The world isn’t fair. We have mass arrests and oppression in Hong Kong, millions of Uighurs in concentration camps, people being slaughtered by the hundred in Iran and Bolivia, chemical weapons used on kids in Syria, kids being abducted and murdered, a seeming global move towards authoritarianism, a worsening climate, increased homelessness, increased inequality and the constant looming specter of taxation and death. How do you manage to get up in the morning? I feel depression at the pointlessness and brutality of life. Most seem to live in misery while a very few enjoy fortune and comfort. How is one supposed to function in this world?
Your perceptions are accurate but the current situation is an anomaly. For most of our species’ history it wasn’t like this at all. It’s really only been this way to a significant extent since the dawn of agriculture, and intensifying only in the last couple centuries at an accelerating pace.
Trying to be philosophical about life in the abstract based on life as you experience it in modern times is like trying to understand the weather at the exact moment you’re being hit by a lightning strike. That’s not to say you can’t (or shouldn’t) do it, but it’s a difficult mental maneuver at best. On the other hand there is so much that needs doing that you could perhaps do. It may not seem like it, but these kinds of times are the only ones in which that sort of opportunity exists at all. Have at it.
You manage to get up in the morning by doing something about it. Obviously you are not going to be able to increase the sum total of world happiness. But you can make someone happier today. You can treat people with kindness and respect. You can work for causes that you support, or organizations that help people. You can care for the people you love, and make them feel whole and worthwhile. You can go to see “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and think about what Fred Rogers was trying to teach. You can support the Jewish concept of repairing the world by working for social justice. You can Make America Kind Again, or just Make Cjackson Kind Again.
Also, take a holiday from the news. The bad stuff will get along just fine without you for a few days while you reset and tend to your own needs.
Forgot to mention genocide in Yemen and children being taken at the border. What really gets me down is that while all this and more is going on you have celebrities living in a over payed, over pampered and over protected bubble jetting around, free from the misery of normal people. I would just like to see them have some pain in their lives and be thrown to the wolves. That seems fair to me.
This is an ugly thought, and your idea of fairness would not make the world a better place. As for me, I manage to get up in the morning because I’ve got a family that I love who are depending on me.
^ All of this ^
Unplug from the 24 hr news cycle is good medicine. Focus on what you can do in your immediate world and environment and you will see results and feel better about life.
People have been doing horrible things to one another since, well, since we became people. It’s what makes us human, unfortunately. Evil far outweighs good in the world, so the best you can do is make your own world good and tolerable. You don’t have to solve the world’s problems, but you can do something - you just have to start.
Start by talking to someone live, either in person or over the phone. Your posts may indicate something more than just concern over world events, especially your comments about the rich. It’s too easy to pick, choose and ignore comments on a message board.
I live substantially more free than I did growing up, in a way no born-and-raised Westerner could really understand. So that helps.
Most of us are a little fish in a big pond with little to no power to change the world at large. I believe that I have this one life to live, I have children that need my support and love.
I’m sort of in a bad place right now, but hope springs eternal, it’s easy to be sad and full of despair it’s hard to be optimistic and it can all end badly by freak accident at any moment. The way I see it I’m going to try and be happy and adapt, I’m not responsible for the horrors of the world, I’ll try and leave it a better place than I found it, “get busy living, or get busy dying”. The universe doesn’t care which choice you make.
The world has always been pointless and brutal. Horrific things happening to people on a daily basis, oppression and subjugation, death and disenfranchisement on a level you cannot imagine. What has changed is that we now have 24hr exposure to all the worst that the world still has to offer. I’m not sure that is healthy and it probably feeds the hopelessness that some feel.
You, yourself actually have the luck to be born in a place and era that affords rights, wealth, health and freedoms unimaginable to most people in the history of the world. You have the option to protect yourself against the worst the climate can throw at you and if you want to compaign or otherwise work towards giving what you have to others less fortunate then you are free to do so.
On a long enough time scale it is all pointless. Just make the most of the good fortune you do have and do what you can to help others.
You’re looking at the picture, but not the whole picture. Climate change is a huge threat; what about Bill Gates’ recent announcement and breakthrough? It won’t resolve the problem, but it’s a huge and significant step. (Have you contacted your congressional reps?)
Kids are murdered, true, but the murder rate of children dropped dramatically over the past 30 years or so.
We have mass arrests and oppression in Hong Kong, yet STILL people there demand justice and freedom.
This month, humpback whales have made a dramatic recovery.
India has halved its poverty rate in the past 30 years, according to the World Bank.
The point is not that everything is rosy. It isn’t and won’t be. But if you lie around thinking the world is a terrible place, it’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
and unlike 30+ years ago they aren’t being crushed by tanks
How do you reconcile the world?
Pretty bold of you to assume I do, my man.
Tigers have been violating gazelles’ civil rights for millions of years, but the gazelles don’t whine about how unfair it is. Gazelles get up in the morning and go about their lives.
Do you know why Forbes and Fortune publish new lists every year? Because the names change every year. America’s suburbs are full of people whose parents used to be rich. Our slums are full of people whose grandparents used to be rich. A tycoon may have it good today, but one grandchild with a drug addiction can destroy an entire family fortune.
That would not reduce the amount of misery in the world. That would increase the amount of misery in the world. You remember Gandhi’s line " ‘An eye for an eye’ makes the whole world blind"? Well, “soak the rich” makes the whole world poor.
Andrew Carnegie spent much of his fortune building libraries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation raises billions to fight AIDS, polio, malaria, and tuberculosis. I think Gates has better odds of success than Warren or Sanders.
Are Bill and Melinda running for POTUS?
Let’s try not to conflate two different problems that require two different solutions.
Despite popular perception, the world is getting better, in many key ways. The overall rate of violence per capita has steadily been decreasing, same for poverty and starvation. Access to clean water and adequate nutrition has improved. The average person in the world today is better off than in just about any previous century.
However, the population is so large, that the raw number of miserable folks is high, and modern media can instantly highlight that misery 24/7, leading us to conclude that things have never been worse. As usual, perception, and visceral feelings about what one is perceiving outweigh the actual facts.
I think humanity’s chances of continued improvement overall are fair to good. Let’s keep working on it.
This. (My emphasis.) The good and evil of human nature haven’t changed. (Cf. Cain & Abel.)
I’ve been watching a series of Great Courses lectures* on the Black Death, the plague that swept Europe in the mid 1300s. :eek: Good thing there was no instantaneous mass media then.
*The Great Courses is available as a Roku channel! I could never do the audio version, because my hearing is crap, but the TV channel is fabulous. [/aside]
Thanks for asking the question. These are all great answers.
Nobody can fix everything. Everybody can do something.
Pick a corner that you, in particular, can work on. Work on it.
Don’t expect either instant or total success. There have been plenty of cases in which people beat their heads on a particular wall for six generations before the wall fell down – but the wall fell down; and it wouldn’t have, if they hadn’t done that.
Am I the only person who gets through the day simply by spending most of my time not thinking about this stuff? I wake up, and my major concern is getting day-worthy (clean, clothed, fed). If it’s a work day, I then go to work and do work stuff. Otherwise or afterwards, I eat when I’m hungry, entertain myself when I’m bored, and sleep when I’m tired. Rinse, repeat, live contentedly ever after.
I suppose this may make me a sociopath or something, but all of the people in my monkeysphere are doing sort of okay. I’ll vote for the less evil party when the time comes, but until then, my concerns are local, and local is okay.