It feels all but certain that I won’t be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire. All of the wealth is going straight to the top. All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled. All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet. We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.
Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won’t be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn’t exist already.
I myself have disabilities (which I don’t think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job. The problem is that I just can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.
Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it? If so, what snapped you out of it?
If I want things, I need money and the only way to get money without practically committing any financial crime that there is, it’s to work for it. Quite frankly, it’s unhealthy to be bathing yourself with this mentality of dreading the reality of the matter. I won’t disagree that it sucks, but there has to be other directions out there for you than just that.
But I do suspect the reason you’re feeling this way is because of you mentioning disabilities and I can’t imagine the kind of world you’re in where, it seems like there’s a layer of disrespect towards the disabled when it comes to work.
Log out of social media, go outside, interact with real people. Life is not remotely as bad as all that, it just seems that way because social media has told you to be scared. Humans are extremely adaptable, we will overcome whatever the problems are.
I don’t know, I’m in the UK and feel similarly.
TL; DR Get in on the scam.
Pick something you like to do, or have a talent for, and plan a path to make money from it. You may still have to work for someone else initially, to develop skills and get experience, but it will be better than doing a shit job only for money.
Research what resources there are to support your startup. Even in places where there is no help from government or anything else for individuals, you will find they want to support business.
Especially if you have extra challenges, if you get good, they will make a narrative around your success and promote you as an example.
I work to have money for shelter and food and, just as importantly, some spending money for hobbies and travel. The freedom to be able to drive basically anywhere any time is a great thing to have.
The inequalities today are large but also the standard of living for even the lower class is probably higher than any other time in history. You can go your entire life without holding a shovel or hammer or piece of firewood Imagine instead having to build your own house, grow your own food, and cut firewood to stay warm. Things aren’t so bad.
Maybe try to find a small business you care about or interests you? I own a small business. It’s me, my wife, my sister-in-law and two friends I made in the industry. We all get paid $16/hr. We got to create the environment we wanted to work in. Its a lot of work but we’re happy and feel more free than we would elsewhere.
I know I’m coming from a point of privilege writing this but I like to think we’re all on equal footing at my place and we’re doing our best to grow together rather than making me rich. I’ve worked for a lot of small businesses as well and they often have more respect for skills and individuals - not all - but a lot. If you find a place you like or even love it can become like a second home.
God I miss my job.
More than 20 years of peace and I took it for granted. When the boss started talking about selling the place I thought, “Who would buy this outdated hole in the ground that makes no real money and is surrounded by competition?”
What bums me out the most though is that when I was 16 he said, “Come work for me. In 10 years I intend to retire and I’ll lease one of these places out to you and you’ll take over when I die.”
I knew it wasn’t happening at the 11 year mark.
Don’t be loyal. Jump around. Don’t throw your life and time away. Everyone I know who has ever made any money did so by selling their skills to the highest bidder.
I helped someone else get everything they ever wanted and I got nothing but promises.
Don’t do that. Seriously.
(I should have made this its own comment but yours is the one that moved me to write it. The speech is directed mostly at OP and anyone else who stumbles onto it.)
Capitalist Wage-Labor is a scam. Surplus value comes from labor. Labor is a commodity just like anything else on the market, but the price of labor itself is tied to general subsistence plus replacement, it isn’t tied to how much value is created. Differences in wages come from various factors but regulate around cost to replace, ie training requires a lot of time, so this is represented by higher wages.
Instead, we should be advocating for public ownership, so that the people get the spoils of their labor, and can pay into a general fund of sorts to provide safety nets, infrastructure, and more that don’t rely on the profit motive. In other words, we should transition to Socialism.
I recommend you read theory. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism if that appeals to you or anyone else.
