flabberghaster OP wrote
Reply to comment by twovests in i think i genuinely have one of the world's worst brains by flabberghaster
I'm being a little hyperbolic but I've really been struggling, and sort of stewing and mad all the time, about the genocide against Palestine, about the abandonment of caring about the ongoing pandemic and treating it as a past tense thing, about the ongoing climate Apocalypse and failure to mitigate it, about the fact that every time I'm driving or walking around town I see a new place that a homeless encampment has been destroyed and all the trees cut down to stop them from being able to come back, about all the gestapo shit going on at the border and in our cities, and I want to do something, but I don't know what to do about any of it, anything I can think of doing seems so pathetic in the face of the scale of any of these problems, and how can anyone see any of these things and not want to do something but yet half of what you hear day to day is people cheering on this cruelty and inhumanity and callous disregard, and I just want to scream and cry and shake everyone by the shoulders and say how can we let this go on like this!!!!
cowloom wrote (edited )
Are there any leftist organizations in your area? I guarantee you you're not alone in the way you feel, and if you start organizing with other principled and disciplined people, you can do something about it.
Edited to add: There's nothing inherently wrong with the other suggestions here; it's good to have tactics to manage your own mental health in the world we live in. But, at the end of the day, taking care of yourself isn't going to actually stop the genocide, or any of the other problems you mentioned here.
One of my favorite quotes is from Angela Davis, and it goes, "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I cannot accept." I can accept that there are some things I can't change right now, but that doesn't mean that I accept them as immutable facts of life, or that I have to accept them on a moral level. Fixing society's problems is going to take a lot of time and effort, but that doesn't mean we should throw our hands in the air and give up, it means we need to get to work. And right now, not enough people are actually doing something.
I know lots of progressive people who are frustrated with the state of the world, but they stay at home and binge-watch TV because they think there's nothing they can do about it. Imagine the frightening progress we could make if every one of those people stood up and started organizing. Defeatism is the cancer that prevents the modern left from getting anywhere. People have to stop believing they're powerless if we want to get off the ground. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing, and I'm not going to stand by and watch the world burn. I'm going to grab a fire hose, but I'm going to need some help to actually put out the fire.
twovests wrote
Frankly I've been feeling a lot of the same thing. I had to scrap my post twice because I got really longwinded in my reply.
I think it's bad form not to ask first to someone venting-- but, would you appreciate an optimistic advice-y reply? Because I feel and have felt the same way. It occupies my thoughts because the horrors are all around us. But I've also found bits of hope that our world is not doomed.
If it means anything, I know how this feels. At least we're not lonely in feeling this way. :( 🫂
flabberghaster OP wrote
would you appreciate an optimistic advice-y reply
yes!
twovests wrote
The suffering is all engulfing and we individually are powerless to change the tide. We're small in the face of suffering. I won't try to deny that this is true!
But something (I think I heard from Ian Coldwater) that really resonated with me is something like this:
"You can't fight in every fight, but you have to be in a fight.
This is an optimistic statement, but it's also correct!
It gives me permission to focus on one thing, to catch myself before a rabbithole. It makes it pragmatic to have the "serenity to accept the things I cannot totally fix in the next 10 minutes".
Frankly, it helps me actually do things, which is good. Even if that's a $5 donation to UNRWA or whatever. You can do small things, and you can quantify them not against the goal of "Fix Every Problem", but against the goal of "Fix One Person's Problem". Thinking at the scale of person rather than humanity really helps.
And, if we're going to live in the timeline that ends up OK, we need to be optimistic, even if the pessimistic outcome is more likely.
If we end up in the "humanity turns rancid (fascist) and kills the globe" timeline... Well, at least you can make the death a bit more painless. That is good too.
That said, this is a lot of rationalizing and untangling a feeling.
The other half is exercise. I hate that the "eat healthy, exercise, and buy my nutritional supplement" people are mostly right, but exercise (specifically cardio) is really really important too. It's a direct lever on your brain. By exercising, you divert excess energy from the Anxiety Nodule and to all your other organs instead. I spent years going around therapists and it's criminal that not a single one of them told me to start jogging.
Sorry this is all over the place, but I feel so much about this.
tldr: You can't be in every fight, but you have to be in a fight. And you have to take care of yourself.
twovests wrote
P.S.: Posting, too. Posting is very good. I mean this very much.
It is magical and lucky that human beings have the ability to transmit thought through sigils. Ink or light, I think it's good that you can transmit this idea to people who are thousands of miles away.
Being able to express ideas of a global-scale on a global-scale is relatively new.
Posting is a big part of the most optimistic future. Even pessimistic, sad, angry, "How Did We Fuck This Up SO BAD" posts are important. You gotta post.
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