Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I know there are many people feeling similar. And I have some thoughts that help me not to give up hope.

1. change doesn’t come fast, it’s growing slowly under the actions small or big of people who want it.
2. there are likeminded people in the world. We are not the majority but we are not alone
3. there is no alternative to aim for a better, healthier world. Even if it looks dark, giving up is not an option
4. go on your own pace. Small steps can make the difference. Don’t expect major changes. Revolutions happen once in 100 years, even less I guess.
5. find at least one or two friends or comrades who share your values. Join a union or a political movement, try to engage and find your place.

For the longest time, I could have written out these thoughts of yours almost verbatim myself. I hear you, and I believe I know that pain very well.

I’ve recently clawed my way out of that mindset, mostly. A total, unrelated stranger on the Internet now suggests you try the same, for your own mental health and The Greater Good™ alike. I’ll share my own story instead of preaching to the choir, with the faint hope of giving faint hope that there at least exists a way out of this mental mess you’re in.

I was almost afraid of being thought of as naïve, considered it a weakness to not show. Cynicism was my shield. Nevertheless I always went and still go out of my way to be a “good guy”, in the most inconsequential ways. Don’t picture the ranting, vitriolic uncle here nobody wants to be with in the same room, I kept this negativity pretty much to myself and only let it out in controlled drips of sarcastic jokes. I, too, was convinced that humanity surely is doomed, if only for it’s insufferable ignorance, and by extension do whatever I can to support those precious few who I deemed as “not lost” in all the ways I could. Voluntary extinction of humans seemed like a pretty swell concept, overall.

I did organize convention security of Eurofurence for more than a decade, going from ~150 to thousands of attendees. All staff are unpaid volunteers. I just recently realized how the “staff side” of the convention is a practical, well-working example of a practically anarchistic collective organisation (yes, security, too) managing a metric shit-ton of complex stuff just for a few thousand fellow furry queers to have fun for a week, and paying €1000+ and PTO for the privilege to boot. You may rightly assume I have seen a fair shit of crazy stuff, first hand, but violence, hate, or even just ignorance? I can count those on one paw, over all these years combined. Even trouble with “outsiders” in Berlin Mitte clashing with the colorful crowd was very limited and ultimately civil.

It took me this long to reflect how this personal experience is NOT a glitch in the Matrix, but actually the “resting state” of human consciousness. People are, in an exceeding majority, “good”. I cannot ignore a decade of first-hand (anecdotal, granted) experience and further tell the lie of “people are ignorant, assholes, or both”. They are not. People are however, broken. Like me. Possibly, like you. By “truths” about “reality as it is”, colported by profiteers of misery or other broken souls trying to dilute their pain by finding, nay, creating company to normalize their struggle and feel a tiny bit better. Not out of spite or hate, mind you, but to soothe themselves and survive in a world that is perceived as harsh, uncaring, and downright belligerent. Which it is, for many out there. But it is not “the world” we are up against— the hedgehogs dozing off in the pile of autumn leaves didn’t raise your rent last week. Neither did your neighbor, or the Mexican lady three cities over making ends meet. Why can’t “they” see that and do something? Likely the same reason why I can’t do a lot of things, I lack the energy. Instead of being on the streets or organizing a local repair cafe, I’m typing a stream of consciousness into the void on the Internet. Whoop-de-doh! I’m such a revolutionary! Welp, there’s the sarcasm again. :)

If you’re wondering how to pay for your damn food, shelter, and medicine tomorrow all day, every day, you literally cannot concern yourself with a long-term solution. You are eternally stuck in stopping the bleeding, and cannot focus on the guy stabbing you over and over again. It is too late, you’d bleed out if you shift focus now.

“You keep them dumb, I’ll keep them poor.” said the King to the Pope. And then propagandize this status quo as the only way to survive, with no alternative, and your survival is constantly at risk from… well… whatever threat we can conjure up.

So. If one agrees, at least roughly, with this (gesticulated wildly) being our shared reality, we have also established that people are, by a large margin, victims in need of help, but afraid to ask for it. This is why I follow the guideline of unconditionally offering help in whatever way I can.

There is no shortage of need for any kind of assistance or help in the world. It’s a seller’s market for positivity and aid out there, and it’s up to you to set the price as low as you can.

No effort in that direction is ever “wasted”, as some want you to believe. For every beneficial action you take, no matter how tiny, is a SHITLOAD of eager and needing recipients. Plucking the candy wrapper from the ground? Pointless, right? Surely inconsequential. Not when scaled up by the thousands. Smile at people, just because you are going to interact with them, and set the vibe. It’s ridiculous how many people are visibly starved for a sliver of positive, human interaction, particularly in retail jobs, for obvious reasons.

Once I began actively looking for the effects of my “inconsequential” actions, I realized that the opposite is true. The act of giving freely, unconditionally, and convincingly is the only way to reach those in need who are convinced they don’t deserve anything, or nothing would help them, anyway. It’s difficult to target aid, hence the 'obvious" pointlessness of it all, but an indiscriminate shotgun approach definitely, eventually hits some of the good people, you just won’t notice it right away. For them, however, any bit of empowerment is very real and sorely needed. Do not underestimate the power of decentralized action, it isn’t limited to Lemmy. :)

If you stop anyone’s bleeding for a moment, they may muster up the energy and focus one day, to give the stabby guy a little push. And take a figurative breather, for the first time in years. And then use that new-found strength to maybe, eventually, throw a punch.

I decided to be a part of that avalanche, from my very privileged position, instead of betraying myself and what I desire to be, in order to feel “normal” and be part of a “normal society” that doesn’t actually exist in the callous form so many claim it to “just be”. Fuck 'em if someone considers me naïve for believing in the possibility of creating a net positive with my life, even if we’re on a doomed ride into oblivion. At least enjoy the view, then, you’ve got nothing to lose but your prejudice.

