Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, AKA “Might as well try my best in case I’m wrong and we manage to pull it off”.

If you find out, let me know…. All I’ve tried is organising and drinking, and they take the edge off but not enough

Shits always been like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but this level of fucked or worse. There was just a brief blip after WWII when things were relatively stable, and now that its ending things feel a little out of control.

Nothing. By definition, I’m already a “doomerist”, I guess.

And it just becomes worse when one gets “transcendental”. While everything you listed (“Climate changes, rise of far-right ideologies, erosion of democracy, huge setbacks in human rights, rise of bigotry and hate crimes, destruction and loss of biodiversity, criminalization of activism/union strikes, etc”) is enough to get a “doomerist” framework and existential dread, wait until you catch yourself gazing into the depths of the cosmic abyss, expanding from mundane events to atemporal, ineffable cosmic noumena, and realizing that everything was just the tip of a gigantic, Lovecraftian-like iceberg.

Cosmos’s indifferent to us. A supernova could explode within our galactic vicinity and vaporize the Earth in just a blink of our eyes, for example. Earth will be engulfed by a bigger Sun (Red Giant) in the future. Every living being, including us, is walking on a “thin” plaque floating above an enormous ocean of deep magma (ever thought of Pacific Ocean as being so enormous? Well, it’s nothing in volume compared to Earth’s magma).

This, my friend, is a stage of “doomerism” which I can’t describe how deep it is compared to the known “doomerism”.

Technically, I consider myself a nihilist, as the way I conceptualize things relates to nihilism (and, etymologically, I’m a “Nihil”-centered person, I sort of worship the “Nihil” a.k.a. the nothingness, so I’d be considered as a Nihil-ist). I’m not exactly Nietzschean because I never dived myself into Nietzschean books, although I like some of his quotes (the gaze into the abyss, for example). I’m just “nihilist” as in “there’s nothing: literally only The Nothing is”.

To be honest, Syria has really been depressing me lately. It’s the first clear victory for the zionists in the Gaza War, the Palestine War, the Middle East Regional War, whatever you want to call it. Everything else could pretty much be called a tie until then? Or maybe even a victory for the resistance? Aside from the genocide, of course. But it’s hard for me to see how they follow this up with any more victories. Ansarallah has increased global shipping prices by 200%, hundreds of thousands of settlers (perhaps more) have left the zionist entity permanently, and there really is a limit to how many weapons a financialized neoliberal economy can produce. The Ukraine War is hopefully going to end soon because the western powers really are exhausted.

I think about how the height of European colonialism was just before WW1. It’s been in decline ever since. Make no mistake, it’s still very strong and still fights very hard and can still win temporary victories, but it’s in decline and on the defensive. I think about how US economic policy is reverting to 18th century protectionism in order to combat China—where the economy is so strong now, that the communists have become free traders, battering down barriers across the world wherever they find them. 18th century economics is not going to defeat 21st century economics, especially with a workforce like the one in the USA, where the vast majority of real work is done by people of color who themselves tend to have the best politics in the country.

I think about the utterly deluded world that liberals and fascists live in, where these people are getting almost all of their news from corporate sources that are deliberately trying to confuse them. The police and military are definitely not what they once were. Reading a bit of Yahya Sinwar’s novel has made me suspect that these guys really are not up to the task of dealing with a real sustained insurgency here, especially one that avoids using computers and cellphones. The issue, of course, is that 70% of the USA is white and will not support an anti-colonial revolution here, at least for the time being. But how fucked are things going to be four years from now? Does anyone think that western society is going to get better at taking care of the increasing share of the populace that is totally enraged with how everything (not just treats, but necessities like housing, education, health care, transportation) has become totally unaffordable?

I think about how revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao (and many others) were, as far as I can tell, totally confident of the correctness and righteousness of their cause, and the inevitability of its triumph. ‘Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.’ — Mao

It is all about perspective. Glass can always be half full.

Few examples:

1. There is still a lot of work beeing done about climate changes. Polution was way worse 50 years ago in my country. Solar power is actually cheap enough and is taking over the world.
2. After far right will not bring the prosparity it promissed, there will be a new age. Also if you are refering to Trump, this is his last mandate. (And after that he will probably go to prison)

Even if there a colapse is to be expected. There will always be the next day. And good people will raise.

There are still a lot of good people fighting and willing to fight for the good.

I see it only as a new cycle of “Bad times create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times create weak people. And weak people create bad times.”

That Italian guy bringing a glimmer of civilised hope to the lands of greedy barbarians.

It’s hard to articulate but probably the only thing for me right now is the sheer weirdness of everything. It feels like everyone’s perceptions of reality have been shaken loose and unusual things are more likely to happen.

So nothing concrete; just vibes. And uncomfortable vibes at that.

Also, chaos and upheaval lead to change and the most optimistic part of me hopes that whatever emerges from it will be defined by people who have had the courage to resist all of the fear, hate and greed.

