Is losing faith/hope in humanity something others experience as well? Is it due to the way i perceive things (i.e. my entourage)? Am I in a bubble and I don't see it? How do I get out? Should I be in a bubble to keep my sanity? How do I build those filters?
Please let me know your thoughts and how you're handling it.
Things that are making me lose hope:
- climate change or how society/corporations/governments are destroying the environment and/or are barely doing anything. All I think about sometimes is how we'll begin to see famines spreading across poor countries until it's all too late... Yet Elon buying Twitter is still in the news till this day.
- social inequality is rising year on year. inflation is a killer for poor families that are barely making ends meet. Yet most corporations are announcing lots of profits and they barely give a sh*t about their workers.
- workers: all I hear is there's a shortage of workers. shortage, shortage, shortage. But they rarely talk about salaries and wages being so low.
- billionaires: ugh, enough about these megalomaniacs.
- media: it's feeding people rubbish all the time. All. The. Time.
- corruption: it's so wide spread, people have become desensitized. war... famines... I could go on...
People in America are "losing hope in humanity" because of things like the impact of climate change in Bangladesh. But folks in Bangladesh know that the 15% of GDP that's at risk under an RCP 4.5 scenario (https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-globa...) is actually only a few years of growth, compared to the immense strides the country has made over the last few decades.
I'm quite partial to this prayer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer
> God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
It was popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous, but I think it conveys an important truth about reconciling yourself to the human condition.
Nine years later it's been the best decision of my life to get a foothold in a place where people cringe when I explain to them what a 'furbaby' is. It's the banality of people's lack of perspective out there, and total deference to weird shit like not continuing your family in lieu of a dog which lives like ten years and then sadposting about mental health on social media when it realistically dies which got to me the most. The predictability of people's depression whenever festival season was over and they came down hard at once off of drug binges, and then september sadposting... like yeah ok not my culture anymore
It's just the whole approach to mental health out there in general isn't "go get some sun, get exercise, learn how to make yourself some good healthy food and maybe get laid when you're healthy enough to be attractive. Put on a happy face in hard times anyways". It's eating massive amounts of antidepressants and then all the metabolites are detectable in ocean outfall being studied as a potential pollutant and nobody sees anything wrong with this. It's the contrast between being the most privileged people on the planet who have everything and live in the nicest countries killing themselves the most and foisting all that misery on other people, versus people who have very little and still appreciate stuff like their family.
Great to step out of that and realize people with materially less stuff are happier somehow.
Keene attacks one particular model, but there are numerous economic analyses, none of which suggest a setback for places like Bangladesh exceeding more than 5-10 years of lost growth over the next 89 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch...
Local action, local attention. Focus on the things you can help make better.
PS: I'm 58... it's always been like this, yet we find ways. Look at how fast electrification of transport is moving now. Renewables are growing at a rate that I wouldn't have thought possible in my youth. Soon, the focus will shift from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, and into, "What can we do with all this cheap energy to make life better?".
That's not going to happen. People basically don't understand where energy comes from, or what's entailed with an "energy transition". See this lecture for a good overview: https://jancovici.com/en/video/can-we-save-energy-jobs-and-g...
What to do with all the cheap energy is already a challenge in some places to the extent they have to pay people to use it.
If what you mean is "what do we do with off-peak power generation" then yes, there will be some of that, to the extent that we don't:
a) fill the need for baseload generation with some form of nuclear power
b) find ways to radically improve the efficiency of transmission and storage of excess power
But I suspect that for the most part, what will happen is some nuclear, some overbuilding of renewable capacity, soaking up some of the excess with storage (battery, gravity, heat) and transmission inefficiencies, giving local/regional off-peak rate discounts, and simply wasting whatever is left over.
Off-peak power discounts might end up prompting additional industrial and compute utilization, but that's dependent on additional infrastructure investment (that by definition will be largely idle during peak power use) so the discount has to be pretty steep to make it worthwhile.
