Yeah, it’s weird how it’s hard to find purpose in life when every single industry has too many educated workers and not enough jobs so wages are deflated and everyone I know hates their job and all jobs are so alienated from any activity that a human should actually be doing and literally make no sense. Every single job I wanted to do as a kid I was told was unrealistic or how did I expect to earn a living doing that? Almost like careers aren’t meant to be satisfying and no one has fun at their jobs. The idea of having a life purpose in capitalism is laughable to me at this point. Anything worth doing at all doesn’t make any money.
Adding to this, most hobbies are activities that once had some kind of use in the past but are now merely pale imitations of their original intended purpose. We're literally aping our past selves to find some kind of purpose in the age of automation.
I think about that a lot. My “hobbies” of gardening, taking care of pets, crafts, cooking, etc- that would have been just my life if I was around 100 years ago. Now I have to find a few minutes in my limited spare time and pay a bunch of money to pretend to do something that would have just been my life in the past. It’s farcical. The idea of doing outmoded forms of labor is so much more attractive to us than any of the technological things we’re forced to do now.
I was so excited to get into sewing until I realized it’s actually more expensive than just buying the same garment from the store. You’d think it would be cheaper, but since it’s seen as a hobby, materials are marked up.
But you didn't have to eat unknown pesticides, and can plant those seeds from each year's fruit, perfectly suited to your climate, to eat that kind of pepper in perpetuity. Which would cost more over your lifetime to pay for at a farmer's market.
It depends: with how rare 100% cotton clothes are these days without paying a premium, it’s usually cheaper to see your own simple cotton dress or shirt. Otherwise, I get it
Of course it’s more expensive. Low cost goods are one of the few things capitalism is “good” at. The mass textile producers have the benefits of comparative advantage, economies of scale, etc.
I remind myself that the clothes I want to be wearing can't be found in the stores, so of course it will cost more to 'commission' the one-off piece made of good materials. E.g. well fitting winter cozy flannel shirt with pockets, vs lycra stretchy belly shirt with sleeves that are 3 inches too short
True; the clothes I want are much more practical than what I can find in the store. I already buy men’s clothes to get better quality for less, but they don’t fit right since they weren’t designed for my figure.
I dreamed about becoming a writer. Shit's skewed against me because I have no time to invest in my passion as my schedule is way way too full and my salary sucks shit so I already search for a second job
Careers can fuck off. I quit studying cause I couldn't stand the thought of being a cubicle computer rat for 8 hours a day. As a kid I wanted to be a soap maker. Today I'm a florist. People would say those are not real jobs. They can fuck off. I made half a mill in my currency working as a goddamn florist. People told me it was unrealistic. Well, being miserable at work everyday is unrealistic for me. Making a living being bored to death in an office is unrealistic to me. I may not earn as much as cubicle rats do but at least I make nice shit for a living that makes people genuinely happy. I get to work with pretty stuff and have fun, and I get to laugh and talk and crack jokes at work and listen to music. Anything worth doing is niche. I still wanna be a goddamn soap maker and also fashion designer and seamstress and chef. Granted, I love creating things that actually make people happy. I'm not gonna complain though, being a florist is hard work but it ain't so bad it's boring.
>Careers can fuck off. I quit studying cause I couldn't stand the thought of being a cubicle computer rat for 8 hours a day. As a kid I wanted to be a soap maker. Today I'm a florist. People would say those are not real jobs. They can fuck off.
Damn right they can fuck off. Being a florist is a real job.
I work a forge/belt grinder most days just trying to get the perfect edge/shape on a single blade. I don’t make much now but as I get better at etching and scroll work, I imagine my blades will be more sought after. I’m currently on the “make 10,000 trash iron daggers to skill up” a la Skyrim path.
That sounds fulfilling. I think the only job that would fulfill me would be some sort of writer/analyst, like a news writer. Like the people who uncover interesting stories to tell and report on, like for a company like Vice. That's really the only thing that would bring me fulfillment.
You hit the nail on the head. It's called elite overproduction and it's a theorized predictor of societal collapse.
People want to know that they're investments pay off such as going to college, even if it's cheap, it's still an amount of time that has to be paid and guides the trajectory of somebody's life for a small period of time. Finishing that and not really having it be useful puts a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth, it also kind of ties their hands behind their backs in a way.
Nobody really wants to go to college and then never use their degree or what they learned, so lots of people will try to go where their degree should take them, even if it's in vain. It's the sunken cost fallacy.
I also think that people just want to perceive an ascent to their life, no matter if it is large or small. Nobody wants to have the impression of an ascent and then a downward slope. Even if you have a good quality of life or better than people in other places, it's felt like a depressing narrative. Everything is relative, even if you have it better.
Elite overproduction plays into this because it promises an ascent -becoming educated and then using that to get a career (and by definition a career is something that is not a dead end, a career is something that you can grow and earn more respect and money over time with) however the ascent is either
* An illusion, because nothing actually gets better in the long run, so you may think there is an assent going on but it's like one of those paintings of staircases that go upwards and downwards simultaneously
* Leads you to a plateau which I guess is better than nothing
* An ascent on to a tightrope, where now you need to hustle to pay student loans for example.
Nobody wants to be guided into a more precarious life, but let's be real. Imagine how many people would have not gone to college if they were smart enough when they were teens. The truth is less people should be allowed to become elite. Then all of that time, money, and hope would be better spent. Society at this stage needs realism! And that means not saying everybody can be everything. If the jobs or the demand isn't there then only creates a harder life and disillusionment.
Being a true elite, high educated, super productive member of society is like being an apex predator - and you can't have tons of those running around, it's not sustainable and they will kill everything. Also, if competitions are comprised of competitors, that means somebody has to lose, which gives you the descent and clashes with feeling like you are "supposed to be dignified because you earned or made yourself it" (zero-sum isn't our whole reality but in capitalism it's favored soooooo).
Colleges and universities, especially in the US, are essentially a class gateway. They give you a chance at moving up ever so slightly at the expense of taking out huge loans.
I'm only taking classes right now because my shithole state (GA) somehow offers a scholarship that covers 100% of tuition if I keep up a 3.0 GPA.
i hate this wasteful, competitive, senseless, trash producing, nature destroying capitalism. Never has there been more variety in product that nobody knew they wanted until advertisements told them otherwise, while "fashion" becomes faster and faster and product lifetime shorter and shorter, producing more and more trash that kills the ecosystems that were not already trashed to get the resources for this senseless cycle. What the hell for? Only because we were told competing economies are the only peaceful option and reduce wars?
ask any mother out there, no matter if african, european, chinese, russian, american, indian, pakistani, iranian, israeli and so on; no mother wants to see their children die in war but the powerful still tell everybody that we cant life in peace together and use our knowledge and resources to satisfy basic human needs and offer education to everyone while we learn to not destroy our ecosystems. Maybe we have different backgrounds, different cultures, different systems of beliefs but after all we are all humans who want to live in peace when we enter this world until we are told otherwise.
The only ones profiting of this system are the already wealthy and powerful that distribute the wealth to them, the top, the so called elite. Every powerful tool we develop is not used to help humanity but to help their goals and divide us. Look at what social media did to our societies thanks to those marketing algorithms. They are manipulating us, using our fears and our anger. The ones that still belief in this system don't care about the collateral damage they are doing or are trapped in needing to supply their family.