For a while there I was a homeless alcoholic. Now I’m an alcoholic. Given the choice between the two I know which I’d rather.
you unironically just have to cope with it in whatever way makes sense to you
I personally think of my career as: “some things I do are interesting and keep me from blowing my brains out, the rest I don’t care about”
when it comes to the company I work for: I treat everyone I meet well, no corporate bs, no yes sir yes ma’am. I do whatever I’m assigned and meet deadlines
but I never go above and beyond (because of burnout)
everything you’ve thought about hard work = reward or better pay is a scam
put everything into work-life balance and when you go home focus on things you really want to do, such as hobbies or hang outs
don’t do unpaid overtime, don’t bend over for anyone, don’t offer yourself up when shit goes down
you want to be as invisible as possible while not burning out AND not working your ass off (everyone has different standards for what this means)
tldr: just find some way to cope because there isn’t really anything else you can do
If you can swing the training, even at the CNA or EMT level, there is healthcare. Purposeful work. Knowledge that helps your daily, and is never entirely useless. If nothing else it will save you from spurious trips to the urgent care or emergency room, or tell you when to use the urgent care instead of the emergency room, and save you money there. Even before ACA there were shortages. There’s potential here for fallout as with everything else, but if hospitals can retain nonprofit status I don’t see much changing in terms of need.
For now anyway, until nonprofit status/benefits get yanked, hospitals pay part of education upgrades. They typically offer better health insurance too, if you stay in their corporate system and don’t have kids.
I’m sure there’s other purposeful professions that don’t have an impossible buyin.
I usually recommend trades. Building something with your hands, again with a skill set that carries over into your household, has purpose. But with immigration policy, a sizeable piece of the grunt work force may be kicked out, so I’m not sure what will happen there but I suspect house building will slow down.
This is why im in the field im in. My labor goes directly to people who need it. Its still a scam and im still taken advantage of monetarialy but I come into work and do things directly for people who need them.
It is a scam, but we need to eat and have a roof over our heads. So you have to find something that you can tolerate and try to get paid as much as you can for as little time as you can give. This is the game we are in. Unfortunately in the current system money talks, it is not fair but that is how it is.
The amounts of copium in this thread are extinction-level.
Everything you just said is 100% valid and you are simply correct.
The thing is, it’s not a measure of a healthy mind to thrive in a profoundly sick society where the worst of the worst have won long ago.
There’s this thing called depressive realism which posits that depressed people, by and large, perceive reality much closer to how it really is than neurotypical people.
Essentially, “normal” people have an (innate or learned) positivity bias. Which is usually a good thing. People like us are the outliers.
But positivity bias in a world where it’s actually harmful is another thing. The majority of people are walking headlong into their own extinction while going “Ehh, it’s not so bad”, while we should ALL be positively irate and picketing the homes (not companies) of our owner class 24/7.
But it hasn’t happened yet and at this point I don’t know how bad things need to get before people realize what’s going on.
Only those that understand a problem even have a chance to solve it. Those who refuse to understand a problem (often for comfort) are not helpful at best, but usually actively harmful.
The problem of suffering runs far deeper than “Rich vs Poor”. We are all trapped inside constantly decaying bodies that are barely capable of survival. This constant decay leads to almost constant pain even billionaires can not avoid. And then there is our anxious brain worrying about all sorts of things that might or might not happen. Yes, all of this is more bearable inside a villa than inside a tent, but it is still abhorrent. This does not mean the “Rich vs Poor” struggle is not worth while. It is, because there is tremendous preventable suffering within this struggle. This struggle, however, is just a tiny fraction of the problem that is called the human condition.
To those who seek to understand the problem of suffering, i can recommend this video. It eases you into the horror of being alive.
Mass starvation is historically the usual trigger for revolution. Not always though.
As long as people have something to entertain themselves and something to eat, nothing will change. Even the Ancient Romans knew that: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.”.
Ah so that’s why bread and games increases loyalism in Civ6 ;)
Get offline, and simplify. Start doing things that are good for you. There is yet joy to come.
You are not wrong. It’s a very unfair world we have build. And a lot of people are struggling even though there are plenty of resources to make sure every single person on earth could have their needs met and the opportunity to live a meaningful life.
BUT we have to dare to hope. Because otherwise we just give up and the people on top is counting on that. ”We have the power and there is nothing you can do about that”. I think David Graeber is one of the most hopeful people to read:
“Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.
His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit
I like this sentiment. Hope is also very important in my life. In my darkest times, there was always hope to cling to. It wasn’t always realistic and most of it has failed. Some have succeeded though and I am in a much better place now.
