this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Unironicaly fantastic take.
My philosophy is that you can either bitch and whine and moan about how hard and unfair life is, while wallowing in self pitying victim complex forever.
Or you can stop crying yourself a river, roll up your sleeves, and get to work on doing something about it. To make the best of you've got and work on improving the parts of life you aren't satisfied with one step at a time with a relatively clear and focused end goal in mind.
These two approaches are a choice of personal philosophy.
Unironically bullshit take.
8 hours of work, commute, getting ready, etc takes literally half the day. Sleep takes another 8 hours. So what the fuck am I going to do with my free 4 hours to "do something about it"? My sleeves can't be anymore rolled you sanctimonious piece of shit.
Oh sorry I guess it's my "choice" that gun violence is so prevalent, or that the government is becoming more fascist, or that my countrymen are rejecting science and spreading disease.
I make a six figure salary and I still need a roommate just to rent. My county is actively supporting a genocide. The second in line to the presidency is a religious freak. The supreme Court is stacked to the regressives.
But go on, please tell me again that this is all because I'm not doing something about it.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
We live in a time where overall there is less violence, less crime, a better state of living, more rights for minorites and lbtq people than any time in human history. Im sorry you feel so wronged.
My recommendation is to pick one problem and focus on it. Don't feel like you need to fix everything in the world, just make a small part of the world better. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, clean up litter, canvas for a ballot measure you care about. Doing nothing while agonizing over how much is to be done helps nobody.
Ah yes, the "dust up your apartment while the apartment complex is burning" approach. Might as well say "This is fine" while you're going at it. :-)
So instead do nothing and circlejerk how miserable you are?
And at no point did I advocate for doing something trivial. I said pick one thing that's important to you and put your effort into that. Do you think poor people deserve homes? Volunteer your time on weekends to build them through organizations like Habitat for Humanity. Do you think that's just a bandaid over a societal wound? Find a group of like-minded people and try to fix that deeper wound.
NGL I'd rather circlejerk than be a "holier than thou" bastard who goes around people who are most likely mentaly and/or physically drained to go minimal or zero improvement actions like volunteer or clean up the streets.
Is "Try to make the world a better place" really so high a bar?
Yes.
8 hours of work + commute, six figure salary, still need a roommate? Sounds like somebody didn't make good life choices and is now stuck in a hole living just below their means while paying off massive debt. Blaming everything but themselves for their financial/living situation while doing little to improve it. but hey you work and commute and sleep so how can you be responsible for building up your own life when your so busy making 6 figures and paying rent, right? It must be the rotten society and world to blame for your failures to be financially stable without working non-stop.
No it isn't your 'choice' that society has ugly aspects that contribute to a lot of individual suffering with no easily fixable solutions. It is your choice to focus on those worst possible aspects of your country while actively ignoring all the good aspects of it and your personal life as a whole. It is your choice to be a pessimistic prick, paint yourself as a shakespearean character living out a tragic existance in a dystopian hellscape, blaming society for everything thats gone wrong in your life while making no efforts to improve anything.
You don't like the idea you are responsible for the satisfaction or lack there of you get out of your existance? Too bad, its the truth. No amount of blaming corrupt politics or society or human ignorance undermines the control you have over your decisions, your emotional state, your personal interpretations, and your progress towards lifestyle goals. Start focusing on yourself and working towards a better tommorow instead of the news cycle. Live well below your means, pay off your debts even if it means moving into a cheap van and paying yourself 'rent' for a while, stop thinking you're special for working a full time job and commuting for long periods of time with little to show for it. Start learning how to effectively save your money towards things that will actually improve your life. Smell the roses and be happy to just be alive. Stop wanting trinkets and convinences and cool things to impress people who don't really care.
You took one sentence I said out of the entire comment and threw in so much of your own bias and hatred out that it's honestly impressive.
This isn't about my finances. I'm not unhappy with my life. I am unhappy that the cards are so stacked against people that just surviving is a goal. I am unhappy that we live in a representative democracy that only represents a small fraction of the population. I am unhappy that when people talk about how shit things are, assholes like you come in and talk about personal responsibility. So, again, go fuck yourself.
Also,
What in the actual fuck are you talking about? What trinkets? What the fuck?
Exactly the narrative all the shitty politicians are trying to push. Own nothing, work like a slave, be happy. I would say "fuck you", but I made the personal choice of making the world better by not swearing on the internet. It will definitely help all the Palestinians, Ukrainians, people dying from hunger, end climate change, and tax all the billionaires. I hope I proved worthy to you :)
The parts of life I'm not satisfied with are the facts that my country is rapidly sliding into becoming a fascist ethnostate, our tax code is fucked six ways to Sunday, corporations are unaccountable to the law, I can barely afford food anymore because of corporations being unaccountable to the law and our tax code being fucked, my society is being actively destroyed by religious fanatics and schools can no longer be trusted to educate anyone.
So, yeah. Any ideas? I'm all ears.
Did you try "rolling up your sleeves"?
There's a story Mr. Rogers used to tell, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." That's what you need to do, look for the helpers, which for adults and politics means look for the grass roots organizers. Go ask the people putting in the leg work how you can help. Yeah alone you are powerless but in a group you become powerful, find allies.
