be. We are in the anarchy. You live your live according to your principles, and that works for you or doesn’t. We all want and can sometimes even have a nice situation, but underneath it, nature is metal - and we haven’t “grown out of it”.
Guillotine Party!
Universal healthcare, securities tax, punitive top-tier income tax. We can get rid of these parasites like we got rid of the robber barons, or we can do it like the French got rid of their first and second estate.
Don’t do a blue collar job. Go into a trade school and do that instead. Drive a truck, be an electrician, plumber, whatever. These are still good jobs and you actually might be happier doing something like this when compared to working in an office. At least you feel like you are doing something and you can see what you accomplish right away.
I’m much older than you and have been working in an office since I can remember. I have been really thinking about doing or at least learning a trade even though that would mean a huge pay cut for me.
The amounts of copium in this thread are extinction-level.
Everything you just said is 100% valid and you are simply correct.
The thing is, it’s not a measure of a healthy mind to thrive in a profoundly sick society where the worst of the worst have won long ago.
There’s this thing called depressive realism which posits that depressed people, by and large, perceive reality much closer to how it really is than neurotypical people.
Essentially, “normal” people have an (innate or learned) positivity bias. Which is usually a good thing. People like us are the outliers.
But positivity bias in a world where it’s actually harmful is another thing. The majority of people are walking headlong into their own extinction while going “Ehh, it’s not so bad”, while we should ALL be positively irate and picketing the homes (not companies) of our owner class 24/7.
But it hasn’t happened yet and at this point I don’t know how bad things need to get before people realize what’s going on.
As long as people have something to entertain themselves and something to eat, nothing will change. Even the Ancient Romans knew that: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.”.
Ah so that’s why bread and games increases loyalism in Civ6 ;)
Mass starvation is historically the usual trigger for revolution. Not always though.
Yeah when people are back to eating grass and dying of malnutrition usually they eat there way through the roots of civilization.
Only those that understand a problem even have a chance to solve it. Those who refuse to understand a problem (often for comfort) are not helpful at best, but usually actively harmful.
The problem of suffering runs far deeper than “Rich vs Poor”. We are all trapped inside constantly decaying bodies that are barely capable of survival. This constant decay leads to almost constant pain even billionaires can not avoid. And then there is our anxious brain worrying about all sorts of things that might or might not happen. Yes, all of this is more bearable inside a villa than inside a tent, but it is still abhorrent. This does not mean the “Rich vs Poor” struggle is not worth while. It is, because there is tremendous preventable suffering within this struggle. This struggle, however, is just a tiny fraction of the problem that is called the human condition.
To those who seek to understand the problem of suffering, i can recommend this video. It eases you into the horror of being alive.
I enjoy eating and air conditioning. Gotta work for it.
Yeah, I mean it all really depends on how you define work… people don’t usually quantify their free time properly
MVW… Minimal Viable Work. Companies think only they can deliver shit? Just deliver the bare minimum… as they
don’tdo with their customers.Companies don’t care us, why should we care about them.
Use them to meet your ends as best you can. If you are truly working your hardest you should be able to get something you need. Hopefully you can have things you want. We’re born into this and have little control over humanity.
You know what’s better than the bare minimum? Give your work more than they expect, but keep some of your potential to yourself. Only give work 70% and keep that other 30% of yourself for yourself. You get all of the benefits of being an overachiever with none of the drawbacks.
You know your job is as safe as it can be because you’re exceeding expectations, and you can reap the bonuses and pride that brings but you still have remaining capacity to do more in your personal time. Plus if you’re not completely applying yourself every day you can hit the grindstone on a really bad day when SHTF and really come out looking like a hero
So, as someone that was homeless 3 times already and went from that to doing ok for myself enough to at least have some vacation and self autonomy.
Find something that only you, can do.
That was the advice that worked for me. Don’t try for the specific jobs that make money or even make you happy doing it but something that you knew if people thought about it, they think of your name to get it done.
It’s stressful and a shitty life sometimes but I know people rely on me. And it’s ok to take time to figure it out and make bold decisions to get there. Stuff you wouldn’t expect to do can be a great starting place.
I couldn’t afford my existence in America ( got bullied out of my STEM field because it made other stressed people feel better) so I looked for jobs that would pay for it for me. That’s how I discovered the circus and cruise lines. Food and lodging and people trying to get by. From there I found something they needed fixed and learned how to do it.