Avoid unproductive worry, but if you want to actually participate in organized efforts to improve things, that's good. Accept that there are only one or two problems you will be able to focus on, ignore the rest.
If God exists, presumably all will work out as he wills. If not, nothing matters beyond enjoying an ethically lived life, so enjoy life, be ethical, and know you've done your part for others.
Stop consuming media that draws your attention to things you are doing nothing about. If you participate in organized efforts to improve things, then you may consume some related media to inform your efforts.
Seriously, just push the off button. This will not hinder your ability to vote or support worthy causes. A limited amount of research before voting or taking on a new project is enough. You don't need to look at that stuff every day.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference"
Even as an atheist, the sentiment is crucial for navigating a complex world full of both beauty and horror.
If you have no power to change anything, you're helpless and it's also hopeless, but for the opposite reason.
In between, there's a balance. Do the best you can to help with what you can. Let the rest go - you can't fix it, so you can't try to carry the responsibility for it.
As a theist, I'm trying to find and maintain the same balance as s1artibartfast. Especially "wisdom to know the difference"...
“[John] von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann’s advice. It’s made me a very happy man ever since. But it was von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility!” — Richard Feynman
Corporations are creations of government, if they don't serve a public purpose they should not be permitted to exist.
I don't really see the value in having millions of entities working on a goal such as changing the course of climate change in their own (and thus inefficient) way. I think it's much better to let these entities focus on what they do best, and then take money from them, and use it to further these goals in a much more optimal way.
"War..famines". Again, go back and you can find many examples of these over the last few decades. In fact, I would argue that we have less wars now in general (Can you imagine surviving during the era of World Wars?).
I think it is mostly the fact that we have all our basic needs met and now we can think about the problems in the world. I am in a similar situation where I want to do something for others and best way to start small and help others with whatever you can. Volunteer for causes that you care about and go from there.
There is a lot of joy in helping others and we sometimes just forget that as we are so tied up in our own little bubbles.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the issues we are facing, especially with regard to climate change. This is not just "bad things have always been happening", but change on the level the planet has not see in literally millions of years https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/All_pala...
Just one quick example: look at lake Mead right now http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
We are already having energy issues in the US and we're looking at a near term future where there is not enough water to run the Hoover dam. This is already impacting people in the US and it will get worse.
Within our life time we will very likely see an ice-free arctic. The blue ocean event will have major impacts on weather patterns and we currently can't really predict exactly how this will pan out, but there is a lot of extreme risk here.
Complex systems, such as our climate and our economy are remarkably resilient. Just like the human body, a lot of unexpected change can happen and it can still function shockingly well. However there are limits and once things start to breakdown the escalate quickly. What we're seeing know is just a tiny, tiny preview of what's to come.
Let's ignore climate. We are still part of the 6th largest mass extinction event in the history of life on this planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Let's ignore the biosphere. First of all your examples of "it's happened before" are all in the last century, a blink of an eye on species level time scale. While you are correct that there has always been war, and plenty of examples of extremely destructive war, we are a very close to potential global nuclear war.
The "this is fine" meme dominates HN thinking, but this is largely because the HN crowd cannot accept the existential terror that is involved in facing these issues. In the long run I still hold that this deep denial is more psychologically harmful that working towards acceptance.
That song is effective for me because those are events one learns about independently but, absent the song, I would never have thought of them unfolding before my eyes.
Don't forget the line towards the end: "But when we are gone / It will still burn on and on...".
As to your health and your outlook, make sure you have the physicals covered: eat well, sleep well, get regular checkups, stay active, curb or quit tobacco and alcohol. Have the emotional side covered too: stay social, indulge the creative outlets, keep in touch with family and people who love you.
And avoid media that trades on gloom and doom scrolling. We are primed to see the negative, so you have to actively seek out the positive, to counter that bias.
At the same time, there's a numbers game that can be played with this.