I will be geniune with you and put some thought into this reply even if you probably won't agree with what I say anyway. I have no solutions for the flaws of our society and the world people have made. Societal inequality, corrupt politics, all controlling corporations. tThere aren't any quick or easy solutions to those aspects of life, if any at all. People are flawed, self interested, sometime cruel and selfish I don't have a solution to my countries problems, or your countries problems, or the worlds problems, or human nature problems that everything else ultimately stems from.
I decided that it wasn't worth worry about all the things I have no power over, that obsessing over all the unfair injustices of life would ultimately lead me to becoming a neurotic pessimist. I hold no illusion that I hold any power as an individual over the flow of society, and that whatever happens, happens. Unless you are rich and powerful, there isn't much you can do with the system as it is. You can be angry with that truth, rage against it, or accept it and move on. I chose the latter and started focusing on the things in my life I do have power over. My own happiness over my own living situation, My flaws as a human being, my negative and hateful interpretations of the world, my passions unfulfilled and frustrations built that lead to my unhappiness and disatisfaction with life. What I might be interested in doing with my life that may bring a sembelance of personal meaning/fufillment to fill that emptyness, what my personal vision of a happy life looks like. I can't control the world or even begin to know how to, but I can control how I interpret my existence and what I choose to do with it.
How you experience and live has a lot to do with how you interpret yourself and your own life. Do you think you think you are a shakespearean character living out a tragedy full of pain and trauma and regret in an uncaring malevolent universe? That we live in the worst timeline possible and everything is beyond hope? That your country is the worst version of itself to possibly exist? That your living situation is hopeless with no way out no matter how hard you try? Then it is so, from your perspective.
Do you think that even though life, society, and everything inbetween is unfair, and there is so much suffering in the world, even so there is still some beauty and goodness to be found in people and every day life? That while our timeline is subpar and things could be better, that there is still some hope for people as a whole and that things can be better? That you have the means and power to work towards a better, happier future for your self? That reality while unfair and sometimes cruel ultimately it has your best interest in mind? Then it is so, from your perspective.
How we choose to interpret reality is more reflection of our individual psychology than reality itself. A smart person once said something along the lines of "the most important question a person can ask themselves is 'is the universe malevolent or benevolent' You have a choice in how you choose to see the world, you can either focus on the bad, rotten and unfair things on the outside that cannot be easily changed or you can focus on the bad, rotten, angry hateful things on the inside eating at your mind which can slowly be changed by contributing to the small acts of good that still happen everyday.
Anticipates massive downvotes
That's a nice outlook you have, and I wish it could be more relatable. The things you're "not worrying about because you can't change them" are actively ruining that entire dealio though. You don't need to be thinking about them all the time to do the bare minimum and simply acknowledge that they are current issues, and will remain to be issues until fixed. It also takes little to zero effort to be aware of the fact that "pulling yourself up" is not always viable, precisely because of these issues you've been "not thinking about". The issues give zero fucks about if your or anyone else is thinking of them. They are still making simply surviving, its own problem.
Crying about it doesn't help anyone, but to say these people just need to "dust themselves off" when you are actively ignoring the issues that are preventing them front being happy or comfortable (not rich, literally just surviving not at the edge), is extremely rich. All that says is you got your piece, and think that means everyone can get theirs. It disregards the possibility of different external and personal conditions. Either of which can, and are, a significant blockage, to that path of progress you refer to.
I actually really appreciate the thought and effort put into your reply here. I will admit freely that my original comment was coming from a place of frustration, no small amount of depression, and desperation. And I think you're absolutely correct that for the average person it's probably more important to worry about your own immediate health and surroundings. It's healthier that way.
The part I disagree with, though, is the idea that just putting on your blinders and ignoring the things you can't change is a fine way to live your life. We, as citizens, have a duty and a responsibility to keep our country in line. We, as human beings, have a duty and a responsibility to be good shepherds of our planet. We, as parents, have a duty and a responsibility to leave a better world behind for our children than the one we inherited. And I can't, and won't, just ignore all that. The universe is not malevolent but it also is not benevolent. It is vast and uncaring far beyond our ability to comprehend it as such, and it is up to us, the thinking, feeling creatures, to forge our future. If we do not act, there will be no action.
Our situation was caused by thinking, feeling human beings, and it will be solved by thinking, feeling human beings and no one else. Or else we will die, and find ourselves as an evolutionary dead-end that tried real hard but didn't quite make it.
So my question then becomes, at the end of the day - if not you or I, then who? If we do not rage against the night, if we do not reach to the sky to pull ourselves out of the hole we've been dug into - then who is going to do it for us? Not God, that's for sure. Not politicians, or soldiers, or celebrities. So who?
Bold to assume everyone has the capability to do this. Maybe you got lucky with an area, maybe someone else got unlucky, but to pretend like any single person is in complete control of their life is an absolute joke. "Rolling up your sleeves and getting to work" stopped being a viable route a while ago, around the same time people started needing two or more jobs to afford basic necessities.
You can make the best of what you got, but if all you got is 0 left over time, <2% extra money in your pockets after living expenses, and a "give'r your best shot" mentality, all you have is... no extra time to commit that effort, and no money to improve your conditions, which would have helped with the time bit. That also doesn't even touch on the people with mental/physical disabilities, or mental health issues.
Sometimes even if you try, the only areas you can sacrifice are the only things keeping you afloat. That's just how it is. You can't win them all. And some, can't win the basics. That's where we're at now.
Or you can whine enough that a politician embraces your viewpoint and try to get things on a silver platter while they print more debt
The internationale gradually fades in