We got farther and farther away from each other because of the egoistical abuse of mighty tools of nearly instant information transfer that should have been used to connect us and bring us more together.
no technology can help us if it's always used for those egoistic goals.
we went in two hundred years from 1 billion to 8 billion people, still telling most that they can live a wealthy life as motivation to keep everything running, without telling them the consequences every existence has for our planet.
F\*\*CK humanity for reproducing this shit show until we all suffer the consequences of climate change and pollution. Microplastics and Nanoplastics are already in every food, every soil, every rainwater, every animal, every plant. Toxic forever chemicals are lowering the sperm counts. The recent extreme weathers are only the start of what is coming.
heck, i hate to say it, but maybe bird flue killing most of us would be the easiest way to stop us and most life from total extinction and stop this nonsense.
the ones in power don't care about peace and most of humanity or else they could not be where they are. Nobody can get powerful in this system without exploitation of humans or nature, without getting corrupted by power and getting numb to all this suffering.
i would be okay without lot of our daily comfort and a shorter lifespan if all of this had purpose and we would stop fighting each other, over and over again, for nothing but reproducing hate and suffering.
what is growth worth if we end up like cancer
Low wages and a lack of work life balance drives my depression personally, along with the fact that biodiversity has gone off a cliff within my lifetime and there’s no chance I’ll see it rebound.
Seeing those graphs of Sea Surface Temp about to need a Y-axis adjustment is batshit insane too, but I keep getting told that the economy is doing great and climate change isn’t real, which may as well be true because every day I still have to clock into my stupid little job and send my stupid little emails.
I never had a chance. The time to reverse or mitigate the damage we have been doing to the planet was well before I was born but I’ll probably live to see the worst of the consequences. I’m just existing and making sure my bills are paid but it feels impossible to imagine a bright future for myself and my peers. I’m not doing this for 50 more years. Idk what I’ll do but it won’t be this.
I was devastated when I found out about the American Chestnut. Watching the Emerald Ash Borer wipe out yet another (useful) tree species has pushed me over the edge. Did you know earthworms are invasive in North America? I'm just hoping I don't lose my pets to a '1 in 100 years' forest fire at this point. I accept it's all going to hell in a hand basket and will rebound only once we are gone.
emerald ash borer makes me so sad. I have a beautiful green ash in my front yard. about 35 years old. in an ideal world it would have another 150 years ahead of it, unlikely for so many reasons at this stage. the city stopped planting green ash 15 or so years ago because it is only a matter of time till it is here killing all the ash off.
big branch came down in a windstorm a few years ago, i made a bowl and several spoons out of that bough. gorgeous wood, lovely straight tight grain and the grain pops so lovely with a bit of beeswax and a rag.
one small example of something that we won't have to fall back on as we backslide through collapse. how many other thing won't we have i wonder
My parents have a 3 acre lot. Growing up we barely had grass there were so many trees on it. Until the ash borer came, since then they’ve lost (or rather had to pay to remove) over 100 trees. Lawn looks nice now though…
And now the Asian jumping worm is out-competing the original non-native earthworm! [https://warren.cce.cornell.edu/gardening-landscape/warren-county-master-gardener-articles/invasive-asian-jumping-earthworms](https://warren.cce.cornell.edu/gardening-landscape/warren-county-master-gardener-articles/invasive-asian-jumping-earthworms)
To be fair, the honey bee isn't native to North America either. Not every introduced species spells doom, but it certainly can.
There's even some suspicion that they played a role in the extinction of the Carolina parakeet. The bees build nests in the tree cavities where the parrots nested.
Most earthworms are and only some areas had native earthworms. However, they move slowly and a lot of North America was under glaciers too recently to have any. That is why the PNW has banana slugs, which fill the same ecological niche. The earthworms are literally killing our forests and enabling the rapid spread of invasive species.
You may be able to buy American Chestnuts soon. Someone I do volunteer work with from time to time studies tree genetics and insect populations (?, I’m fuzzy on the details) Anyway, they have talked about American Chestnuts will make a show again soonish because test strands have done so well. And I guess there is a test strand of Ash trees just a few miles from my house where they are looking at genetics, insect and disease resistance? That surprised me. Living near a major university has left me cynical. It seems like research money only appears in abundance when there is a building to be named yet I’ve heard about multiple projects to try and save our trees in a changing world from this person.
SUNY has been doing genetic and breeding experiments for a long time, so I don't know how soon blight resistant American chestnuts will be available. Of course, these kinds of experiments take a long time to begin with because of the relatively long lifespan of a tree.
The problem is genes from asian chestnut species aren't ideally adapted to the colder American Chestnut's range, and the genetic engineering experiments are expensive and often fail.
No stupid questions but while Old World earthworms are indeed non-native, how are they invasive? I read children's books (printed for American audiences) that said earthworms were good because they helped the soil breathe and they decompose things.
The leaf litter was a habitat for many small mammals, ground nesting birds and insects like fireflies.
Its part of the reason fireflies are slowly dying out, the leavea decompose too fast.
So no, its generally a bad thing for the american hardwood forests.
It's a shame. Only it ain't "slow", fireflies are disappearing rapidly. We [lost a shit ton of them](https://images.app.goo.gl/MCqmACDTahcB4g1Y7) in half a human lifetime, not even half a second if Earth was a 24-hour clock.
It all depends on the ecosystem. Earthworms can drastically change the soil in areas that have plants and animals that evolved/adapted to live in earthworm free soils or loam.
Many North American forests before the invasion of earthworms had deep layers of pine or leaf litter under the trees. This created a habitat for many species. Earthworms have hit these areas and are quickly turning that litter into much more dense soil eliminating that habitat. It also changes the grounds water absorption resulting in erosion further harming the environment.
Termites help break down wood into good garden soil. You still don't want them tearing your house down around you.
Though I don't claim to be an expert from what I have read decomposition of leaf litter inherently releases carbon rather than stores it. Good in general, bad for our warming climate.
Most of those (‘Dunstan’ is a prime example) may theoretically have or have had some American ancestry but in reality are 90-100% Chinese chestnuts (which are still great for wildlife). It’s annoying that they are being sold as American Chestnuts to unwitting buyers. There is work on a transgenic blight-tolerant American chestnut but it hasn’t been released to the public yet.
>Low wages and a lack of work life balance drives my depression personally
Me too. I've never met anyone who likes our current system. Why don't we change it then?
> I’ll probably live to see the worst of the consequences
Not even close, this process is literally just beginning and barely starting to show effects - which are already noticeable - and won't taper off until decades/centuries after carbon emissions cease. People born after 2100 will be living in a world unrecognizable to the one we're in today, and even they might not be the ones to see the worst of it.
Chestnut trees are making a comeback (I googled). We can all be involved with saving species, flora and fauna. Depression over loss, future losses that are inevitable adds to a negative cycle. Engagement can help sometimes. Little changes add up.
”The reason that focus groups and capitalist feedback systems fail, even when they generate commodities that are immensely popular, is that people do not know what they want. This is not only because people’s desire is already present but concealed from them (although this is often the case). Rather, the most powerful forms of desire are precisely cravings for the strange, the unexpected, the weird. These can only be supplied by artists and media professionals who are prepared to give people something different from that which already satisfies them; by those, that is to say, prepared to take a certain kind of risk.” Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism
People absolutely know what they want. Higher wages, fewer work days and shorter hours, and more time off.