For example, worldwide refugee status has exploded over the last few decades. People don't become displaced because things are going great. Life expectancy has increased worldwide, but in some places like the US, it's started to decrease again, and birthrate is now below replacement rate. Do we even need to cite environmental statistics? Sure, they're maybe better in the US than in the early 70s but in terms of global effects they're probably worse than in the early 70s. It also seems strange to be talking about genocide given what's going on in Ukraine and other places in the world lately.
Things like life expectancy and child mortality are strange too. They were in the better direction circa 1930s-40s and that didn't stop WWII. Sure, things are better than that now but my point is that these discussions are a bit difficult because we as a society don't have a good handle on statistics that matter. As much as I get annoyed with Taleb, I think he has a point that sometimes these kinds of political discussions have a flavor of "look things are great if you just accept my model of the world," ignoring whether the model is correct.
I wouldn't say I've lost my faith in humanity; what I would say is that I've been surprised good and bad over the course of my life by how good and bad people can be in general. I also think that it's easy to forget that as good as one person's experience of life has been, so too can someone else's experience be equally bad. Average experiences are somewhat meaningless at some level; I don't think a good life makes a bad life acceptable.
The human bias is to pessimism. Sure. The world sucks. It always has and always will. Ukraine is going through hell. I saw a program about miners in Congo whose job is to go down into deep holes, not much wider than their shoulders, that not infrequently cave in and bury them alive. It's good money though, at $5 a day, so, there's that. If the Guardian is to be believed, there are 40 million slaves alive today, more than the entire 250 year history of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Or, maybe, to remain rational, this bias needs an explicit counter. No matter how good things get, we humans will always be prepared to get really depressed about what's not working. There's a war. There are several wars actually. But fewer people by every measure are dying in them. Cold comfort to the guy whose entire family, including his 3 month old baby daughter, died yesterday in Russian missile strike, but, hey, fewer babies dying in war, I can't see that's not something to celebrate.
On the one hand, ignorance of reality by avoidance just postpones the problem;
on the other, there is sufficient difference here, and from a public of comparatively discreet selection (potentially actually quite high), to show that "losing faith about humanity" is a statistical and stochastic phenomenon - facts do not show only "pure doom".
Certainly there are things to feel outraged about. But with some news sites it feels commercially manipulative.
GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
[1] Video version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaVaF6TkSUU (highly recommended due to voice)
[2]Text version - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata
I find that spending time with people, getting to know them as individuals, lets you appreciate the value each one of us has. We're almost all pretty decent people who happen to get caught in bad patterns when we get together in larger groups especially because there are a few bad eggs who spoil the mix. The more you appreciate us all as individuals, the more you can separate our societal flaws out as problems we need to solve without writing off humanity along with the problems.
And remember that whenever you're "being connected with" by a company (and some people), it's not an even deal: they're attempting to co-opt your mental capacity for their own ends.
If you imagine every corporate message you see, from adverts to tweets to emails are from an acquaintance deeply into an MLM scheme who wants to talk, you won't be far from the mark.
For example, if people are more conservative about consumption, it would lead to prices falling, i.e. CPI deflation. However, central banks have a mandate to keep inflation at 2%. They fix this by issuing more money, and lending it to those who consume more. This causes both climate catastrophe and wealth inequality, and is against the free will of people, who want to limit consumption to save the planet. Because of this, it's literally impossible to solve the climate crisis under the current monetary system.
Workers, billionaires, media, corruption.. It's all there to support the same fallacy of overconsumption and overproduction. It all starts from central banks. Poor people lose and billionaires who are close to banks win.
This system is fundamentally broken. We all vote for more of it, because of our own incentives. Bitcoin is the hard stop to this madness.
I find lots of solid advice in other replies, but I add:
-Read or listen to the book "Factfulness". Or if you are impatient, read a summary of it. You'll get a much better sense of the bigger picture.
News systematically emphasize bad events. This is not due to a conspiracy, it's a result of interaction of multiple factors:
1-Progress is steady and slow while disasters are sudden and newsworthy. (Mostly)
2-People tend to care more about bad news. This creates a vicious cycle between news publishers and consumers and bad news get more and more attention.
