Been doing some thinking on why I ask this question in whatever form so often; it’ll bump the poll too, so I figure why not.
I think I want to try to have hope, and try to reassure myself that others do, greatly because I still have a stake in the future. I’m not elderly yet, and as mentioned above, I have young nieces and nephews. If I didn’t have hope, I feel like I’d be abandoning them to misery and/or death. I mean, someone who’s lost hope in the future has no motivation to care about it or others who live in it, no reason to resist the fascists or do anything to change the course of the world. If democracy in America is dead, there’s no point in voting or protesting. If someone thinks having hope is naive whistling past the graveyard optimism, and say so repeatedly, then there’s no reason to count on them to say or do anything if I get dragged away by the fascists, or to look at my nieces and nephews and do anything but shrug and say, at least they’re not my kids. It’s the same with climate change, really.
So maybe I have no real rational reason to hope for anything. Maybe all the progress I’ve made in life the last few years is going to dissolve and there’s nothing I can do about it. But I think I need reasons to keep living, to get up in the morning and go to work, and look my nieces and nephews in the eyes and not foresee and inevitable march to death, despair, and poverty. So I try to find hope so I don’t go insane or kill myself. And part of that is hoping that there are enough people who still care out there with me.
This is all happening so fast it’s making my head spin, ever since the L.A. Times’ and WaPo’s owners refused to endorse Kamala Harris. Now some Republican politicians have launched an effort to change the 22nd Amendment to allow three terms instead of two, so Trump can have a third term, and yesterday a Milwaukee weather reporter working at a CBS network affiliate got fired for criticizing Minister of Propaganda Elon Musk’s Nazi salute–out of the office, on her own time, and on her personal social media account.
I sympathize with her, but if she violated a stated company policy in regards to social media, she should have known better. As a media personality, a “name,” anything she posted on social media could be interpreted as coming from the company itself. Many companies, media or otherwise, have social media policies. The last company that employed me before I retired was a huge media company, and there was a stated policy regarding employees’ participation in social media, which everyone was required to sign as a condition of employment. The gist of it was that if anything in your social media profile identifies you with the company, anything you say on social media could be subject to review.
In this woman’s case, as a high profile face of the TV station, her social media posts were probably more highly scrutinized than someone who is not on the air. Even still, one of the sales people at the station I worked for was fired for getting into a nasty online squabble. Had his social media profile not identified his employer, he might have gotten off with a reprimand.
On the other hand, if her company has no stated policy or if her profile does not mention her employer, she could have some grounds for legal action, but I doubt she would win, and she will never again work in television.
I want to have a policy to speak out against fascism irregardless of how it affects me financially or professionally. If my employer prevents me from doing so they lose me. Hence I have resigned my job accordingly. You want hope? Take a stand.
I keep thinking about the payoff matrix (in game theory terms): what do we stand to gain or lose from having hope for the future vs. giving up all hope? And I don’t see the point of hopelessness. I don’t see how giving up hope leaves us any better off, no matter how much actual reason for hope there is (which is something none of us knows for sure).
In an era long lost in the mists of time, it used to acceptable—even commended—to speak out against fascism or people using the symbology and behavior of fascist to spark public outrage. The annals of history actually record an era where the United States turned its population and industry to fight a war against fascism in a far away land known as Europe [/ˈjʊr.əp/] for several years where people made straight-armed ‘Roman salutes’ to express support for and subservience to their despotic leaders, and then spent many subsequent decades making movies and television programs celebrating themselves for having vanquished fascism, one particular character going so fas as to opine, “Nazis…I hate these guys!”
Fortunately in these more politically enlightened days we’ve discovered the sage wisdom and popular appeal of fascism, and have decided that speaking out against its symbols and supporters is something to be ashamed of and punished for doing, especially in public and on some form of media in which the objector can be recognized and associated with a corporation which, of course, doesn’t want to be seen not preemptively complying with autocracy or papering over fascist symboling with a patent, “Maybe he was just stretching his arm,” explanation. We are truly fortunate to live in a more sophisticated culture and reasonable tolerance for the expression of the diversity of political opinions as long as they are in alignment with that of the dominant political party, and censure for those that are not.
I voted ‘no’ but have been doing some more thinking and reading, and my vote may be switching to ‘yes.’ According to this MIT study, we may have 15 years before the industrial civilization crashes. And for at least the next four years, we’re going to be led by people who are rushing us toward the cliff with a “business as usual” approach to making money and living life.