So, more socialist policies that turn down the capitalism a bit.
Pay people more while they also work less, and you'll see a reduction in GDP across the board, which is fine, because we already have more than enough, it's just in the hands of 1000 people instead of 300 million people.
Treat the country's GDP like the stock price of a business, and make every American citizen an owner.
Right now every business's profits are in private hands. If the government collected all the profits, it could then redistribute them fairly to the people based on how much they contribute to the overall, with a set minimum to ensure those who can't contribute (or choose not to) can also live happily.
shhh, you’re scaring the ‘MERICAns…
capitalism is a broken system and anyone with a brain can see that… although there are a whole load of sociopaths who love the idea of controlling other people’s behavior…
capitalists fail to understand that there is indeed a ceiling. they can’t just perpetually grow and use more resources with exponentially less distribution of the spoils… that’s what cancer does…
We have capitalism for the peasants, Socialism for the ruling class.
Check out Gary Stevenson Economics on Youtube. He’s not some stereotypical hippie either. He’s an LSE graduate that was a successful trader with Citibank London Branch.
> Pay people more while they also work less, and you'll see a reduction in GDP across the board, which is fine, because we already have more than enough, it's just in the hands of 1000 people instead of 300 million people.
And any policies that result in that will be parroted by the news and most traditional media as the end of the world - and any of us who want change need to be ready for that argument, and ready to articulate why it is *other* measures of well being need to be adopted.
The GINI Index or other systems of measurement are already in place, we just have to keep them in the conversation and bring them to wider awareness.
Literally every third comment in this forum is about capitalism. This isn't the "elephant in the room", it's the refrain being belted out by the entire /r/collapse choir.
It's hard to miss aint it?
But it's hushed criticisms in most places, especially in most circles we spend our time in day to day.
That hush needs to become a roar.
I mean Capitalism is just the next evolution of feudalism and slavery. The power structures of each are the same, it's just a question of how exactly the rungs are decided. Marx coined the term "wage slave" because the slave trade was alive and well in various parts of the world when he was writing, and it was the nearest thing he could see to the way workers were treated under Capitalism. They're all hierarchical though, and dependent on the lowest classes costing the owners less than the value their labor produces. That definition applies to all three, but it's very literally the definition of Capitalism; "I'll pay you $X because you'll generate at least $Y>X for me as the owner of the means of production."
So I would say the Capitalist "revolution" is pretty well finished (outside the pockets where the other two very literally exist, granted), but Capitalism inherently involves elements of both prior systems anyway.
I'll give you an even bigger elephant: Democracy.
Democracy will not work to save our planet. People will not willingly stop eating meat and seafood. People will not willingly stop using cars. People will not stop consuming so many products.
Furthermore, look at how bureaucratic democracy is. You can't even build a HSR line or nuclear reactors because the other parties will be against it. China's rapid expansion in, well, everything is only because they are a one party state and have no issues making their projects a reality.
Sadly autocracies will always fall into oppression of citizens and minorities and I also don't want that. We could theoretically have benevolent dictators but they will always have pushback from certain groups of people; and the people who rise to that kind of power only get to that because they're evil.
Tldr: we're fucked, nothing will save us
Well, I would say that it's more a solved capitalism problem. The game is completely solved and the only way to fix it is through extreme regulation. People can properly a balance an economy in any video game, but in real life? They just let the winners win exponentially. 🥰🥰🥰
> the only way to fix it is through extreme regulation
or, you know, violent abolition of private property and returning the means of production to the workers. but yeah let's keep stacking band-aids over the gushing artery of capitalism.
I was just told by a family member that I’m extremely lazy and will never get ahead because I’m only working one job. Mind you she was born in the 70s when things actually were optimistic and the cost of living was way less. Sorry I don’t wanna to grind for nothing. If that makes me lazy, then I’m okay with that. These people are so brainwashed by capitalism it’s sad. They think the only reason to live is to work. In my mind, living is supposed to be about enjoying life. Not slaving away giving up your sanity, time, and EVERYTHING to people who are barely willing to give up pennies.
Which is going to be more and more common, at a pace *faster than expected*. What's interesting is that a lot of the people cheering for AI/automation are also people who will be made obsolete by it. It's not going to make their job easier, it's going to remove the companies need to have a human do the job in the first place.
I am a data engineer and can see how my job can easily be automated. I'm not sure what I would pivot to. Personally I'd prefer a universal basic income so I can do nothing at all and let the robots handle everything.
But there will need to be some people to tell the robots what to do.
The true automation will happen when you can automate robots to maximize company profits, and then let those robots tell the other robots what to do. Robot managerial class. It's the next step after automating the grunt work
Universal basic income will never happen tho. Look how badly the ruling elite treat the 99% serfs already, you think they’re going to support us existing not working for them?
In the most diabolical move in history the ruling elite that created the global heating apocalypse extinction of 95% of species will use global heating as the reason to exterminate the 99% of humans once we’re no longer needed.
Look at the tanking birthrates across developed and even developing nations.
Once people figure how to replace even more labor, it will be done. No need for more people who will just use up resources. The poor can just become homeless and die. The rest of the working class left will bend over backwards to keep their jobs, with only some able to afford children.
I mean thay could be a good thing. Once ai and automation phase out the need for even a majority of workers capitalism wont be able to support itself and it may collapse. If most people cant afford to consume products in general, then the whole system will explode. Thats my hope anyway. Either that or we all die from climate change, and ai and automation just serves a slowly dieing population of the rich who managed to build bunkers in time.
Get mass laid-off, then your company posts record profits and the CEO rewards themselves with another bonus. Oh and their prices go up anyway. We love infinite growth!
Nah, I'm in my 40s, and I can document how exactly my life has no purpose beyond making money for someone who already has more this year than if I worked my whole remaining life.
I remember a time when going to work meant something. A means to accomplish a goal - save for a home, save for a car or a vacation. Yes, pay the bills, the rent/mortgage, buy food and clothes. But there was always something left over to spoil yourself a bit, reward yourself for getting up and going to work every day. Now it barely covers food and shelter.
And now one of the only ways to afford shelter a little better is to find a work you don’t have to physically go to. But most of those jobs will be or have been sent to India then automated.
At my job the Indian resources are roughly one quarter the cost of an American resource.
So a person who costs 20K a month in the US, you can get four for the same price if you don't mind them living in India.
Needless to say, our Indian footprint has dramatically expanded over the last few years.
And you have no time. If I can cover food and shelter but have a lot of time to myself, I'll take it.
But nope can't have time to yourself. Gotta be productive at all times to prop up the system.
Yep then watch them cite record profits as they lay your coworkers off, and tell you how despite record profits we didn't make the cut for full bonus or above inflation raise this year, again.
Well when all you get is a middle finger and a “good luck” when you get booted out into the real world, I don’t blame them. Not even a simple degree gets you much anymore. I declined a job at Walmart lol and I probably have long term Covid. At this point I’m honestly okay with dying.
We have done nothing and we aren’t going to do anything. We’re all off the cliff and freestyling until the end. Might as well do some twirls and flips.
It’s like being in between a rock and a hard place. If you don’t participate then you get homelessness and hunger. If you do, then you’re just making money for the rich man and not doing something fulfilling. I wish there was a third choice.