Okay, I’m done, this is getting ridiculous.

TL;DR: Don’t give up, so many more people are “good”, every action has consequences, even if unseen.

I think a lot of it is people are struggling to just survive. Barely making ends meet, putting food on their own table and a roof over their head. There are probably many people that wish they could do more, but don’t have the time or resources to do anything more.

I wouldn’t necessarily say people don’t care. I don’t think they have the capacity to care. I think there’s so much going on in their lives and right in front of their faces that they can’t even see what’s happening.

That doesn’t make the solution any better though…

@aka I don’t have any answers but I feel the same way. The oddest thing for me, as a child-free person, is that people who ~have~ had kids don’t want to leave a better society or a liveable planet for their children and grandchildren.

The only person you can control is yourself. Do what you know needs to be done, set the examples for others, but place no value on whether they see you or not. The effect of your actions will be apparent.

At work, I listen to a coworker frustrated about a simple problem. It would be a simple change to make this person’s job much less painful, but he “just works here”. It’s just such a dumb problem to waste hours of someone’s life on.

This person is aware that the only reward for fixing the problem is more work. He’s still going to work the same hours with the same pay.

People don’t and won’t care until more their more immediate and drastic problems will be resolved. I’m happy for you, you’re not too empathetic, you’re simply privileged enough to care about such things. Meanwhile people who have no civil rights see vegans as class traitors, people being bombed would roll their eyes 360° at a mention of fighting light pollution, etc etc.

Activists of the privileged world. Your preaching audience is forever limited to about half of the population more privileged than you. If you want others to care about what you consider problems, SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS FIRST.

(steps off a soapbox to use it as a makeshift shield)

have come to a state of learned helplessness

I think it’s the reverse. The problems you talk about are too large and abstract for most people, they’ve never entered their minds. The same way most people never worry about the riemann hypothesis.

They worry about more important things such as the new Taylor Swift album.

I want you to know that I feel incredibly seen and validated by this post.

I’ve never had the chance to meet people like you in real life, so I’ve had to hold on to the few instances in which I’ve seen my feelings reflected in media. The one instance I keep coming back to is How To Be Hopeless by Carlos Maza. It’s an absolute masterpiece of a video essay, written from the depths of the personal and existential despair of a man who dedicated his adult life to fighting far-right extremism, and was rewarded with the end of his professional career and the victory of his serial harasser. Its message has become a core part of who I am now, and when I experience the kind of despair you’re describing, I return to it. It’s saved my life before. I cannot recommend it to you strongly enough.

Your coworker is reaching out to you in his own way, and you are making his life more bearable than you may know. What seems a little bump in the road may be a mountain to him. But life’s a marathon, and he might come around yet.

One of my favorite and best teacher was a biology teacher, and I remember being taught about population cycles of various living things. I like how that teacher showed us humanity’s population trends, and how it resembles boom and bust species. It was subtle, as if they knew it wouldn’t stick with many of the students.

I think most people can see the rat race they are in, but for whatever various reasons, cannot or will not notice the incoming cliff fall. But, some of us stand taller, and can see the cliff fall coming. Stopping in the middle of humanity’s stampede to warn everyone is going to be met with all sorts of problems, like being left behind, or being berated for slowing others down, or even violence if you create too much impact that impedes the flow of humanity. It’s really awful to deal with seeing a horrible thing happening, care about it, and are not able to make a difference to obvert a tragedy you see coming.

To me, it takes almost no effort to just think the correct way, to voice the correct thing in pertinent moments. It’s the holding of the tongue that takes effort when you realise the ears in the moment won’t listen. You can learn about people quickly by saying some off hand comments and seeing their reaction. Most of the time, people are oblivious or react negatively hearing about the cliff. Pardon my French: Most people only care about themselves and their own shits, sometimes so much that they actively shove their heads up their own asses, purposely so they cannot see anything else other than their own shit. Sometimes you might find someone aligning to your views, but be careful of circumstantial situations, like the rat race hitting a road bump and everyome complains about it. Lots of people only cared about covid when it knock on their door step and infected the nonbelievers.

I could go on, but have to stop atm, but know that you are not alone and it’s a struggle, like everything else in life, unfortunately.

I think most ppl do want to make the world a better place, but most ppl give up very easily, because they have urgent personal matters to deal with as well. Most think often about how they can help fixing the world, but they can only do so much every day, so they are like “It’s a shame I can only use rechargable batteries and plant wild flowers for the bees, but my taxes aren’t gonna file themselves.”

If you want to improve things you can’t wait around for a good moment or depend on the involvement of the depoliticized and hopeless to join in. You can just do things. There are other people doing things, too and you can find them. The change you make can inspire some others too, but the disaffected will always be frustrating to see and deal with. There will always be more to do but the thing is to keep trying to move toward the ideal even if it’s just by inches and there’s miles to go, it’s the long haul

The despair you feel toward the average person’s lack of interest or outright dismissal of these very real problems is unfortunately common. As others have said, the magnitude of the problems we face is often paralyzing. How to begin addressing these massive problems was a question asked by a mother to Noam Chomsky in 1992, and I think his answer still holds up quite well. One of his big points is that it’s pretty much impossible to tackle any of this alone, you need a group to brainstorm ideas on how to solve things and not feel so helpless as a single individual surrounded by a sea of uncaring people.

In a way, this community, slrpnk.net, and even the fediverse as a whole is acting as a place for people to come together and know that they’re not entirely alone, though finding a group in real life who shares your values would allow you to really start enacting change, even if on a small scale.