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Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world
raynethackery @lemmy.world

How do you cope with the state of the world today?

Everything just seems so out of control. The US seems to be tearing itself apart. The world is on fire. We seem to be going backwards when it comes to freedom and human rights. We've turned our backs on each other. How do you cope with all this without just giving up?

131 comments

  • Part of it is the mantra “out of my control, out of my concern.” Or “not my circus, not my monkeys.” That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I do what I can do, and try not to despair about what I can’t change.

  • How do I cope?

    The media sells the idea the world is on fire. By a lot of measures, humanity is the best it's ever been:

    Things do seem bad, things do need fixing. My advice is to pick one singular part of the world you want to improve and figure out how to fix it. Something like abolishing prison labor or environmentalism. It needs to be something you can make a noticeable dent in, where you can see your own contribution to the effort.

    Don't change tack every time something new like Isreal-Hamas or the scuffle at the US-Mexico border happens. You picked that one thing to fix, remember? And unless you plan on going down to the border with a gun, how do you plan on making a real difference? If you can't make a difference, why let it bother you?

    • This depends on what you’re measuring and where.

      Also it’s good to have perspective by comparison but life happens in the moment to moment. If people are reporting feeling worse then that is current state and that is what matters.

      • I'm saying that their moment to moment is being influenced by being bombarded with nothing except negative news.

        That leads to an "everything is awful" mentality that bleeds into one's personal life.

  • I was listening to a podcast about the scientists responsible of monitoring potentially world threatening asteroid collisions with the earth. They are constantly reminded that the whole world could blink out of existence in an instant. But they continue their job because that’s the part they have control over. I worry of the things I can change. Wether they being small or big and wether my impact is small or big. If I have no control over, I acknowledge it and move on.

    1. Do what you can. Reduce your carbon footprint by eating less meat, using cars less, flying less. OK, by yourself it's not going to make a huge difference, but at least you will know that personally, you aren't making it worse. Join a group that is trying to make a positive difference.
    2. Concentrate on the little things that make you happy. You can't stop climate change on your own but you can make something nice for dinner.
    3. Value your friends and keep in touch with them. They probably feel pretty much the same as you do. Cheer each other up and support each other.
    4. Get a hobby to keep yourself occupied.

    That's all I can think of.

  • Best advice I have is to reach out in your local community to help where you can.

    Doesn't matter if it's a municipal food bank, a church running a shelter, a charity helping battered spouses, or some kind of a mutual aid group getting people caught up on the bills... just working with others to help fix what you can does an amazing amount for your mental health. Volunteer to help shelter and feed migrants or the homeless. There's after school programs for kids in single parent households or who's parents have to work too much to be there for them. Cities across the US have citizens councils where local problems are brought and attempts to solve them are made.

    I know it all sounds cliche and it's all a bandaid on the bigger picture's problems but, in terms of your own mental health it can do wonders... plus I guarantee groups local to you need an extra set of hands on a regular basis. When bad things are going around, we start to worry... when the bad things are enormous and out of any semblance of our control we think we can do nothing. That's not true, you can do something, just on a local or regional scale. Reach out and offer to help in any way you can.

  • I started therapy a year ago.

    I enjoy walking my dog (usually) and sitting with my cat.

    I spend way, way more time exercising than is normal or mentally healthy probably, but it's been my coping mechanism for years and I leaned into it.

    I try to invite friends over when people have time. It's not often. I'm that age where people are starting to get married and have kids and move away.

    I'm miserable most of the time. I try to ignore the shitty politics, the news, the cost of housing, the cost of food, the quicksand it feels like we are all slowly sinking into.

    I've decided I'm never having kids. They don't deserve to be forced to exist in this.

    The only consolation I've found is an answer to a similar post to this on Reddit a couple years ago - someone in their 60s or so was explaining that for what it's worth, the world is always on fire if you only focus on that part. They grew up in the cold war, doing bomb shelter drills and hearing how they were going to get nuked by Russia. The economy has its issues then. The government has its issues then. I think those issues are worse now, but honestly who knows. You have to look for moments of brightness and try to avoid focusing on the morass of terribleness that everyone is trying to shove down your throat. It's not easy. But the alternative is worse.

  • Accepting this is what my species is like and that this is the world we've made for ourselves, is the hard bit.
    The good bit is that it will be over soon.

    The rest is depression.

  • I'm going to be honest, this will sound silly, but... Watching Avatar The Last Airbender really helped.

  • I have a small circle of focus on my own life. It’s working, and my life is getting better.

    In my work, I focus on doing the best possible job. If I succeed at my job, then my customers’ lives are better. That’s how I make the world a better place. It gives me a reason to do my best every day.

