The reality is setting in that people simply do not care about making the world a better place. It is breaking my heart, and I do not know how to reconcile my thoughts. I’m sorry to be such a downer here but I don’t know where else to share.
Perhaps the climate catastrophe, human suffering, and inequality is so large and so much out of people’s hands that even people who care have come to a state of learned helplessness. However, there are things within people’s control that doesn’t change. At work, I listen to a coworker frustrated about a simple problem. It would be a simple change to make this person’s job much less painful, but he “just works here”. It’s just such a dumb problem to waste hours of someone’s life on. To a certain extent, I can’t blame him, because a lot of people just work to survive.
I want to make the world a better place. A world where people have all there basic needs met, live in balance with nature, and have a right to self determination. A world where humanity strives to be the best version of itself. I can’t help but get sad or frustrated when I see something wrong. I can’t help but feel like I’m a downer to my friends when I point these things out. They don’t disagree with me, but it just seems like a depressing topic. People seem generally content to live their normal lives. In the same way, I can’t blame them. It won’t build a better future, but they deserve to be happy.
Maybe my coworkers are right, and that I’m too naïve. Maybe my friends are right, and that I’m too empathetic for my own good. I am envious that they can turn off the thing in their head that worries, or wants to make things better, and that they can just enjoy life. A more utopian future is generations away, or maybe never. If I can’t effect change, maybe I should find an outlet, or stop caring, or something. idk, sorry for yapping. if you’re reading this i hope you have a good day
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Saying people don’t care undermines the good that millions of people in the world are doing. Stop using blanket statements and attributing to the whole- what only some are doing.
This only makes shit worse.
My original post comes out of a place of deep sadness, so I didn’t take much time in proof reading. I should have been more precise in my words on the internet. 😓 I’m sorry for generalizing.
There is nothing wrong with what you said.
I have gotten involved in local, state, and federal politics in my life and I think it does help. I lobbied successfully for gay marriage in Washington State. I have met with reps at the city, county, state, and federal level.
I was on the homeless task force in my city, I wrote and administered a drug-free grant, and I am currently working closely with our Reentry coalition. I am a helping professional for a living which does not solve our many problems, but makes me feel like I am doing my part.
Do a lot of wealthy people make the world a much worse place? The answer is yes. Does that mean we should roll over? Hell no.
It I feel a lot the same. I think its important to remember that this isn’t natural; it takes a lot of work to make a human be like this. It takes the maintenance of a lot of pressures to keep them this comprehensibly awful.
But once the dam breaks…
I feel exactly the same way! I’ve been struggling to accept this fact for years and years. Really the only thing that’s helped is looking far and wide for like minded people, as few as there are, and chat them up so I don’t feel so alone in my thinking. If ever you want to share your feelings and talk about the ways you’re trying to live a life of integrity and long term thinking, I’d love to chat!
Disagree.
Most people want to make the world a better place, we just can’t agree on what a better world would look like, and how to get there.
There’s a lot of people out there, for example, who think that the “right to self determination” is a bad thing because they believe humanity has an intrinsic self-destructive aspect. I disagree, but they firmly believe that a dictatorship is the solution and I’m being unhelpful because I don’t want that.
One of the hardest things I’ve been through in therapy was realizing that my parents really did think they were doing the right thing. They listened to the “experts” at church who told them that in order to protect their kids, they needed to hurt their kids. My mother dropped out of college when she got pregnant, and my stepdad is mentally ill, so neither of them were particularly well educated, and they landed in a cult.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. People can be horrible and think they’re doing it for the greater good.
Writing “self determination” was inspired from this in-progress book of speculative fiction I’m currently reading called “A Visitor to the Future”
https://www.chronohawk.com/a-visitor-to-the-future/
In the book society has two main rules. The right to self determination, and that people do not have the right to impede on other’s right to self determination. All other rules stem from these two main ones. I find the book very hopeful about the future.
Yeah, my point is that one person’s utopia can be another person’s dystopia. Everybody wants to live in a better place, but nobody agrees on what “better” actually means.
Some people crave structure and order, and don’t want to lose that in favor of increased self-determination. Others see structure and order as constraining and chafing, and see increased self-determination at any cost as freeing.
Quite a lot of people also have a hard time viewing things long-term. IDK where you’re at, but a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck here, and I think they’re stuck in short-term thinking as a form of survival.
Like I grew up poor poor, with shitty parents to boot, where you have so little self-determination that you just straight up learn that making plans only leads to disappointment. Long-term planning is a skill, and when kids grow up with parents that raid the piggy bank for beer money, they learn that planning is useless and spending all your pocket change on candy is better.
one man’s utopia is another’s dystopia This is true, but there are universal goods that anyone who isn’t antisocial can agree on like a livable climate, everyone having food, shelter, and safety. At least I choose to believe that. I get the point about parents and long-term thinking. That’s a whole thing, they are making it so hard to just live that you’re so busy and tired just doing the daily struggle lots of people don’t have time to think or plan or organize.
You’re not more empathetic than other people, you have an ideology built around what you perceive as your class interest, just like them
It can often take empathy to be able to even see or care beyond oneself and towards a bigger picture. An unemphatic person could, and often does, simply reject an ideology that may not place their own wants or desires above that of others, even if they are in the same class as those who would benefit from such an ideology.