3-Same thing happens in social media.
Over the past few years I've stopped using news and most of social media. The only communities I interact with are a few Whatsapp/Telegram groups of my real friends, and Hacker News.
Please don't forget to check "Factfulness"
https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...
Some could have suggested: "less news and more analysis".
Problem: history is far from encouraging for people diffident on humanity. :)
In fact, I was tempted to write some work about "Progressive history". This is, on the contrary, encouraging.
I'm now exploring spirituality outside of religion for the first time. It's helped greatly with the anxiety and existential dread.
Weirdly, I have a different recommendation. Try to find an online game you like, and then devote yourself to it. I came out of my dota 2 years with a few more friends and few less points of anxiety.
Life has always been hard for most people most of the time. There is nothing about the premise of existence that promises it will be easy or comfortable.
The past 50-80 years have been incredible in terms of advancement, poverty (lowest ever globally), health.
Turn off the news, get off social media. These things are not designed to give you a balanced perspective. They are designed to drive advertising revenue.
Go and live.
If you want to feel better about the world, go and do something that improves the lives of others.
Personally, I’m very lucky/fortunate/happy: great family and friends, in a longterm relationship, a stacked social calendar, good job and generous pay, a home I like in a city I love, and the luxury of financial security.
Even still, I can’t help that think the world is falling apart at the seams, or at least heading in that direction. It sounds bleak, but I really have absolutely no faith in elected politicians, billionaires, corporations, the media, our system of democracy, really anything institutional. This isn’t based on some political ideology or a pendulum swinging to the right/left, or some “both sides”/“run to the center” plea (Maybe controversially, I think the “center” is only good at maintaining the status quo, and I think the status quo is not sustainable).
I’m only in my 20s, I am more than personally fulfilled, yet I can’t shake that feeling that everything in the world is going to collapse spectacularly.
No matter who advocates for change, it seems modern society has adapted to either selectively sideline it or co-opt it, with no real change in either direction (see: healthcare in the US for an example; both sides dislike the current system completely, which itself was a compromise around keeping the existing private system, and we’re still in the same mess with even less political will to fix it). My opinion is that polarization is not a “cause” of all of this. It’s a symptom. Nothing is changing and most everyone is unhappy with the way things are.
What I’ve found helpful is making peace with that, in the same way that life itself is temporary. We’re only here for a short time, and so are our institutions. It’s still not a solution, and I still fear for the future, but accepting there’s only so much I can control ( / aspire to control) has helped. It doesn’t feel so much like “giving up” so much as “being practical”, or so I’ve convinced myself.
But hey, if/when the world gets even worse or outright collapses, at least I won’t be too shocked.
- Try and become a child again (when I didn't have these worries/frustration). Concentrate on what's in my control. Don't worry about things outside my control.
- Stop reading the news. A family crisis after the shit-show that was 2016 clarified what _actually_ affected me.
- Stoicism. "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius (recommended many times on HN) helped. That what he wrote 2000 years ago is so relevant today made this stick.
- Appreciating how fortunate I am (good job, health, life). I'm mostly happy, I try and act this way. Cut myself off when I'm going off on a rant. "Thinking happy thoughts" in other words, it's not nice for anyone else listening to doom-and-gloom. This also helps with the next topic:
- Friends. Putting in some effort with (not yet friends) at work, on walks, meetup etc - sometimes you end up with a few more friends.
- Distraction. Keeping busy with other things. Preferably creative or in-the-moment things.
You aren't going to fix the worlds problems. By _all_ means help and do your part, however getting angry and upset is only going to make you unhappy.
e.g. with all war in Ukraine, yes it's horrific. Perhaps you are in a position to help - offering a home, help or financial support? Sympathy and understanding for people you know who might be affected, reach out to them.