    What I do is design kitchens. I also bridge the gap between the plan and the execution of the plan. There are lots of little details to pay attention to. When I get everything right, people get new kitchens.

    With kitchens the way they want them, they eat well. They have peace in their house. They have social space to invite people over. Everything works smoothly, and they have a solid building block to build their own lives on.

    If I try to do more, I might fuck it up. This task of making kitchen rebuild projects go well is the perfect balance between my own competence and the needs of the world. It takes everything I’ve got.

    Having the match between my mission and my skills, having the mission be just hard enough to take everything I’ve got, is my own personal recipe for not falling into despair at the state of the world. The thing that bothers me the most is if one of my customers has a problem. I worry more about that than I do about Gaza.

  • Unlike most, I don't believe its possible (or even a very good idea) to ignore the news. What I do is limit my news source to two places a day, BBC and The Guardian which I know are not perfect but I believe they can be largely trusted. Other than that, I read the odd link on here but I won't doom scroll.

    I also do things that have a tangible effect for people who have it worse than me. Hands on in my immediate locality, and via donation nationally and/or internationally. I have a list of charities that I support and donate to two for 6 months then switch to another two and repeat. Doing this means that most importantly, people are helped in some small way and less importantly it offsets the shitness of life a bit. If I can feel a bit happy that I'm doing something, that's a good thing.

  • I stopped worrying after the hamas terrorists attack in Israel. Not because I don’t care and think this is horrible and all people should live in peace. But because it is too much information I can handle. All the media is full of wars and crisis but I don’t think there are more or less crisis then 20 years ago for example. The thing is we are so exposed with social media and news websites and stuff. I can’t even surf YouTube without getting actual news about what’s going on. Sometimes I just want to watch dumb or nerdy stuff or read some which is not related to bad things. Some say this is selfish or ignorant - well I still get enough news from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza - I just stopped reading and watching all the stuff I stumble across. I cannot even change much on the situation so it is kinda human to get used to stuff like that. I cannot even Imagine what it was like to live during the Cold War with permanent threat of getting nuked and stuff.

  • I just accept that life is absurd. Once you accept that morality, your own desires, logic, all of them are like waves through time, coming and going, changing form, never staying still...you recognize how ridiculous it is to desperately cling to any semblence of a ground beneath you. Just let yourself fall into the unknown, and at least the insignificance of your own struggle against the tides of change is acknowledged.

    Or you can, y'know, just scream, cry, and rage about it. I think of emotions like a buffet. You gotta try them all at least once, and often in a wide variety of combinations. But hey, you do you.

  • Meditation (as in, observing your thoughts without judgement, allowing them space, cultivating awareness and compassion). You don't have to sit and focus on a candle or image or get the right breathing techniques or follow any kind of religion. Pema Chodron's books are a very accessible and easy to read, and you don't need to be a Buddhist to follow her work.

    Look for spiritual sustenance in nature and in compassionate people. I find a lot of reassuring and helpful approaches in Jiddu Krishnamurti's works, particularly his understanding that cultivating awareness and honest, open observation will increase compassion in yourself and will spread compassion in the world. (It's more nuanced than that, but that's an element of his observations). People with something genuinely helpful to say are not selling you anything - neither an idea or a product.

    The news is there to sell things - ideas and products. Most news sources are selling a political and/or religious idea and bias as well as literally advertising products. News media is a business, making money from advertising. They don't make money from selling ideas that life can be satisfying or enjoyable without buying stuff or doing things that make politicians and religious leaders more rich or powerful. Always read the news with a critical eye and look at what isn't being focused on, not what is. Search for interesting personal stories, not headlines to get a slightly better perspective on the world.

    There was a study done a few years ago that found that 60% of social media accounts were fake. That number is probably higher now, and there is more AI, too. The news and media and even federated systems are all manipulated in various ways. Huge congregations of right wing end-times Christians work like bot farms to spread fear and misinformation across all platforms: their goal is to speed up destruction because they believe in an afterlife that is only possible if the unbelievers are destroyed. They spread so much fear around feminism, LGBTQ+ issues, trans debates, flat earth nonsense, climate change denial, pro and anti vaccine arguments, etc. They just use whatever works to stir people up; they will take either side of an argument. The Taliban and Al-Queada worked in the same way, to similar ends. Israel and Russia and China all use these manipulation tactics too, to slightly different ends. The UK and Europe have other methods and goals (destroy threats to capitalism and neo colonialism, be seen as good guys). There are bot farms, hackers and paid accounts for every type of greedy power addict. But they all want destruction of perceived rivals, and they want one group of people to be afraid of another. It's all lies and manipulation - some of it works, in a way, but a lot of it doesn't. The fact they are all using these tactics show how desperate and afraid they are. We need to remember just how manipulated news stories and media are, and how the governments and organisations of the world are all trying to fool each other's populations. Before the internet, you only saw your own country's propaganda - now you see it all, and the system is falling apart in front of our eyes.