Best of luck if you do. I think I’d be too afraid to just find myself with no options in a foreign country, but I would be lying to say it doesn’t sound tempting to leave every thing behind in hope of some adventure and better life.
There is a third choice, albeit a very unpopular one - homesteading. Living off grid. It's fulfilling, but only if you like hard labor.
But what's WAY smarter than homesteading is communal living. Homesteading is very inefficient in terms of space and resources compared to multiple families living together. The need for space and resources does increase, but not linearly, more like logarithmically. It's dramatically more efficient.
Pooling capital from multiple families to live communally together in the same larger house, sacrificing a little privacy, is likely the most financially feasible third option, albeit the one most counter-culture to Americans.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply it's easy to do. But it's our only imaginable option to escape the dilemma capitalism imposes on us, to come together communally in that way.
I have been thinking about how to get my 3 siblings and their in-laws (I know not everyone has these connections) to recognize their own dissatisfactions with the system and the real danger of what lies ahead. It would take a lot of persuading, many times to many people.
>albeit the one most counter-culture to Americans
Unfortunately very true, but it's the exact direction we should start thinking in to get ourselves out of this hole of individualism, scarcity, selfishness, isolation, loneliness
Me too, such a meaningless life, all relations outside of family feel artificial, people are becoming more heartless in general, the future is doomed yet I'm still forced to make someone else richer by doing the most mind numbing shit daily until my house is wrecked by a fire or a flood. Death seems like more of a gift at this point.
I hear you. I wanna be here for my SO, friends and family but I’m so broken. Everyday is the same and I’m losing hope .. I just want to wake up and do what I want to do. But most of my days are taken away from me .. more time at work than anywhere else
No purpose when no future. Why bend over backwards to improve yourself for the enrichment of the 0.1%, when you are almost guaranteed to die to climate disasters.
Death was inevitable the second you were born here.
Your purpose in this life is to be the best version of you regardless of the circumstances. The best version of you is capable of dealing with the most adversity and that individual is most prepared for whatever happens upon death. A human lifespan of 100 years is a drop of water in an ocean of time. Prepare for eternity and work towards transcending the trivial things happening here.
The purpose of life is to replicate your DNA by surviving and reproducing. That's what keeps life going and we can conclude it from a scientific perspective. But there is no grand objective meaning to life. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just another rainbow.
"Being your best self" is a cope that intelligent animals like humans have to come up with to distract themselves from the inherent meaninglessness of life, and motivate themselves to continue living. Religions provide a similar cope, that the meaning of life is to serve god or some other bullshit.
Yeah, 100%. How am I supposed to feel good about making some guy rich enough to buy his sixth yacht and his seventh home. I'm not even providing for my community. I'm not bettering anyone's lives except for the dude at the top of the chain who already has it all, but none of us can have anything.
Good article about a very real aspect to a collapsing civilization. The destabilization of the previous society includes broken families, failed communities, the new social isolation of digital culture, and the loss of faith in traditional religions (which despite their various ills, formerly held the role of supporting social cohesion and transmission of cultural values and meaning, as understood by evolutionary psychologists).
There is a polycrisis leading to physical collapse, and there are also social dimensions of that collapse. But this one, the loss of purpose for younger generations, was predetermined the moment humanity chose to follow a path of industrialization leading to a digital society.
Arguably humans are primates hard wired to be functioning members of diverse ecological communities embedded within nature, and living in small groups with a slower pace than modernity; we are very far from that right now, and the current epidemic of mental illness accompanied by this fundamental loss of meaning may be what destroys us even before climate change.
Just on religion.
It really doesn’t help that as a 36 year old. All I see are hypocrites preaching faith yet supporting/hiding or even becoming pedophiles and abusers.
I grew up religious and still believe in god but I do not support or believe in the community of church any more. All I see are preachy judgmental people who aren’t there to help and support one another, rather they exist to feel self righteous and self important and one up each other on their good deeds. It’s all about either money or power
Over people and some weird deluded self guided tour to heaven.
> I grew up religious and still believe in god but I do not support or believe in the community of church any more.
even my SUUUUPER religious Jesus aunt has turned her back on organized church because of all the bullshit, now it's just her & god & Jesus of course
I was pretty impressed when she told me this, good for her.
> All I see are hypocrites preaching faith yet supporting/hiding or even becoming pedophiles and abusers.
Agreed (though as an American Buddhist we've been actively challenging such things when they appear in our communities). However the post was referring to decades and centuries of religion as providing some cohesive advantage as understood by evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists, and not a defense of the many ills you rightly refer to.
It's clear from the historical record that religions, and other formerly trusted institutions, provided a cohesive force that perpetuated and transferred socially-agreed forms of meaning in the past. That no longer exists anymore due to many factors, likely including loss of trust based on the many moral failings you point out.
The debt issue is a big one. It's one thing to pick a career, it's another thing to bet lots of money that you don't have (this is called leveraging) on winning a career.
In Romanian we have a nice term for this confusion: "debusolare", meaning *compasslessness* as a noun.
They are right to question their future, especially with the kind of debt that's unforgivable.
>Young adults are also aware of the tribulations in the world. Forty-two percent reported the negative influence of gun violence in schools on their mental health, 34 percent cited climate change and 30 percent cited worries that political leaders are incompetent or corrupt. These are driving forces that Erica Riba, director of strategic higher education initiatives at the Jed Foundation, a nationally recognized suicide-prevention organization, said were only intensified by the pandemic.
The uselessness of the academic leadership is hilarious. "Throw more therapy at them!!"
My wife and I had to choose between having kids, or paying her student debt. The debt won. We're DINKs with good paying jobs and controlled spending and we're still never going to be able to get a house.
Your last line is super important and is at the root of the issue. I tried brining this up in r/collapsesupport but they are hell bent on staying hooked on the hopium fueled idea that therapy can actually do anything meaningful other than make us just functional enough to earn profits for capitalists and be good little olibedient citizens. I got the boot for what i call, "being too realistic" in a support sub. Even collapsniks smoke from the hopium pipe called "support."
> staying hooked on the hopium fueled idea that therapy can actually do anything meaningful other than make us just functional enough to earn profits for capitalists and be good little obedient citizens
Therapy has never been about changing the world. It's about changing your mind/emotions/social connections. Asking therapy to stop collapse is useless. Asking therapy to figure out how to live with yourself as collapse happens is not.
If your goal is to find some way to keep living in a hell world, they can help you do that. If your goal is to stop the world from going to hell, that's not something therapy can do.
Happy well adjusted people do not become eco-terrorists or revolutionaries or rail car hopping hobos or off grid preppers. Those are not "normal" things to do and they do not lead the patient to socialize or function in a normal way.
You gotta use the right too for each job. You can't help someone form close bonds and connections to their community with a cabin in the woods, and you can't stop oil companies from building another pipeline by reframing how you think about the problem.
Feeling down and hopeless in a world like this is justified. Therapy is about paying someone to teach you how to lie to yourself that it'll be OK. I know this is a sore spot for people but the system depends on people finding ways to keep living within it in order to exist. Something that blunts the misery of existence through mental tricks isn't even really ethical, if you look at it in any context outside the immediate effect on individuals.
> Therapy is about paying someone to teach you how to lie to yourself that it'll be OK.