Of course the situation is far from the ideal. The earlier you burst those numerous (to some uncountable) illusions, the better it will be for your objectivity and the less you will be scorched by experience - just drop prejudice, do not fall in an opposite one.
It is a duty of yours, in case you live in a democratic system, to reserve part of your time to study and try to understand those issue-rich contexts. This will increasingly protect you from rush judgement. In a way, it will help you see why those others («humanity») have difficulties apparent in their statements and actions in grasping the matter.
The human system is very far from perfect, as an understatement. That is the space in a very gross description: now study its details and laws and hunt for the solutions, as you should. Do not dream, outside some luxury moments in leisure.
And on the emotional side, you are supposed to let what you "see" orient you, not affect you - you are in the field, not at the theater.
The dinosaurs probably didn't feel bad about letting a space rock hit Earth; it just happened. Who am I to say whether they could have done something differently to not die out? Is it their fault they didn't have hands to build Mars escape pods? (Perhaps they did.) Is it humans' fault that we're greedy and dumb enough to burn said dinosaurs? Would the dinosaurs have scorched the skies too, if they had the dexterity? (Perhaps they did.)
If no space junk hit Earth and the dinosaurs didn't die out, would I even have a brain to formulate this sentence and a laptop to send it to you? Perhaps this good/bad categorization humans spend so much time on doesn't actually matter. Sometimes chance and change are useful. We can't reliably predict the weather tomorrow; why do we expect fixing Earth is something in our ability? Because it gives you something to lose. A fight to unite behind.
Change what you can change, and accept the things you cannot. The true nature of humans is probably much simpler than anyone makes it out to be.
- the climate has always been changing and it always will but humans and most other species survived. It takes an extinction level event to make a big dent in the biosphere
- social inequality is far less now than it has been in earlier times when people often lived or died at the whim of some aristocrat
- there is no shortage of workers, only a shortage of people who want to do a given job for a given reward
- there have always been 'billionaires' and there will always be since having a lot of resources makes it easier to gain more resources. Some billionaires do interesting things with their resources, others lie on them like Smaug. As long as there are enough resources left for the non-billionaires I don't care about them other than doing my best to not feed them if I can
- the media is rubbish. Don't criticise the media, be the media. Corporate media doesn't bite the hand that feeds it so just avoid them (see above).
- corruption is everywhere and has always been, it is not for nothing that Utopia was named so - it does not exist. Just like I try not to feed the billionaires I try not to feed corrupt institutions, occasionally breaking a law or two instead of giving in to their demands. That means they have a stick to hit me with if and when they want but knowing that they always will be able to find that stick means it doesn't make any difference to me
And compared to most humans that lived before us we can basically enjoy life on easy mode, so be thankful for the unique times we live in. If reincarnation is a thing I figure I must have done something spectacular in a previous life to be rewarded with this incarnation.
I may not have faith in humanity, but I do have faith in evolution. I see progress as driven by energy and our earth as a giant battery that humans found a way to tap. This discovery has led to great gains and placed us in the perch of privilege we now enjoy, but as the battery runs low we will certainly experience the harsh effects of deprivation. We will have to make changes in the way we live while the battery recharges, and before it is charged again we will have gone. But someone will come after us and the game of life will progress.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/2447275-world-reserve-curre...
(ps: there are some very likeable thoughts in other comments here)
Suggested Read "A guide to the Good Life" by William Irvine
Begin to see? I think I've found you problem. Life is not a Disney movie. Imagine, as a thought exercise, you are living in the Middle Ages and are just now realizing it.
Now, go tilt at them windmills.
Consume less media. That will deal with reducing attention on the other points.
Recognize what you can change and don't dwell on what you can't. Focus on what you can.
But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in!
I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into? ’‘I wonder,’ said Frodo. ‘But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.’‘No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that’s a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it – and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We’ve got – you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end? ’
‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.’‘And then we can have some rest and some sleep,’ said Sam. He laughed grimly. ‘And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning’s work in the garden. I’m afraid that’s all I’m hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, or course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: “Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring! “ And they’ll say: “Yes, that’s one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave. wasn’t he, dad?” “Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.”’