However, it is important to learn that failure is a good thing. Society has imprinted in most of us that failure is bad. It is not. Failure is a way to learn. Without failure you cannot learn and you cannot grow.
For this same reason it is perfectly fine for hope to fail. You can learn from that and adjust your hopes and expectations accordingly within the scope of you values.
Honestly, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time in some online communities that are doom posting about everything. Do things suck right now? Yes, but they’ve literally sucked for as long as human society has existed. Things can always be better, or always be worse. However you can’t just sit around passively waiting for the times to change, or your life will suck.
The single biggest factor in whether your life is good or not is you and your actions. Don’t let things outside of your control convince you to give up. Do the best with what you have, and I promise you that you can find fulfillment and happiness in the life available to you.
Honestly, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time in some online communities that are doom posting about everything. Do things suck right now? Yes, but they’ve literally sucked for as long as human society has existed.
Ah. I was worried for a second he may have been stuck in places that are only pessimistic doom posting. Good to know that life sucks now, and has always sucked. That’s the positive message we need right now.
Either that or a god damned pitchfork…
Yeah… it feels like what my mother used to say when I was a kid. “People have it worse than you in <insert country here>.” Like okay, things suck and have always sucked. Doesn’t really nullify his feelings though that they suck right now and they’re having a hard time. Just feels kinda dismissive. The rest of it is fine but that part just bugs me.
It’s contextualizing, things suck, that’s real and gets acknowledged, not dismissed, they can suck more and probably do for other people, this is also real. It doesn’t make the suck you are experiencing magically better but it does put into a wider context and helps to show that you, likely, aren’t at rock bottom without any hope. Your actions and headspace matter. They won’t magically make everything great, but they can easily be the difference between bad and legitimately “ok” or better.
Yeah this is catastophizing. Sure it’s bad. Does it mean certain death? No. Is it the quest country to live in? Certainly not. Just stay focused. Find the best job you can, and don’t be a slave to them. It’s business, not family. You’ll make it through. While you’re making some money and have some mental and financial bandwidth, think about your next move. Be patient and try not to panic. It’s going to be okay in the long term.
You’re right, I’ve definitely been doomscrolling way too much.
I think the biggest thing holding me back is the idea that it is too late to do anything because my life could effectively be over in less than a few months. I see lots of people dooming about fascist purges and the end of societal function and think, “Well, how do I know for sure that they’re wrong? I don’t know enough about society to make a solid prediction either way.”
And so my brain thinks “There is a reasonable chance that my life is over (or at least the ladder to make any life progress gets pulled up) in a few months. If everything I do is all for naught, then why bother?” It’s a belief that I have no long-term agency.
I think that in order to move forward, I have to disprove the idea of me being targeted in a fascist purge and complete economic collapse happening anytime soon with reasonable certainty. Are those sound predictions, or are they just nightmares dreamt up by a bunch of armchair historian doomers exaggerating how quickly these things happen? Is the theory that the “day one mass deportations” include all known political dissidents actually possible, or are the logistics too insane to work? That’s what I have to figure out, or else I will likely continue to believe that I am helpless.
In other words, I think it’s quite plausible that I’m reading misinformation, but the fact that I don’t know it for sure is preventing me from dismissing it outright.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply!
Just my 2 cents, but the logistics part is substantial. Our jails and prisons are already overflowing (with the highest incarceration rate of the global north) so there’s no quick process that is feasible. We should have plenty of warning as to what’s coming down the works… as for having the means and ability to do anything about it? We shall see.
You’re not helpless unless you don’t take action. Build your community and celebrate the small wins. Find meaningful work(even volunteering) and build more connections to others. Having some of that to fall back on has kept me saner lately, and now I’m driven to focus more on that, least for the short term.
I recommend the It Could Happen Here podcasts from after election day. I’m not caught up, but the three I listened to acknowledge the terror of the situation we’re in while also trying to put things like mass deportation in context. It’s going to be so unbelievably expensive. So no I don’t think dissidents like you or myself are on the list, yet.
Consider the fact that you can change your life slowly with concerted effort. It helps me!