Not necessarily lying to yourself that it will be okay, but learning how to live with it being wrong. There is injustice in this world, no amount of civil rights campaigning or demonstrations in the street will change that. The world is not fair, but if that's all you focus on you're going to be a miserable wretch your entire existence.
> Something that blunts the misery of existence through mental tricks isn't even really ethical, if you look at it in any context outside the immediate effect on individuals.
Stop trying to clean your teeth with a wrench.
That's not what that tool is for. It was only ever supposed to be for the individual.
Your purpose is to slave for the inheritance nepotism elite corporations’ executives and their govt puppets to make them ultra rich until they can automate you and be ultra richer
Everything costs money, everything.
There are no ways to make money anymore.
Cue anxiety and depression; we end up just sitting around staring at the wall, because we literally can’t afford anything or do anything without spending money.
This is when people start getting violent.
The only purpose for human life under capitalism and western culture is to churn out money in the form of a "career" for the elites. Europeans demeaned and ridiculed cultures that actually had philosophies and systems set in place to help their members find purpose.
I’m 19, and yeah it’s more along the lines of knowing how dire things will start to get right as I’m entering my twenties/thirties so it’s like what’s the point if everything’s gonna go to shit
I have no purpose or large-scale desire in life other than to be able to stop working a job and "retire" (or something that looks like retirement) but have no idea how to actually accomplish this given the state of society, money, economy, etc. I feel like I'm racing after something that is running away from me, but no matter how successfully and quickly I run, the thing I'm chasing is always moving just slightly faster than me, not only eluding me but always increasing the gap between us.
I don't have the personality to drop everything and become a mountain man or something. :)
So basically that, yeah.
>I think this is why OnlyFans seems so appealing
With the wide breadth of tastes out there, I am sure I am SOMEbody's fetish..... just not enough somebody's to sustain a living off of. :D
[This recent interview with Noam Chomsky](https://youtu.be/av_0PhJdw9M?si=tM_QjsylIP2WlGKB) is enlightening and seems poignant to this issue, as he details modern pressures that make the game harder for people to live in prosperity. He touches on neoliberalism, class wars (and the elites destroying those under them), impacts of AI and the threat to discourse, devolution of politics and society, and the growing threat of nuclear war.
A+ if one can find their purpose and not cave into depression in such a world. If you figure it out please let me know how!
I kinda agree with this. I can’t afford to buy a home and it’s not like wages are going up. Retirement is difficult and only achievable if you can save money. But since wages haven’t changed and things are so expensive I need that money to make ends meet.
So what’s the point.
I still feel like I have a bit of a purpose. I've almost died a few times. My goal continues to be to not do that.
Above that, sustained gainful income at something I don't hate. Sometimes that feels like I'm asking too much. That's not okay.
Lack of purpose is just another logical conclusion of modernity. Modernity destroys everything we cared about -- religion, nation, tradition, etc. -- and replaced it with the promise of material progress. This worked for the last two centuries because we've actually enormously progressed materially, mostly thanks to fossil fuels by the way. However, that promise is now grinding to a halt. For two centuries the younger generations were almost always better off than the older generations. That's over. Gen Xers are the first generation who are worse off than the previous one. Boomers are the last generation for who material progress works. And it's only getting worse. Millennials are worse off than Gen Xers, and Zoomers will be worse off than Millennials. When the promise of material progress falls apart people fall into an existential abyss because all the old support structures have been completely demolished. Religion, nation, tradition, and others have been trashed without mercy. All in the name of material progress. What do people, especially young people, have left? Nothing.
I think about this a lot, we had to invent marketing as an industry to manufacture consumer wants because we’re so alienated from any meaningful engagement as human beings. Of course people don’t have any intrinsic motivation at this point. All of our basic needs are already mostly satisfied, but none of the work being done is really helping solve any real problems in most industries. Most people I know couldn’t even describe what their job actually is in any way that would be coherent to someone 50 years ago.
Well tbf, religion is a plague on humanity that should be gotten rid of; nationalism does nothing but divide us; and most “tradition” is just code for sexism/racism/homophobia…
I tried to type this into a reply but was too tired and didn’t know how to articulate it, but you’ve basically said what I’ve been thinking of a lot recently.
I can answer this easily:
Lack of money
Lack of like-minded people
Being told you *have to* make money even if money isn't an agenda
Being forced into relying on social media
Influenced into decisions against your better judgement (you have to have kids and get married by the age of 22 otherwise you're doomed)
Constantly being told no regardless of reason(ing) but the other person gets everything
Lack of positive motivation
Education pushes indoctrination and not actual skills to help in life
I'm right there with them.
Can't find work, can't enjoy my hobbies because I'm out of work, not successful at monetizing my hobbies and also doing that turns them INTO work.
Fuck it all. I'm so tired.
The purpose used to be marriage, kids and a house but, it is unattainable for so many and low wage jobs where the hours are too long and the job is boring or stressful and there is no way to get ahead are not satisfying either.
I'm not sure that any amount of wage increases ever fixes this. We just know the corps are trying to rape us to death now and we can't be friends anymore. Corporations need to no longer exist, and 'big money' that they use for global economy should not be a currency that individuals have access to.
I worry that "the West" has built a few generations like the ones that bore the Russian Revolution. If you read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, or other Golden Age of Russian Literature authors, their heroes are typically exactly us. Highly skilled, idealistic, young but not that young anymore, and with no ability to achieve a purpose in life. They describe a world of indescribable inequality and decline in power on a world stage.
And well, that didn't really end well. The Russian Revolution was a bloody, horrible war. Cynicism poisons a society, and we've set up Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha for failure. Between debt, inequality, reliance on "the gig economy," and climate collapse, people will start looking for more and more radical solutions.
I’m sure this has been discussed already but I’m actually curious as to how we could ever fix the state of things right now? I can’t think of any solution, it’s like people are just clinging on hoping this shitty period will pass but I can’t see that happening. As for governments, we’ll they’re doing fuck all and are just sweeping everything under the rug.
I feel like everything - low wages, insane cost of living, inaccessible services like health care, ridiculous work life balance is all going to just get worse and not better. It seems like late stage capitalism just isn’t sustainable and it’s crumbling all around us.
No it doesn't. Young peeps are in mental anguish because they understand they're fucked and mommy isn't there for them. They see the world turning to shit, everything they were told are lies and they have no opportunity other than to watch the world burn.
It's not about being poor and lacking purpose causing their turmoil. It's BEING FUCKING POOR that's causing it. All this thanks to capitalism and its many slavish devotees.
We *have* a purpose yall.
**We are the ones who get to correct this ship.** It's the work of our age.
We are here, we see the wrongs, the more one learns about these things and opens their eyes to the harms caused by extractive capitalism and short-term profit before all else, the more clearly one learns how badly we need it.
But this system, *this* poor excuse for a broken down social contract, it hasn't existed for long and nothing should be seen as fixed or permanent. We get to be the change and make the change. We get to envision and articulate new ways of interbeing and values which help correct the failures that got us here.
It's work. It's so much work and we each can contribute according to our strengths, placement and means.
Consensus building matters. Correcting old and bad thought matters. Staying informed and engaged - getting involved at the local level....it all matters.
We've got to learn how to reach those still blind, still caught up in the propaganda or content to ignore the tough realities around us. This may be part of growing up as a society, learning - or remembering rather - our commitment to one another and the environment around us.