You need to be willing to change. And probably willing to go your own path in a way that will mean a life different than you ever knew. Nothing that worked for anyone else will absolutely work for you, we are all too individual and different.
But that’s why you can do something. Maybe you can work with leather and make aprons that no one else can. Maybe you can operate a remote station alone better than others cause you like the quiet. Maybe you can land planes in Boise Idaho cause you don’t mind living there and like planes. Maybe you can run a cult of personality where people think you are their mother God…
I dunno it’s worked for others but it’s up to find what you can do and how far from the norm you are willing to go.
Normal is a myth of America anyways. Go do you.
I continue to live because the goal of the system you described is to kill us. As long as we still breathe, they haven’t yet won completely, and we still have an opportunity to chuck spanners into the gears to try and slow the enshittification. The bastards in power are the smuggest, shittiest, most vile excuses for human life on this planet, and any drop of satisfaction we can deny them is a victory.
I have personal goals in life I want to reach and I’m going to do whatever it takes to do so. Try laying out your life goals… What do I want to do 5, 10, 20 years in the future? Then you make a plan to achieve those goals, keeping in mind employment with inevitably be on that path. It can be seen as a means to an end or more depending on how you shape your view.
Do you want to do a minimum wage job where you feel like you’re a worthless drone, or do you want a more meaningful career that could maybe even turn in to something more? You have the option to pave your own path. If you look at a job as nothing more than wage slavery, then those are the only jobs you are going to find. The companies that pay well and/or offer good benefits are definitely out there and they want people with skills who are motivated and reliable. Everyone has the chance for their big break, but it will never come if you don’t work for it. Also not every place to work is a faceless corporation, there’s a lot of small businesses out there needing talented people too, and those are often the sweetest deals as long as the business owner(s) care to keep their people happy. There’s such a thing as working for a company that you believe in and want to see succeed for a greater reason than bumping up your own paycheck.
There’s also such a thing as working a job and doing what you like doing at the same time. I work with computers. Do it at work, do it at home too. I enjoy all of it, I lean new stuff every day and I make a good living doing what I consider to be fairly mentally stimulating but also rewarding work. Sure, it is pretty stressful at times, but there’s always a light around the corner.
I’ve found that things have a way of working out, no matter how shitty things might look. Live your life for you and the ones you love, if you have to grease some corporate palms along the way or do some jobs you don’t necessarily love to get by, that’s just the way of things. The system is just kinda designed to work like that. Are you going to let that stop you? I personally say hell fucking no.
I see one of the most powerful and defining traits of human beings to be our adaptability. You have the power to handle just about anything the world has to throw at you, whether you realize it or not.
I’m not sure if you have any kind of faith, but it honestly helps. I’m not a religious person but I’ve found that having faith in myself and in the ones I love the most to be a very rewarding/fulfilling part of my life. I’ve found you have to find your own light in life, no one else will necessarily do that for you. Building a plan for your future and executing it is daunting and there will be adversity, but you can handle it. Balance out the hard/mentally taxing stuff with whatever it is that makes you truly happy.
The system has failed, but we still have to live within it. There’s a positive though, if we play our cards right and use the system to our advantage to the best of our ability, we will have enough smart and skilled like-minded people down the road and we can band together to beat the system. The next revolution, whatever form it takes, will require all kinds of different talent from many different walks of life.
I have personal goals in life I want to reach and I’m going to do whatever it takes to do so. Try laying out your life goals… What do I want to do 5, 10, 20 years in the future?
As a relatively young person but older than OP myself, this is exactly what I did to get out of the slump of knowing how the system is stacked against us all. I set myself goals, and kept updating my goals. I had a 6 month, 1 year and 3 year plan at any point. Longer than 3 years it’s hard to set specific goals because too much can change in that time frame. I always had goals to work towards and make myself a better version of me. If you can continually be a better version of yourself than you were before then you’ve won the game of life
I feel you, but you need to remember that the world is generally a pretty chaotic place and predicting the future when complex systems pass tipping points and transition to new equilibria (as they are at the moment) is pretty difficult.
Invest in yourself, your ability to cope with new and unfamiliar things, and build resilience. Resilience being the ability to bounce forward when you hit rocky patches. Don’t expect to bounce back and end up where you left off, but learn to adjust to the chaos where you need to.
Develop your capabilities until you have a sense of being a competent, worthwhile and dependable person outside of the circus going on around us. Someone that isn’t quite so dependent on the big bad system we are often forced to be part of.
“toss me into a torture facility”
What? Step away from the internet for a while.