‘It’s saying a lot too much,’ said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. ‘Why, Sam,’ he said, ‘to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad? “
’‘Now, Mr. Frodo,’ said Sam, ‘you shouldn’t make fun. I was serious. ’‘So was I,’ said Frodo, ‘and so I am. We’re going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: “Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.”
’‘Maybe,’ said Sam, ‘but I wouldn’t be one to say that. Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he’s the hero or the villain?
Don't worry, there's always somebody who's lost much more than you.
Really study history; the bad stuff, the politics, war, equality, environment, etc. Whatever you are worried about. Is it really so bad now? Is it that different? - No to both. Yes, specific things from nuclear weapons to the internet are new. No, the arrival of, and volatility caused by, some new major thing is not. You cannot expect constant improvement with no backsliding. The graph of progress is a very noisy line with ups and downs of various durations, but positive long term average slope. This year or decade or century might be a little worse in some area, but you can't extrapolate that into a slide into the abyss.
Then, as other have said: Stop worrying about what you can't change.
Pragmatically figure out how you are going to proceed and live in a way you can be proud of. This you have control over. You can make your family, workplace, neighborhood a slightly better place. If a couple billion people did this, and they are, the universe will not be worse for it.
When you find yourself in a position that you can do something positive about something, do it! But to do so, you have to be watching and ready. If you've squandered all your energy, money, health worrying about the problems you cannot change, you won't be able to take advantage of those, usually small, but sometimes not, opportunities.
There are lot of groups that like to appeal to fear and anger and hate, even violence, in support of an often valid cause. They would like to make you feel that if you don't join in on those beliefs you are the enemy. They often make hysterical and absolutist claims. Doom and gloom. They would love to steal your hope. Don't fall for it. A cause that professes hate, anger, guilt, etc. as a solution is certainly not going to be effective in it's stated "goal", but it is likely not even truly committed to it. The soldiers of these groups shout and throw nothing but problems in your face. Many of these problems are real. Sometimes exaggerated a bit. Or a lot. Or fabricated - doesn't matter to them. But then they say roughly, "if we don't fix this right now, the world will end!", or "its the worst its ever been". That's what's not true. But they never ever mention progress or good news, and will outright lie to avoid it. Because then it would be balanced; the world would be OK on average.
It's hard to ignore the huge amount of noise coming from these sort of exploitative groups when it hammers you every day. We get to see all the bad stuff happening from the entire world instantaneously. But we get good news from very few sources.
See those mechanisms for what they are and realize that it's not hiding from the worlds' problems "in a bubble" to keep your sanity. It's rising above some fundamentally unhealthy forces and propaganda. It's a workaround for an information feed that's heavily biased for negativity.
Generally considered the 'doomer' political circle. No proper political alignment, often seen as purple or populist. Also not necessarily a pessimistic world view.
>s it due to the way i perceive things (i.e. my entourage)?
Most likely yes, but can be independently derived.
>Am I in a bubble and I don't see it? How do I get out? Should I be in a bubble to keep my sanity? How do I build those filters?
Everyone is in a bubble. Imagine a venn diagram of things you know and things you dont know. That's your bubble. Being in a bubble isn't inherently bad. Being in an echo chamber is bad and the probability you are in an echo chamber is very high. To evaluate if you're in an echo chamber, pretend to say something you dont agree with inside your echo chamber just see how it's reacted to. "climate change is false for X reason"
>- climate change or how society/corporations/governments are destroying the environment and/or are barely doing anything. All I think about sometimes is how we'll begin to see famines spreading across poor countries until it's all too late... Yet Elon buying Twitter is still in the news till this day.
Climate change is often the first one in the doomer field lately. Take extinction rebellion for example, or the maya calendar or y2k doomers. They are all climate change now. Their climate change echo chamber is quite problematic.