An average right-wing libertarian is often not terribly wealthy and works for a living, putting them in the working class, but they may find Ayn Rand’s flavor of selfish ancap/libertarianism appealing due to a lack of empathy, even if practically it does not improve their circumstances.
Just do what you can do to make things better for people. It’ll drive you crazy if you’re worrying about what other people are doing. Even crazier than that if you want a reward for doing things right. Do the right thing (even if no one else is) simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Serenity is to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
People do care. But there are a lot of people. Not everyone does.
When one does things, you end up with other people who do things. Won’t be your neighbor, won’t be your colleagues (unless you do the Good Thing™ professionally) so do not waste time trying to convince them.
Do your own thing. Life is short and there are billions of people out there. Spend it on the millions that want change, that’s a big enough crowd.
This isn’t new.
The realisation as you go through life that things just aren’t as good as they should be is hard. The more you learn, the more you are exposed. What is new, perhaps, is that the scale of bullshit is bigger and the spread of it more actively pushed than before.
How to cope? Damned if I know. I just try to shut it out as much as possible.
(BTW, your colleague may just be exhausted with change, or demoralised or depressed themselves. It’s hard not to judge people when you see the answer so clearly, but it’s a trueism that everyone walks their own path and you just don’t know what’s going on in their life)
I have been going through a very similar experience to you. The more coworkers I have over the years, the more people I realize are extremely jaded and having a tough time caring at all about the world at large.
This is a pretty complicated issue. I think that means you need a sort of patchwork of paradigms to apply to the issue at the right moment.
Sometimes you need to give yourself a break and let yourself live your life - you only get one, and joy is an essential part of a functioning human, and you must continue to function if you are to continue impacting your world.
Other times you must keep in mind that it is literally completely illogical to say that your actions have no impact, obviously each individual action on it’s own is small but the actions humanity makes are made up of individuals. Change happens one person at a time, and individuals are difference-makers.
Consider professional sports teams where the stars elevate the team to the next level - they cannot do their work by themselves, every member of the team is needed and makes an impact, but the impacts are not all the same. You will see the same dynamic play out in the typical workplace - a relatively small portion of people really make things happen at most workplaces in my experience, but they still need the team to help them get it done. So you should continue to think of your actions as being important/having meaning in my opinion, and you should keep striving to make the world a better place.
Sometimes when there is a situation that frustrates me but that I know I cannot change (or cannot change immediately or in full), it helps to quiet that thing in my head that worries by practicing mindfulness techniques. Personally I find “box breathing” (a style of controlling breathing to regulate heart rate and perhaps lower cortisol) to be most effective. Maybe this or some other method could help to quel your feelings when you know that it is a situation to let go of.
I’d argue they don’t care because they aren’t issued the resources necessary to care. Our workers also don’t have enough time / energy to parent or to engage in their civic duties of working out what is in their best interests and voting accordingly. Let alone the impetus to imagine a better world and strive for it.
It’s difficult to say if this was intentional all along, or just a happy(?) accident of overworking our labor force out of sheer greed,¹ but it belies the drift of abusive systems towards greater dysfunction, which is why we need ironclad protections against labor abuse.
Not that we’re going to get it necessarily without blood…or with blood for that matter. It’s why violent revolution is on the table since the masses can’t afford the time and energy to conduct non-violent protest.
I’d credit our oppressors for being thorough, but they really aren’t all that bright, so I no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.
¹ We now have studies that show a well-treated labor force is worth the extra expense, from sheer productivity increase alone. Our upper management is just too short-sighted, too divisionist and too paranoid to bother to make their companies worth putting the effort in for, even though optimizing for profit is their job description.
Reminder. 2/3rds of the Internet is bots or paid people in other countries.
I’m not saying this to make you feel better. I’m telling you because it’s true.
Trust your conversations with real people in real life.
Don’t assume the discord online reflects real people’s beliefs.
Go to protests and talk to people.
There are more good people than bad in the world.
I think of it as situational, in your orbit, you have coworkers wasting time on simple problems. In other parts of the world, in remote villages, solar is changing people’s lives for the better.
I have known too many people lost in their own bubbles of reality, never considering the larger picture and impacts of personal choices. They are the majority, unfortunately.
Just focus on what you can do for yourself, find like minded people to share on larger efforts, and don’t waste your own time and energy (especially emotional) on people that never put in a second thought into efforts for improving the world.
Whenever I’m struggling with the fact that everything is bullshit, I try to remind myself that there isn’t that much stopping me from living my own life as if I was already living after the revolution, or in utopia, or after the apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it or think it might be. Ultimately, I want to hang out with my dogs, garden, hike, cook, listen to and play music, hang out with friends, run rivers, ski, etc. etc. All achievable now, mostly. Do I also have to do bullshit I don’t want to? Sure. Are a lot of other people living in a crappy way and doing stupid and destructive bullshit? Definitely. But for the most part, if you just do what you can and try to live your life as if you already won the war, it’s pretty ok.
Sadly a lot of people just didn’t care about anything unless it directly effects them. I feel for ya but remember to take care of yourself, friends and family first. Do the things you love. Oh and build some kind of solar device that saves you thousands. Your friend might listen then.
For you my friend, I recommend the book “climate, psychology, and change” I hold this one close to my heart.
