Feeling pretty doomy right now, lemme hear some positives! Generally positive, specific to your life, whatever you got. What’s something good going on that makes the future seem a bit brighter for you?
weed
Renewables and EVs!
Despite humongous efforts by us politicians and their corporate owners, adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is speeding up.
Even further, the basic idea that the poster child for anti-future, Trump, may be doing irreparable harm to the US in many ways but is unintentionally key to speeding up the transition in the rest of the world.
Mango Mussolini has cemented his place in history as the worst ever President, the most corrupt, the most damaging to the country’s position, the most harm to the citizens, the worst so far in running up the debt. However history will also talk about his inadvertent role in other positive changes
EVs?
Yay, let’s continue with building cities for cars! Van you imagine, allowing human beings to just gasp walk around? Or *clutches pearls" drive bicycles? Ew! Worst of all: public transportation, oh noes!
I know you probably didn’t mean it like that but can we PLEASE focus on livable cities that are firstly designed for people, and lastly for cars where there isn’t another choice?
I so fucking miss the Netherlands, you can cycle everywhere, you can walk everywhere and sure, cars can get around where needed (still way too much, but at least there is some balance)
Design livable cities with goog cycling infrastructure and good public transportation and you can get rid of most cars in most cities
“Its not perfect! No improvement until it’s pefect! No harm reduction unless it’s perfect!”
This is how one ends up making no progress.
When you talk to people IRL outside of work, some of them are pretty cool and helpful for no other reason than because they want to be.
Personally, I’m terrified that the massive, oligarch-sponsored, far-right propaganda machine that dominates US social media and television viewership, in fact, has the United States public by the balls, and is going to have unassailable influence on elections in the US from now on.
(And if the technology, borrowing techniques from marketing and industrial psychology, is not dominating the will of the lumpenproletariat already, it’s still being developed and eventually will.)
However, there are a lot of people whose opinions I respect, including historians like Heather Cox Richardson and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie (who is well studied in US history) who are optimistic about the future of the United States, and even think we can seize the country back from the oligarchy and restore free and fair elections in short order. (Albeit, for now, we’ll still be stuck with the two-party system we have. It’ll take a revolution of the people to change that.)
Meanwhile, Daniella Mestyanek Young aka Knitting Cult Lady is an experts on cults, including authoritarian cults of personality, and was an intelligence officer for the US Army, and according to her, cults of personality that are focused on a single person rarely survive the demise of the cult leader. They can if they create a doctrine of transition to a new leader (see North Korea) or from CoP to a cult of idea, but without preparation by the charismatic leader, they collapse.
And Young seems to know what she’s talking about.
She observes that Trump is entirely not cooperative about facilitating a transition, even to the point of publicly humiliating his natural heirs (that is J D Vance and Marco Rubio). It seems even that Trump may want MAGA and the Republican party to collapse once he is gone.
Work will still need to be done after Trump dies (or faces accountability and is imprisoned) and/or SCOTUS is banished like a demon possessing a child and free and fair elections are restored. We’ll need to confront what happened here in the United States, that we’ve been under the yoke of the ultra-wealthy, and of big conglomerate corporations, and need to ironclad our election processes and our regulatory bodies so that they cannot be subverted or captured.
Can we do this? I don’t know. Historically, the US has failed to follow through every step of the way, from quitting reconstruction to failing to try Nixon after Watergate to failing to address mistreatment of blacks, of the First Nations folk, of children, of immigrants, of every group we’ve exploited for labor and suppressed. But this time, people can get their information from the internet rather than merely through school curricula and published news. Maybe there will be enough voices to pressure change.
A few weeks ago I ramdomly found myself in a demonstration against imperialism mostly judging the US involvement in Cuba, Venezuela and Israels Genozide. This made me realize that I’m not alone. These people I didn’t even know existed,felt thr same way as me. No even more so, they put a whole event together and I got to intrract with this people. It was was by surprise that I
We’re currently living in one of the calmest most peaceful times in human history. Humanity has solved a lot of problems and challenges already, and life is considerably easier for the vast majority of people in the developed world compared to any time previously.
With that in mind, the key really is to not sweat the stuff out of your control.
Only think about and care about what you can affect. Who you spend your time with, what you choose to do. Simple things like hobbies, work and education. These are the things that matter and actually should affect your mood.
It’s hard to ignore the news, but try not to get wrapped up in it, yes there is bad shit going on, but since the dawn of time bad stuff has always been happening.
You and I both have the power to change a lot more about what is going on. It’s ok to decide not to even if you can control it because not everyone can be forced to make the sacrifice required to change the world. Your perspective is also very dependent on your location in the world right now. Sometimes it’s not the news, it’s your friends, family, and neighbors suffering.
Be careful not to minimize the hardships of other people right now, even if it’s quiet and peaceful outside your house (or the world, statistically or historically).
I feel what you said is fairly judgmental, and I was just trying to add a bit of positivity to the conversation.
You don’t know anything about my life’s journey or the challenges I have been through.
I don’t ignore the crazy in the world, I believe I do my best to improve the world in the ways I can. I try to focus my time and attention on the things that are most important to me.
I can’t directly stop trump waging war on Iran as much as I can stop Putin waging war on Ukraine. But if I can contribute in some way to helping mitigate damage I will.
Everybody goes through hardship at some point in life regardless of circumstance, and to minimise that is not right, but even people in a war zone are entitled to find happiness and joy in the small things. But I also appreciate circumstance change the ability to control these feelings but don’t completely remove that ability.
It’s interesting after you read the news, it feels like the world is on fire. But if you step outside, the grass is still green, when you were expecting ashes
I only ever watch the news for any ufo, uap stuff. I know it’s far fetched and basically filler on a slow news day but it’s better than watching a story of the doom.
I used to love watching UFO stuff on Reddit, before A.I. videos became a thing
Even the obvious AI videos are entertaining to watch. Everytime I see them, I think “Wouldn’t that be cool if that were real?”
If you have hope for the future you probably aren’t reading any of the climate crisis science. Or you think you’re going to heaven.
On a long enough timescale humanity will almost certainly go extinct, ending human suffering and the threat of human violence against any peace loving intelligent species in the cosmos.
I take joy imagining a slightly more balanced universe once our ignorant, violent species isn’t part of it anymore.
