Economic meltdown, global climate change, mortality, peak oil, obesity, war, water, pirates. Convince me it’ll all work out okay in the end, please.
Mortality: you will die
War: it will never die
Economic meltdown: it will happen
Peak oil: oil will run out
Obesity: you will get fat
Water: it will cost more that you will ever be able to afford
Pirates: they will say arrrghh until you can’t stand it anymore
Global Climate Change: snow in Las Vegas? It will get worse
Solution: …
Or maybe not, but why waste time worrying about it?
Log off the damned computer. Turn of the TV. Go outside and take a walk. Say hello to a neighbor. Help someone that needs it. Watch some kids play.
That should help you convince yourself that (in the words of Mr. Marley), “Every little thing’s gonna be allright.”
Find your silver lining and cling to it.
Eventually humanity will go extinct, and thus all of humanity’s problems will be solved. No humanity, no problems!
Go watch some of the videos on Cute Things Falling Asleep. It’s hard to feel bad about the world when there are puppies and kittens and babies and pandas nodding off adorably!
Fuck it, have a few drinks find a pretty and willing young thing and make the best of what you can. Life is short and hard in the best of times, but worrying has never once fixed a damned thing.
Some of these problems (like mortality) will never go away. Some of them will go away, only to be replaced by new problems. That is nothing new; we don’t have more problems than we used to, only different ones. But there are joys in life too, which also change. Cling to them like your life depends on it. Because it does.
Oh, things really will get better, I promise.
Here’s what I honestly believe:
It’s YOUR life that matters. Don’t rely on media hype. They may say it’s really, really good or really, really bad.
No.
What matters is YOUR life.
Work hard. Play hard. Plan. Love. Help others. Find happiness. Hang around five-year-olds.
We should have a thread where we all just list the really important things in life. Like, snow falling. A sunset. A stranger’s smile. Delicious food. A cat meowing. A puppy going nuts because you are there.
There’s no such thing as good or bad. There’s just you. It’s all up to you.
Well said Runs With Scissors. I do feel bad for any regular cog like myself who’s been short ended by the events of late, but mostly what I see on television is the gnashing of teeth by truly horrible cunts who could use a little comeuppance for treating the same economy that I depend on like a Take a Penny Leave A Penny tray. Like if for instance that Neil Cavuto person were to be reduced to selling used carpet samples from a dirty old station wagon, that’s a good thing. You know, my grandmother had it real hard during the depression and she was one of the happiest people I’ve evern known. Focus on those things in your life that truly matter, ditch some of the bullshit in a nice retro Henry Thoreau move and find something every day that gladdens you.
Sometimes when I’m feeling that things are all going wrong, I remember that humanity is much better off than we were a short time ago. Consider the 1930’s, for example. Totalitarian regimes ruled almost all of Europe and Asia and imperialist Europeans controlled most of the rest of the world, so only a small fraction of humanity had freedom and democracy. The Great Depression had ruined all the world’s economies, with no end in sight. War was looming. It was hard to find any sign of progress or hope anywhere. Yet some people still had faith that the good guys (and girls) would win in the end. And better yet, they were right.
Pow.
(YouTube link that I’m surprised hasn’t been posted yet.)
Well, we don’t have the plague or the Inquisition to deal with, and humanity has survived that.
Dear God (whom I don’t believe in) do I wish you had a time machine (which I also don’t believe in).
If you did, I would suggest you get ahold of me in the past. I could do a wonderful job of explaining to you why you were being naively optimistic and you could then compare my rants to how it actually worked out.
Economic meltdown? Reagan, Thatcher, yuppies, and the Japanese are going to eat our lunch anyway, if the bad thing doesn’t happen. Global climate change? Too long term to be an issue. Mortality is guaranteed. Peak oil? Not going to become an issue. Water? Personal and local, sucks to be you if you haven’t got any, let’s move along. Pirates? Same thing.
You may note I haven’t mentioned war. There’s a reason for that. From the time I became aware of the possibility until I was about 19 years old, I fully expected that “the world” was going to end during my lifetime, probably somewhere in the next week or so. Ronnie Raygun and the disposable Soviet premier of the day were going to decide that the bombing began in five minutes and that would be that. Global thermonuclear war, do not pass go, do not collect $200, hope you die early because that’s the best option. Duck and cover ain’t gonna work.
So, we missed that. Reagan went quietly insane without fucking up too much, Thatcher … got replaced, yuppies stopped being trendy, the Japanese hit the recession wall and got replaced by the Chinese, climate change is far less immediate than ionizing radiation, mortality is still guaranteed, for peak oil see climate change, water isn’t a big local issue the way that megaton explosions would have been, and pirates would have a hell of a time (whatever the Arrogant Worms would have you think) becoming a power hereabouts.
Go watch a child, preferably under 5. See how important whatever they’re crying about is? Does it still seem that important 5 minutes later? Remember your first date? Little tense were ya? Ever read Plato complaining about how the kids with their flute music and the disrespect for their elders were going to end western civilization? They didn’t even have baggy pants, pants not having been invented yet.
All of the stuff that I was worried about would have been very neatly displaced from my head by the term “catastrophic resurfacing” had I been able to learn about that at the time.
Everybody, ever since we as a species were able to do so, has worried about how much everything sucks. Between the comets and the ice ages and the fact we can do it ourselves for a while now but haven’t, you’re probably safe statistically.
If, however, you manage to be eaten by a large carnivore who isn’t a human, I would really appreciate it if you would let me know, since I’ve been trying to explain to my child how important that was as a daily consideration for most of our species lifespan.
[Sarah Palin]
Relax, this is all just a natural occurrence associated with the end of days…
[/Sarah Palin]
How in God’s name did I not know this website existed? THANK you so much for posting that!
An Gadai, mankind has survived a lot of bad things–I think we’ll make it through this. And others have said, concentrate on making YOUR life worth living, controling what you can, doing good where you can, and don’t worry about the global level.
Have some chocolate cake and a glass of milk and curl up with a good book. As long as you can do that none of the other things in life matter too much one way or the other.
I needed this too. Thanks guys.
Concentrate on here and now. “Here” as in where you are. The news reports are bad all over the world. Are things really so bad where you live? The busses still run, the stores are open, people go to work and school.
As long as you have a roof over your head and food to eat, things are never so bad.
I don’t agree with just trying to ignore the badness out there. I would instead say, can you think of a way you can do some small act to help with any of those problems? Even if it’s something minor like making your next car purchase a hybrid or donating to a soup kitchen that might need some extra donations this year, maybe taking whatever step you can to try to help with these problems will make you feel better.
Other than that, eh, I agree with the view that the current problems are small potatoes compared to what humanity has faced before and survived. The only reason things seem so bad now is because most of us haven’t had the perspective of having personally experienced horrors like the Holocaust, the Great Depression, or other epic disasters. In the historical perspective, things aren’t so bad.