All this 10 years left or various ultimatums are absurd. They've been saying it'll be 10 years for decades. We're on take 5 or so. In reality climate change is never going to properly threaten human life. We are going to do what is right at the right time and it'll be solved.
We have probably 30-40 years to solve this problem without any major controversy.
>- social inequality is rising year on year. inflation is a killer for poor families that are barely making ends meet. Yet most corporations are announcing lots of profits and they barely give a sh*t about their workers.
Totally a problem. Will inflation lead to mass death or something? No. Social inequality is a problem that is really hard to solve. It derives heavily from the ability to take of debt. "credit score" disallows the peasants from taking on debt and therefore end up missing out on a force multiplier that leads to social inequality. How do you fix this? Given poor people debt? We saw how that worked out after glass-steagal repeal.
No society in history has ever had a system that eliminated social inequality and frankly I don't think there ever will be for quite some time. If someone got into fights in high school, got their 51% and gets blackout drunk every day after their mcjob. Their outcome in society must be less than a doctor who did all the extra work to be qualified to be a doctor and saves lives. It builds an incentive system to build people into doctors and not mcjobs.
>- workers: all I hear is there's a shortage of workers. shortage, shortage, shortage. But they rarely talk about salaries and wages being so low.
This actually has to social equality measures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#/media/File:US_La...
In the 1950s before equality ~85% of men were employed. 35% of women. Overall about 60% of society were employed. Today men are around 65% and women are 55%. Yet still around 60% in total. So what happened was we displaced useless men into homelessness and took useful women and told them not to have babies. Which happened within a generation. Birthrates in 1950 compared to 1980 is night a day bad.
Tons of benefits from doing this. We have a more productive and more useful population. Egalitarianism was tremendously successful and the few countries that dont do this today are harming themselves. But what did that do? It produced more workers in supply but total jobs more or less stayed the same. Demand didnt change. Simply supply vs demand. Workers are going to be paid less.
We do have some consequences to deal with... but absolutely nobody is considering going back. There's great news here for workers and it's just starting now. It's the worker shortage of 2030. It's set it stone. Come 2030 the world war 2 countries are going to be hurting bigtime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux1GxExRUUY
>- billionaires: ugh, enough about these megalomaniacs.
When warren buffet became a millionaire, it wasn't the same as a millionaire today. Owning a 2bed 1 bath in toronto is worth over a million and you're a millionaire. Inflation over time. In maybe 100 years inflation will make everyone billionaires.
Billionaires existing is not really a thing anyone. It's not like Bezos literally has a billion $ in the bank account. He owns things that sum up to maybe being worth billions. He has no actual way of consuming those billions. So in reality it's not a problem at all. He contributed tons to society and people rewarded him.
The last thing you want to do is punish or stop this. Amassing wealth and being unable to every spend it means everyone is more wealthy than if they hadnt. Removing billionaires, you deincentivize anyone else to do useful things in your society. You basically kill your own society.
>- media: it's feeding people rubbish all the time. All. The. Time.
Big time. In reality they've been lying to us forever. We are just catching them now. Not really something that changed to affect your losing hope in humanity. If anything we're about to fix this.
>- corruption: it's so wide spread, people have become desensitized. war... famines... I could go on...
Check out this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
The world is amazing. Things are great, there's no more third world countries. That video is 15 years old. I read his book. Things have actually improved significantly since that video.
Poverty worldwide is being redefined because it's getting better and better. Practically the whole world is getting connected to the internet allowing them access to unlimited knowledge. Places like Africa who don't care about patents can steal every single idea from the patent system. They are rapidly building up their societies.
This huge increase in development is going to raise everyone to today's standards in the west. Meanwhile the west is on the verge of 1 big thing. The end of scarcity.
You might have say $50,000 in your bank account right now. In the end of scarcity world that $50,000 produces every good you ever need. Solves every service you ever need the rest of your life. You get to do things that can't be programatically done. That's an ideal world.
The future looks amazing.