    The news is not the sum total of things that are happening; it's what is making someone more money or more power. The news doesn't report all the people who had a pleasant day, or did a little bit better than yesterday - but how can it? Remember that for every horror story in the news, a thousand times more people were doing OK or better.

    Do something that brings you actual joy every day. If you are honest with yourself, you find that actual joy is always the simple things - a favourite food, bouncing a ball, sitting under a tree, reading a good story, caring for a pet, holding hands quietly with a loved one, watching the clouds, riding a bike in nature, making music and art, reading a comic... Whatever small joys you can find, do them every day if you can, even if you're living in a war zone. The small joys are reality, and sometimes you'll experience big joys, although you don't need them so often. News and depressive thoughts are not reality, only skewed and biased ways of looking at parts of reality. Moments of small joy are often all of reality that really matters.

    Meditation (in whatever form works for you) can help you to experience the sensation that you are not your thoughts. "You" are something that exists with or without thoughts. It is not enough to consider this idea, it is something you need to actually experience, as often as possible. By extension, the world is not the collective thoughts and opinions of people: there is a reality of existence beyond all the nonsense we project on top of it.

    Look for humour and go back to things that help you remember that there is always a lot to laugh about in world. Try to avoid cruel, mocking humour and yet be open to finding life-affirming humour even amongst the worst tragedies.

    Cultivate compassion for yourself and the world around you. Ultimately aim to do everything out of compassion - not obsession or selfishness, fear or greed. If you need to be alone, be compassionate for yourself and others that need to be alone; if you need to be with other people, be compassionate for them. Don't look for things in return: it is not a transaction. Compassionate action will not only bring you joy and peace, they will spread it. Practice compassion for everything - plants, animals, yourself, and other people. True compassion is not draining or tiring; it is a letting go of things like prejudice and judgement. It is not easy to do, it is something to work at.

    Have positive, achievable goals and work on them whenever you can. You will get setbacks; it's OK. Life shouldn't be lived on a flat surface, there should ups and downs. It's a journey, and a true journey should be interesting, across a changing landscape. When you have downs, recognise that there will necessarily be an up before long. The same us true for people around you, and the world.

    Work on things you can change for the better, don't focus on what you can't. But actually work on the things you can change. It doesn't matter how small they are; in many ways, the universe is not interested in big or small; and small things can make big changes anyway, like atoms or bacteria or blood cells (which can all do equally good or bad things, from our human perspective).

    There are injustices and tragedies and traumas happening around the world; there are as many beautiful, loving kind things happening at the same time, probably more. The internet, the TV, the newspapers, magazines, books and media are just very small windows for an infinitely large world. We often think we're seeing everything, but we are seeing very little. Our only reality is when we are not looking at life through these small windows - but we spend so much time looking through them that we forget reality. Do things that take you back to reality. If that reality is painful, approach it with compassion and it will gradually get less painful.

    Work in reducing suffering in all forms for yourself and everything around you. Don't contribute to suffering and don't dwell on guilt and fear. Acknowledge those experiences, but let them pass. Don't push bad things away, but don't give them energy - just observe them, and return to things that create joy and peace, no matter how small. You don't have to fix things or cure things that are bad, just work on making them a little bit better.

    Remember that a lot of bad news is only a matter of perspective. So much of what we hear about - wars, corruption, illness, oppression, greed - are clear signs that the perpetrators of those things are desperate. Desperate people feel as though they are losing; they are doing everything they can to hold on to power, and they are lashing out. But they are losing the fight (most of which is with themselves or each other). Yes, we are the victims of their lashing out, but their viciousness and fear-mongering is because they are losing. They are losing because they have lost compassion and kindness and love. If we don't cultivate those things, we will join them in desperation and fear; if we do continue to cultivate those things, they can never defeat us, because we are not even trying to win or to fight. We are surviving and growing and living. They can hurt us, but they can't defeat us, and when they hurt us, they hurt themselves. But when we try to hurt them, we hurt ourselves, too. We end the fight by inviting them (the desperate, the rich, the powerful) to join us in compassion and kindness, by turning away from suffering and from causing suffering. There is no action too small to help make the world a better place.

    Thank you for coming to my Wendy's Ted Talk.

131 comments