My coping mechanism:
Block/filter out the news!
(Except for positive/uplifting news)

It does wonders for your mental health!

Most news sources are for-profit,
and they did some research,
apparently depressing news draws more attention / clicks, which results into more profit for them, but it isn’t good for your mental health.

Other news sources just drive an hidden agenda, and aim to manipulate you to believe whatever the rich guy that owns the news site wants.

Also, try to have fun while humanity is sliding down in the background!

Whether you’re depressed or acknowledge and then ignore the facts, will have zero impact on the final outcome which will apply to the whole world.

So might as well aim to be happy in the meantime :)

Focusing on what I can do to make my and my partner’s lives better, ethically, and realistically and just happy and present with her. Life’s too short.

https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16. Myth of Sisyphus.pdf

All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The gods cursed us to roll a rock up a hill. We don’t know why and they probably don’t either by now. I push the rock because doing so makes me hate them more effectively and at some point I might become strong enough to kill them for that. If I was arbitrarily born into 18th century France and my rock was to starve for the aristocracy, I’d push it because there’s a guillotine over the horizon. I’m arbitrarily born into the late 20th century and my rock is to starve for the corporate aristocracy, I push it because I or someone like me will get to turn their bunkers into brazen bulls. At no point in history could I have been born without some rock to push and it’d always mean existential damnation for me, but I’d purify my hate pushing it.

I recently found a rap song in the endangered Tlingit language, I also recently had the opportunity to speak to a cousin in a language that stopped being passed down on that side of the family with our shared grandpa, and I also recently got to speak with an Ojibwe woman who is learning that language, about her experiences with it. An Ojibwe dub of Star Wars was recently released, as was the first ever feature film in Norwegian Sign Language. As someone who is interested in languages, their preservation and revitalization, I feel like experience and recent news gives me reason to be optimistic.

Earlier today I learned that there is such a thing as pea milk, which means that there is another and more nutritious plant-based substitute for dairy milk which can be made entirely with local-grown ingredients in Norway. As someone who wants to both see food sovereignty and veganism in Norway, these sorts of advancements in food science leave me optimistic.

When it comes to the topics mentioned in the OP, what keeps me optimistic is just remembering that the course of history is really just entropy, right? Suppression of activism, the erosion of people’s rights, the rise of fascism and the epidemic of hate crime, these are all symptoms of a broader power structure trying to sustain itself by force. But that system just doesn’t have infinite energy to sustain itself, it doesn’t have infinite resources. We see evidence of this in the “little things” like my cousin learning a language that had been forced out of our family: the forces that had pushed the language out of the family could not keep it out indefinitely, because with the effort one family member would take to relearn it, the effort needed for others to do the same gets progressively smaller.

Humans are known as persistence hunters: we certainly don’t need to hunt for food anymore, but the same strategy is certainly useful for hunting down our own oppressors. Oppressors will grow exhausted of trying to fight their inevitable failure, and that’s when they’ll easily be slain as “paper tigers”.

The best thing to focus on in the present moment is simply what you can do. Because any new skill you master, any positive interaction you have, any good news you read, all of that will prove to you that challenges can be overcome, that you can make a difference and that there is still good in the world. It is the little challenges you overcome that make the big challenges easier to overcome in time.

It sounds like you’re trapped inside a media bubble that’s feeding these positions and stories to you. Don’t confuse the stories people are talking about with your own life.

There’s always been crappy stuff going on. There’s always been amazing stuff going on. The human race is not dying. Some stuff gets better, some stuff gets worse. If you hyper focus on all the bad stuff and outrage that the algorithms are shoving down your throat then you’re going to get pretty crappy. It’s like trying to live off of sugar.

Retake your agency and live your life; be yourself. Don’t go crazy obsessing over yet another doomsday scenario someone is spinning for clicks.

The people I love still have many years left to live and I want to enjoy them

— Ooh, yeah, baby! This right here is gonna make the last three days worth it. A fat syringe full of clear, medical-grade, Federally-backed estrogen. Aqueous estradiol valerate, to be precise.

— What happens when I inject myself with estrogen?

— Oh, no. No, no, no. Don’t tell me you forgot what estrogen does. Estrogen. Remember? Uh…anticistamines? Feminephrine?

[Hard: Success] — You haven’t forgotten. Generally speaking, patients undergoing hormone replacement treatments will experience a variety of physiological and mental changes. Drier skin, growth of breast tissue, weight redistribution, decrease of body hair growth, shifts in facial fat and musculature. Emotional changes vary wildly between individuals, but are often reported to be “intense”.

— Bzzt. Wrong. Estrogen is like junk, baby. A calm, soothing, smooth-like-butter body high. A referral letter from two medical professionals and a couple of shed tears in a therapist’s chair are the only things keeping every sucker on the street from turning into an E-junkie. Getting it is hard; stopping after you’ve had your first sweet shot is even harder. This is serious shit. And now it’s all yours. Shoot it up!

originally by @DiscoPosting@hexbear.net