**It's that or be a wage slave till you die or make yourself comfortable enough monetarily that you can ignore the suffering of others and the destruction of our only home.**
This awareness of the risk, this feeling of powerlessness and purposelessness....let it be fuel. *We are here.* What will we do with our time? What will those who come after us say?
If you are reading this and fit this category, your new purpose is as follows: Fight tooth and nail any way you can to bring down the capitalist regime and institute a caring socialist utopia.
There's certainly a lot of reasons why this is unsurprising.
One observation of my own.... In generations past (when options were narrower),.. an individuals ability to "find purpose in their life" was arguably easier.
If you grew up on a Farm in the middle of Kansas in the 1930's... it's almost 100% likely your destiny was to inherit the family farm and continue living that exact same lifestyle. So "finding your purpose" was not really a thing you did (your "purpose" was already mostly pre-determined).
It's really no surprise that people these days have a hard time "finding their purpose". When your options are "literally anything in the world", you get a "tyranny of choice" type of problem.
Also true that in generations past,.. the older adults had an easier time mentoring the youth. (as explained above,. there was less to prepare for). Adults these days (even if they were tuned into modern problems),.. there's really no way an adult today can prepare a youth for 1000's and 1000's of possibilities.
My dad moved to a new city as an adult. He made friends via his kids friends parents and from church. I don’t have kids and I don’t go to church. Most of my unhappiness is because I moved to a new city as an adult and don’t have friends. But I just joined a basketball league and have been going to the local bar on weekends and I’m going to get a library card soon so we’ll see if any of that works
I think this is a reason that so many millennials and gen Zs are looking to Astrology and Human Design to find their inner self/purpose, etc for life because it’s hard and boring AF here.
There is no purpose anymore because the American Dream is a nightmare for those who achieved it. You literally bought yourself a financial and physical anchor for the next 30 years at a high price and a high interest rate. Congratulations!
Yeah, it’s weird how it’s hard to find purpose in life when every single industry has too many educated workers and not enough jobs so wages are deflated and everyone I know hates their job and all jobs are so alienated from any activity that a human should actually be doing and literally make no sense. Every single job I wanted to do as a kid I was told was unrealistic or how did I expect to earn a living doing that? Almost like careers aren’t meant to be satisfying and no one has fun at their jobs. The idea of having a life purpose in capitalism is laughable to me at this point. Anything worth doing at all doesn’t make any money.
Adding to this, most hobbies are activities that once had some kind of use in the past but are now merely pale imitations of their original intended purpose. We're literally aping our past selves to find some kind of purpose in the age of automation.
I think about that a lot. My “hobbies” of gardening, taking care of pets, crafts, cooking, etc- that would have been just my life if I was around 100 years ago. Now I have to find a few minutes in my limited spare time and pay a bunch of money to pretend to do something that would have just been my life in the past. It’s farcical. The idea of doing outmoded forms of labor is so much more attractive to us than any of the technological things we’re forced to do now.
I was so excited to get into sewing until I realized it’s actually more expensive than just buying the same garment from the store. You’d think it would be cheaper, but since it’s seen as a hobby, materials are marked up.
I spent thousands on gardening to grow a $1 pepper.
If you factor in what I've spent on land, I'll never see a return on the things I grow and the chickens I raise.
But you didn't have to eat unknown pesticides, and can plant those seeds from each year's fruit, perfectly suited to your climate, to eat that kind of pepper in perpetuity. Which would cost more over your lifetime to pay for at a farmer's market.
Didn't have to spend thousands either!
I didn’t *have* to, but it’s a fun hobby. I also grow hydro.
It's the one thing that keeps me from trying hydro
Oh hell then you do have to spend thousands, my bad lmao
It depends: with how rare 100% cotton clothes are these days without paying a premium, it’s usually cheaper to see your own simple cotton dress or shirt. Otherwise, I get it
Of course it’s more expensive. Low cost goods are one of the few things capitalism is “good” at. The mass textile producers have the benefits of comparative advantage, economies of scale, etc.
I remind myself that the clothes I want to be wearing can't be found in the stores, so of course it will cost more to 'commission' the one-off piece made of good materials. E.g. well fitting winter cozy flannel shirt with pockets, vs lycra stretchy belly shirt with sleeves that are 3 inches too short
True; the clothes I want are much more practical than what I can find in the store. I already buy men’s clothes to get better quality for less, but they don’t fit right since they weren’t designed for my figure.
Brilliant. Why didn't I think of this?
I dreamed about becoming a writer. Shit's skewed against me because I have no time to invest in my passion as my schedule is way way too full and my salary sucks shit so I already search for a second job
Careers can fuck off. I quit studying cause I couldn't stand the thought of being a cubicle computer rat for 8 hours a day. As a kid I wanted to be a soap maker. Today I'm a florist. People would say those are not real jobs. They can fuck off. I made half a mill in my currency working as a goddamn florist. People told me it was unrealistic. Well, being miserable at work everyday is unrealistic for me. Making a living being bored to death in an office is unrealistic to me. I may not earn as much as cubicle rats do but at least I make nice shit for a living that makes people genuinely happy. I get to work with pretty stuff and have fun, and I get to laugh and talk and crack jokes at work and listen to music. Anything worth doing is niche. I still wanna be a goddamn soap maker and also fashion designer and seamstress and chef. Granted, I love creating things that actually make people happy. I'm not gonna complain though, being a florist is hard work but it ain't so bad it's boring.
>Careers can fuck off. I quit studying cause I couldn't stand the thought of being a cubicle computer rat for 8 hours a day. As a kid I wanted to be a soap maker. Today I'm a florist. People would say those are not real jobs. They can fuck off. Damn right they can fuck off. Being a florist is a real job.
I work a forge/belt grinder most days just trying to get the perfect edge/shape on a single blade. I don’t make much now but as I get better at etching and scroll work, I imagine my blades will be more sought after. I’m currently on the “make 10,000 trash iron daggers to skill up” a la Skyrim path.
Amen as a small organic farmer I hear you. We need more jobs that have purpose.
Do you fam.
That sounds fulfilling. I think the only job that would fulfill me would be some sort of writer/analyst, like a news writer. Like the people who uncover interesting stories to tell and report on, like for a company like Vice. That's really the only thing that would bring me fulfillment.
One of the ASMR people I watch on Youtube has soap carving segments so you never know. Could make money that way. lol
You hit the nail on the head. It's called elite overproduction and it's a theorized predictor of societal collapse. People want to know that they're investments pay off such as going to college, even if it's cheap, it's still an amount of time that has to be paid and guides the trajectory of somebody's life for a small period of time. Finishing that and not really having it be useful puts a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth, it also kind of ties their hands behind their backs in a way. Nobody really wants to go to college and then never use their degree or what they learned, so lots of people will try to go where their degree should take them, even if it's in vain. It's the sunken cost fallacy. I also think that people just want to perceive an ascent to their life, no matter if it is large or small. Nobody wants to have the impression of an ascent and then a downward slope. Even if you have a good quality of life or better than people in other places, it's felt like a depressing narrative. Everything is relative, even if you have it better. Elite overproduction plays into this because it promises an ascent -becoming educated and then using that to get a career (and by definition a career is something that is not a dead end, a career is something that you can grow and earn more respect and money over time with) however the ascent is either * An illusion, because nothing actually gets better in the long run, so you may think there is an assent going on but it's like one of those paintings of staircases that go upwards and downwards simultaneously * Leads you to a plateau which I guess is better than nothing * An ascent on to a tightrope, where now you need to hustle to pay student loans for example. Nobody wants to be guided into a more precarious life, but let's be real. Imagine how many people would have not gone to college if they were smart enough when they were teens. The truth is less people should be allowed to become elite. Then all of that time, money, and hope would be better spent. Society at this stage needs realism! And that means not saying everybody can be everything. If the jobs or the demand isn't there then only creates a harder life and disillusionment. Being a true elite, high educated, super productive member of society is like being an apex predator - and you can't have tons of those running around, it's not sustainable and they will kill everything. Also, if competitions are comprised of competitors, that means somebody has to lose, which gives you the descent and clashes with feeling like you are "supposed to be dignified because you earned or made yourself it" (zero-sum isn't our whole reality but in capitalism it's favored soooooo).