2040 is about the time I hope to retire. Is that hope misplaced? Could be.
Sometimes I hear an old song in the car radio and it takes me back to younger days. There was always a relative feeling of safety and very often hope back then. Now I feel none of that. Just disgust and loathing and sadness.
I didn’t think we were better than anyone else as a country but my life felt safer/predictable to some extent and I had hope for the future.
That has been demolished.
The only hope I have now is that I will not be here all that much longer.
Eleven years ago I was diagnosed with a fatal illness and was given 3 years, tops, to live. There were some rough spots but I proved the docs wrong by several years.
Then Covid came along. I managed to not die from it but it exposed to me just how stupid people and evil people can be. I decided I didn’t want to live my life around unmitigated assholes. I tried drinking myself to death. I was hoping to just pass out and not wake up. What I got was a very painful case of pancreatitis, but even that wasn’t enough to take me out. I stopped drinking and recovered enough that I can live a fairly normal life despite my original diagnosis.
For now my head is in a better place mostly because I’ve chosen to ignore what I can’t change. I did what I thought I could do and voted. Having failed on that front I keep reminding myself that I have enough money to last for a short while when the economy goes to shit. I’m male, white and can fake being religious if I have to. I’m in an extremely red rural area but I feel fairly safe from the locals. Folks around here will mostly leave me alone as long as I keep my mouth shut and don’t stand out as being “different” in any way.
Even tho I’ve outlived the doc’s predictions I don’t see any reason to try very hard to continue to do so. My “hope” extends maybe a month or two out at most. It helps that my immediate family is relatively sane. For now my main hope is that when I decide the time is right to get my ticket punched my chosen method is a bit less painful and much more successful.
See, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean. Skepticism about the study and its media coverage aside, what am I expected to DO with this information? I’ll likely still be alive in 2050; am I supposed to live and structure my decisions assuming social collapse by or around then, barring revolutionary change? Are my nieces and nephews? Are you?
For some reason people view the future like Blade Runner is inevitable and they romanticize the past like Outlander or Downton Abbey.
Also looking back at various points in history, I’m sure people at the time thought it was the “end of the world”. Or actual stuff that’s happening around the world as we speak. But people still got on with their lives.
Much of the stuff people in this thread are hopeless about isn’t “real”. That is to say, they aren’t suffering from an actual event like a wildfire destroying their home with everything in it or being forced to relocate because of war. Most of what people seem to be wallowing about is “I don’t like the current political environment / people are mean / stupid / climate change / etc”. Stuff that “might” happen in a time frame that in many cases is beyond their children’s lifetime.
Not to pick on a single poster, by in another thread I recall @Reply bemoaning the fact that he “didn’t (and still don’t, really) have enough confidence in the stability of our society and financial systems” and is now waking up at 40 with no career to speak of and doesn’t know how a 401k works. It’s hard for me to imagine any society where someone with that outlook and lack of initiative would be successful.
Not that I don’t worry about stuff as much as the next guy. Maybe I’m less concerned about Trump specifically or longer term stuff like climate change as I am about a world that’s just “stupid” and “virtual”. A world where no one knows how to actually solve problems or do anything besides argue and post videos on social media.
Hmm? I don’t feel “picked on” as much as misunderstood I’ve never been the sort of person to seek wealth. Even when I made more money, I gave much of it away to people in worse situations.
I don’t think that wealth is success, and I don’t think that success is happiness, and I don’t think that happiness is the same as hope for the future – all reasons why I said “no” to hopelessness in this thread, despite being poor and all that.
The kind of society I’d like to see is just one that’s more collectivist and less hung up about individual accomplishments. And I don’t even mean some sort of fantastical near-future collectivist utopia, just something more like the Scandinavian, East Asian, or even Western European (of the 2000s and 2010s, before the alt-right lurch) cultures.
Of all the critiques (edit: defenses) of American society, I think “some of our posters don’t have wealth management figured out and that’s why they don’t like it” is a pretty weak argument, no? I don’t think that was your intent… but the point is that we all have different value systems, and what is success to one person may look like suffering to another. Conversely, it isn’t fair to say that the things some of us care about are not “real” issues. They may not be your pet issues, and that’s fine, but they matter to some of us – yes, more than wealth, sometimes.
I’ve never been the sort of person to seek wealth. Even when I made more money, I gave much of it away to people in worse situations.