It’s hard to know what to do.
I’m concerned about climate change. I spent 20 years not driving, buying locally, going to protests, organizing my local political party, avoiding flights, and trying to work for NGOs.
It kinda sucked. I missed out on things. I didn’t have much money. I spent time trying to figure out how to do the right thing. I didn’t have a car, so getting around sucked. My stuff sucked because I thrifted.
When I had kids, I went mainstream. I got a car. Started traveling on my vacations. Bought stuff new. Got a job with a corporation. Life is so much easier. The only thing I miss is volunteering.
I still vote my conscience, and try to buy sustainably, but I did my time. I’m done sacrificing my quality of life while assholes are living it up.
Yeah that is the thing. Even if everyone did what you were doing, the main pollution is still not coming from people but large companies and the like. It’s like recycling. Make your life shittier but nothing really changes. Your life just sucks and you feel better about the environment even though no noticeable change happens but you did your part.
Spot on…
Time for Eco-sabotage to become mainstream.
Unless you’re a billionaire or willing to shoot someone vigilante-style, there’s nothing you can do that’s going to impact anyone outside of your own neighborhood.
But if everyone brings positive effects their own neighborhood
…it’ll probably be out done 1000x by the negative effects of an industrial plant or something…
but it will still make your part of the world a nicer place to be!
But if everyone goes hunting for just one billionaire…
It’s okay to make your own neighborhood a little bit better though.
What if I don’t like my neighborhood because its full of backwards morons?
I’m convinced most of the accounts accusing people of being “doomers” are astroturfers trying to gaslight people into complacency.
No it just doesn’t get you anywhere being a doomer. I grew out of it
We’re all living and we all know things are fucked. Just some people are better at dealing with it than others. Doomers can’t deal with it
Recommended movie viewing: Everything Everywhere All At Once. Might snap you out of it if you go in with the right mind set.
Everything Everywhere All At Once was about appreciating what you have in life and the people around you and not giving into hopelessness because you can’t attain some romanticized perfect life. It’s not about ignoring the horrible things going on in the world for the sake of your own peace of mind.
My take from it is that any life can be enjoyable. Joyce was the doomer who just brought everyone down around her.
She was obsessed with trying to pursue all these different skills and obsessed over all of the opportunities she made throughout her life and what she lost by not making certain choices. She overloads her daughter by trying to make her “everything” which drives her into a pit of nihilism and drives them apart. She only saves the day by realizing that she would have missed out on just as much that is good in her life by making other choices and by giving up trying to be “everything” to just love and accept her daughter–and by extension her life.
The message was essentially to appreciate the choices you’ve made and how they shaped the life you live, to appreciate the people around you, and to not obsess over missed opportunities and the pursuit of an impossible “perfect.”
Simply being a doomer doesn’t accomplish anything on its own. You have to translate it into meaningful action.
You don’t “grow out of it.” You just decided to put your head back in the sand.
Well I stopped acting like the person in the comic more like. I still pay attention to what’s going on. I just don’t bring up those topics at the lunch table at work for example, you know?
I think it’s ok to bring it up as a call to action, so long as you’re not just wallowing in the despair.
Yup. But you have to be careful with when you do it. I lost quite a bit of friends in my doomer phase because they just couldn’t handle talking to me
Being a doomer makes you complacent though?
If you think we’re doomed, (like I kind of do) you lose motivation to do anything.
I don’t want to be a fucking doomer I want people to convince me to stop being one and no one seems able.
You have to use the doom & gloom to motivate you into action. It’s a useful piece to differentiate between performative and productive actions.
I was having a great morning until I remembered how broke i am and that I have to go to the pawn shop after work to pawn something for gas money. But hey the economy is doing great
Please unplug from the news, at least sometimes. For you own mental wellbeing
I unplugged a year ago and it has been great. Highly recommended.
I largely have as well, but I fucking hate that forced ignorance is my only path to mental and emotional regulation.
It doesn’t have to be forced ignorance. I still follow the TLDR news and sister channels. They present a summary of a few key issues quite well. I know about the political parties I support and will vote in an election. I have an app for breaking news headlines (I just look at the headlines for just urgent breaking news…but I’ve uninstalled this recently).
Mainstream news I have no interest in following anymore. Especially since they’ve pivoted to reporting on “this person said this dumb thing on social media” and “royal family/celebrity does some dumb shit”.
I would also recommend using RSS for news if you have to. Subscribe to only what you want. Get news in chronological order rather than their bullshit prioritisation. Set blacklist filter words (I used to have a news RSS with a blocklist as long as my arm…Trump, Gaza, COVID, Ukraine, Musk, Twitter, Facebook, etc etc). But now I’ve uninstalled this too.
The dread builds up anyway. Imagination takes over.
I am not following. It is not my job to change how other people feel, is it? Of course we should try to change the world, but that’s different from people feeling down.
If you don’t want to be a doomer, do something about the doom in the world
I did, before November 5th. A ton of shit. Didn’t fucking matter.