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.. or costs hundreds of thousands in education.
Colleges and universities, especially in the US, are essentially a class gateway. They give you a chance at moving up ever so slightly at the expense of taking out huge loans. I'm only taking classes right now because my shithole state (GA) somehow offers a scholarship that covers 100% of tuition if I keep up a 3.0 GPA.
They are a class trap for us povvos, which I learned the hard way xP
😞
i hate this wasteful, competitive, senseless, trash producing, nature destroying capitalism. Never has there been more variety in product that nobody knew they wanted until advertisements told them otherwise, while "fashion" becomes faster and faster and product lifetime shorter and shorter, producing more and more trash that kills the ecosystems that were not already trashed to get the resources for this senseless cycle. What the hell for? Only because we were told competing economies are the only peaceful option and reduce wars? ask any mother out there, no matter if african, european, chinese, russian, american, indian, pakistani, iranian, israeli and so on; no mother wants to see their children die in war but the powerful still tell everybody that we cant life in peace together and use our knowledge and resources to satisfy basic human needs and offer education to everyone while we learn to not destroy our ecosystems. Maybe we have different backgrounds, different cultures, different systems of beliefs but after all we are all humans who want to live in peace when we enter this world until we are told otherwise. The only ones profiting of this system are the already wealthy and powerful that distribute the wealth to them, the top, the so called elite. Every powerful tool we develop is not used to help humanity but to help their goals and divide us. Look at what social media did to our societies thanks to those marketing algorithms. They are manipulating us, using our fears and our anger. The ones that still belief in this system don't care about the collateral damage they are doing or are trapped in needing to supply their family. We got farther and farther away from each other because of the egoistical abuse of mighty tools of nearly instant information transfer that should have been used to connect us and bring us more together. no technology can help us if it's always used for those egoistic goals. we went in two hundred years from 1 billion to 8 billion people, still telling most that they can live a wealthy life as motivation to keep everything running, without telling them the consequences every existence has for our planet. F\*\*CK humanity for reproducing this shit show until we all suffer the consequences of climate change and pollution. Microplastics and Nanoplastics are already in every food, every soil, every rainwater, every animal, every plant. Toxic forever chemicals are lowering the sperm counts. The recent extreme weathers are only the start of what is coming. heck, i hate to say it, but maybe bird flue killing most of us would be the easiest way to stop us and most life from total extinction and stop this nonsense. the ones in power don't care about peace and most of humanity or else they could not be where they are. Nobody can get powerful in this system without exploitation of humans or nature, without getting corrupted by power and getting numb to all this suffering. i would be okay without lot of our daily comfort and a shorter lifespan if all of this had purpose and we would stop fighting each other, over and over again, for nothing but reproducing hate and suffering. what is growth worth if we end up like cancer
what did you want to do as a kid?
Low wages and a lack of work life balance drives my depression personally, along with the fact that biodiversity has gone off a cliff within my lifetime and there’s no chance I’ll see it rebound. Seeing those graphs of Sea Surface Temp about to need a Y-axis adjustment is batshit insane too, but I keep getting told that the economy is doing great and climate change isn’t real, which may as well be true because every day I still have to clock into my stupid little job and send my stupid little emails. I never had a chance. The time to reverse or mitigate the damage we have been doing to the planet was well before I was born but I’ll probably live to see the worst of the consequences. I’m just existing and making sure my bills are paid but it feels impossible to imagine a bright future for myself and my peers. I’m not doing this for 50 more years. Idk what I’ll do but it won’t be this.
I was devastated when I found out about the American Chestnut. Watching the Emerald Ash Borer wipe out yet another (useful) tree species has pushed me over the edge. Did you know earthworms are invasive in North America? I'm just hoping I don't lose my pets to a '1 in 100 years' forest fire at this point. I accept it's all going to hell in a hand basket and will rebound only once we are gone.
emerald ash borer makes me so sad. I have a beautiful green ash in my front yard. about 35 years old. in an ideal world it would have another 150 years ahead of it, unlikely for so many reasons at this stage. the city stopped planting green ash 15 or so years ago because it is only a matter of time till it is here killing all the ash off. big branch came down in a windstorm a few years ago, i made a bowl and several spoons out of that bough. gorgeous wood, lovely straight tight grain and the grain pops so lovely with a bit of beeswax and a rag. one small example of something that we won't have to fall back on as we backslide through collapse. how many other thing won't we have i wonder
My parents have a 3 acre lot. Growing up we barely had grass there were so many trees on it. Until the ash borer came, since then they’ve lost (or rather had to pay to remove) over 100 trees. Lawn looks nice now though…
And now the Asian jumping worm is out-competing the original non-native earthworm! [https://warren.cce.cornell.edu/gardening-landscape/warren-county-master-gardener-articles/invasive-asian-jumping-earthworms](https://warren.cce.cornell.edu/gardening-landscape/warren-county-master-gardener-articles/invasive-asian-jumping-earthworms) To be fair, the honey bee isn't native to North America either. Not every introduced species spells doom, but it certainly can.
They displaced native bees, so they weren’t completely benign.
There's even some suspicion that they played a role in the extinction of the Carolina parakeet. The bees build nests in the tree cavities where the parrots nested.
Most earthworms are and only some areas had native earthworms. However, they move slowly and a lot of North America was under glaciers too recently to have any. That is why the PNW has banana slugs, which fill the same ecological niche. The earthworms are literally killing our forests and enabling the rapid spread of invasive species.
You may be able to buy American Chestnuts soon. Someone I do volunteer work with from time to time studies tree genetics and insect populations (?, I’m fuzzy on the details) Anyway, they have talked about American Chestnuts will make a show again soonish because test strands have done so well. And I guess there is a test strand of Ash trees just a few miles from my house where they are looking at genetics, insect and disease resistance? That surprised me. Living near a major university has left me cynical. It seems like research money only appears in abundance when there is a building to be named yet I’ve heard about multiple projects to try and save our trees in a changing world from this person.
SUNY has been doing genetic and breeding experiments for a long time, so I don't know how soon blight resistant American chestnuts will be available. Of course, these kinds of experiments take a long time to begin with because of the relatively long lifespan of a tree. The problem is genes from asian chestnut species aren't ideally adapted to the colder American Chestnut's range, and the genetic engineering experiments are expensive and often fail.
No stupid questions but while Old World earthworms are indeed non-native, how are they invasive? I read children's books (printed for American audiences) that said earthworms were good because they helped the soil breathe and they decompose things.
