Asklemmy

Ignore it until it becomes an immediate problem. I'm honestly praying for a position at some place like Duke energy.

Well my small part of it is, which is something. I guess it is because I am a fatalist. One day I will be dead and there is no afterlife. So yeah things as a whole are going to shit but they were always destined to. Our job is palliative. It's going to die, try to make things comfortable before the end.

My primary coping mechanism is woodworking. I'm getting pretty good at building guillotines.

Weaponized Apathy.

Why care about the world when it doesn't care about me? I'll stick to caring about my small circle that I can actually do something for and rather hands off with the rest.

Nihilism. Nothing matters therefore I am free to do anything. If I choose to make a positive impact in my tiny part of the world, no matter how small it is a net positive compared to if I decide to do nothing. I tried apathy for a while and it served no-one, not even me.

If the best you can do is vote against fascism then that is OK. If the best you can do is show up to local town/village meetings and have your voice be heard that is OK. If the best you can do is vague-post online about the state of America, that's OK.

The only bad thing you can do is be silent. As long as you are willing to speak up about the issues that are important to you and the problems you see that need fixing, you are doing more than 90% of this country.

Live your life according to your values, and on those be uncompromising. Vote your conscience, and hold your elected officials to a higher standard. Realize that change comes slowly, and some things are simply out of your control.

You are not responsible for the things outside your power. You are not to blame for the failings of your nation. Have the greatest effect where you can and learn to recognize where you can't.

We're all in this together, and we're all pulling for ya.

The weather lately has been depressing and angering. I keep trying to get people around angry about it too, but just like everyone else it's hard to feel like it's possible to get anything done. That's why we need to band together

I got a vasectomy as a way of dealing with it.

That's the neat part, I don't!

The world is getting better in many ways. It's just not profitable for media organizations to highlight the good.

For the ways things are getting worse? That's always how it's been. People have always felt that current times are worse than times past.

I think what has helped me is watching John Green/ Hank Green's YouTube channels. The fact is bad news happens fast, but good news happens slow.

A maternity ward was built in Sierra Leone thanks to the coordinated effort of thousands of people across the world. Patents for Tuberculosis tests and treatments have been released in the countries that need it the most. This is a disease that takes millions of lives every year, not because we don't have the technology, but because people don't have access to the treatments. Of course this was something that should have been taken care of decades ago, but the fact we can pressure pharmaceutical companies to release their patents for the good of humanity must mean something.

Despair is seductive, it asks nothing but to feel sad, and you can always find reasons to despair. But the correct answer to consciousness is hope.

I work in Chicago with non profits that are dedicated to building safe communities, to saving local and global ecosystems, to public health access, to helping house the homeless.

I fully believe that there isn't anything wrong with the world that can't be solved with what is right with the world. And when I feel despair, which I am oft to do, I look at my friends, my community, those that roll up their sleeves, shake hands, and do what they can with what they have.

I just focus on not making it worse myself.

Cry, panic, be apathetic, drink alcohol. Typically one of these, usually chosen at random.

For me its the fact that I know in the end there will be a judgment day and that everyone will be taken to account. No one will get away with the misdeeds they commit "forever". In a similar light, no good action will go not rewarded forever.

Learning about the philosophy of the Stoics (which frankly was not enough for me), plus this quote (which also was not, but the two together... that did help!:-D), something to the effect of: "Strong societies beget weak children, who then grow up to create weak societies, which then beget strong children, who then grow up to create strong societies" - and the cycle continues. i.e., Boomers mainly did not fight in the wars, just grew up hearing how Great America was, without having to experience first-hand the blood, sweat, and tears that made it that way (to the extent that it ever was that way ofc). Well, now things are changing in the direction that they were ALWAYS going to have to changed in - b/c evil people gonna evil it up, no doubts about that - and eventually, sheeple will get sick & tired of being sick & tired and rise up, to change things. Until then, we suffer, but not needlessly.

In other words, we've gone through the stages of denial (climate change / economic downturn / wage slavery / cultural insensitivity / whatever is NOT happening), anger (okay so it's happening but what are you going to do about it), bargaining (he tells it like it is and big daddy will fix everything & make it all great again! ironically this holds true for both Obama and Trump, loathe as I am to have ever uttered such a sentence), and now we are into the depression era.

Next comes acceptance, and that's when the healing - and the beginning of lasting change - can truly start.

I stop filling my head with nihilistic bullshit.

The world is getting better, and if you can’t see that you need to widen your information diet and stop fixating on all the negativity.

I wonder if you've gone out to look for things that have actually improved. So many quality of life indicators in many countries are far better than they were 50 years ago, and that should give you some measure of encouragement. And we need that encouragement because there's a lot of problems that people are running into, and some of those problems feel insurmountable.

As always, most of the world is not doing better, but some of it is doing great. I choose to be part of the latter and be an architect of the future regardless of how big or small my contribution will be.