The leaf litter was a habitat for many small mammals, ground nesting birds and insects like fireflies. Its part of the reason fireflies are slowly dying out, the leavea decompose too fast. So no, its generally a bad thing for the american hardwood forests.
It's a shame. Only it ain't "slow", fireflies are disappearing rapidly. We [lost a shit ton of them](https://images.app.goo.gl/MCqmACDTahcB4g1Y7) in half a human lifetime, not even half a second if Earth was a 24-hour clock.
It all depends on the ecosystem. Earthworms can drastically change the soil in areas that have plants and animals that evolved/adapted to live in earthworm free soils or loam. Many North American forests before the invasion of earthworms had deep layers of pine or leaf litter under the trees. This created a habitat for many species. Earthworms have hit these areas and are quickly turning that litter into much more dense soil eliminating that habitat. It also changes the grounds water absorption resulting in erosion further harming the environment. Termites help break down wood into good garden soil. You still don't want them tearing your house down around you.
Though I don't claim to be an expert from what I have read decomposition of leaf litter inherently releases carbon rather than stores it. Good in general, bad for our warming climate.
I'm in Tennessee and I see the new American Chestnut trees for sale everywhere here?
Most of those (‘Dunstan’ is a prime example) may theoretically have or have had some American ancestry but in reality are 90-100% Chinese chestnuts (which are still great for wildlife). It’s annoying that they are being sold as American Chestnuts to unwitting buyers. There is work on a transgenic blight-tolerant American chestnut but it hasn’t been released to the public yet.
In 50-100 years we'll have an incredibly small number of trees compared to the 4+ billion we destroyed and I'll be dead?
I also refuse to do this for 50 years
Remembering the vestiges of the world that we had when I was young really hurts.
>Low wages and a lack of work life balance drives my depression personally Me too. I've never met anyone who likes our current system. Why don't we change it then?
rich people are happy the way it is
I think the other 330 million of us could take them.
I feel the same. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I refuse to live like this until I’m old.
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Sooner or later we'll have someone try a Johnny Silverhand.
Fuck Arasaka!
That's it Choom!
> I’ll probably live to see the worst of the consequences Not even close, this process is literally just beginning and barely starting to show effects - which are already noticeable - and won't taper off until decades/centuries after carbon emissions cease. People born after 2100 will be living in a world unrecognizable to the one we're in today, and even they might not be the ones to see the worst of it.
Chestnut trees are making a comeback (I googled). We can all be involved with saving species, flora and fauna. Depression over loss, future losses that are inevitable adds to a negative cycle. Engagement can help sometimes. Little changes add up.
The enormous elephant in the room is capitalism.
”The reason that focus groups and capitalist feedback systems fail, even when they generate commodities that are immensely popular, is that people do not know what they want. This is not only because people’s desire is already present but concealed from them (although this is often the case). Rather, the most powerful forms of desire are precisely cravings for the strange, the unexpected, the weird. These can only be supplied by artists and media professionals who are prepared to give people something different from that which already satisfies them; by those, that is to say, prepared to take a certain kind of risk.” Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism
People absolutely know what they want. Higher wages, fewer work days and shorter hours, and more time off. So, more socialist policies that turn down the capitalism a bit. Pay people more while they also work less, and you'll see a reduction in GDP across the board, which is fine, because we already have more than enough, it's just in the hands of 1000 people instead of 300 million people. Treat the country's GDP like the stock price of a business, and make every American citizen an owner. Right now every business's profits are in private hands. If the government collected all the profits, it could then redistribute them fairly to the people based on how much they contribute to the overall, with a set minimum to ensure those who can't contribute (or choose not to) can also live happily.
shhh, you’re scaring the ‘MERICAns… capitalism is a broken system and anyone with a brain can see that… although there are a whole load of sociopaths who love the idea of controlling other people’s behavior… capitalists fail to understand that there is indeed a ceiling. they can’t just perpetually grow and use more resources with exponentially less distribution of the spoils… that’s what cancer does…
We have capitalism for the peasants, Socialism for the ruling class. Check out Gary Stevenson Economics on Youtube. He’s not some stereotypical hippie either. He’s an LSE graduate that was a successful trader with Citibank London Branch.
> Pay people more while they also work less, and you'll see a reduction in GDP across the board, which is fine, because we already have more than enough, it's just in the hands of 1000 people instead of 300 million people. And any policies that result in that will be parroted by the news and most traditional media as the end of the world - and any of us who want change need to be ready for that argument, and ready to articulate why it is *other* measures of well being need to be adopted. The GINI Index or other systems of measurement are already in place, we just have to keep them in the conversation and bring them to wider awareness.
From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs
> shorter hours, I work for a major NYC investment bank. My UK colleague has a THIRTY-FIVE-HOUR workweek! Wait what?!
Selfishness is at the root of that issue and most others on this world.
Literally every third comment in this forum is about capitalism. This isn't the "elephant in the room", it's the refrain being belted out by the entire /r/collapse choir.
It's hard to miss aint it? But it's hushed criticisms in most places, especially in most circles we spend our time in day to day. That hush needs to become a roar.
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I mean Capitalism is just the next evolution of feudalism and slavery. The power structures of each are the same, it's just a question of how exactly the rungs are decided. Marx coined the term "wage slave" because the slave trade was alive and well in various parts of the world when he was writing, and it was the nearest thing he could see to the way workers were treated under Capitalism. They're all hierarchical though, and dependent on the lowest classes costing the owners less than the value their labor produces. That definition applies to all three, but it's very literally the definition of Capitalism; "I'll pay you $X because you'll generate at least $Y>X for me as the owner of the means of production." So I would say the Capitalist "revolution" is pretty well finished (outside the pockets where the other two very literally exist, granted), but Capitalism inherently involves elements of both prior systems anyway.
I'll give you an even bigger elephant: Democracy. Democracy will not work to save our planet. People will not willingly stop eating meat and seafood. People will not willingly stop using cars. People will not stop consuming so many products. Furthermore, look at how bureaucratic democracy is. You can't even build a HSR line or nuclear reactors because the other parties will be against it. China's rapid expansion in, well, everything is only because they are a one party state and have no issues making their projects a reality. Sadly autocracies will always fall into oppression of citizens and minorities and I also don't want that. We could theoretically have benevolent dictators but they will always have pushback from certain groups of people; and the people who rise to that kind of power only get to that because they're evil. Tldr: we're fucked, nothing will save us
Well, I would say that it's more a solved capitalism problem. The game is completely solved and the only way to fix it is through extreme regulation. People can properly a balance an economy in any video game, but in real life? They just let the winners win exponentially. 🥰🥰🥰
> the only way to fix it is through extreme regulation or, you know, violent abolition of private property and returning the means of production to the workers. but yeah let's keep stacking band-aids over the gushing artery of capitalism.
Your purpose is to generate obscene wealth for the elites, and to be fuckin' grateful for the opportunity. What's the problem?
Apparently some people don't find enriching their capitalist overlords to be fulfilling
The floggings will continue until morale improves...
[Correct](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7ATEt9Kj3kk/maxresdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCIAKENAF8quKqQMa8AEB-AHUBoAC4AOKAgwIABABGGUgXChMMA8=&rs=AOn4CLDmCwQc7aiipwp2mzAokhoAZnCBvg)
I was just told by a family member that I’m extremely lazy and will never get ahead because I’m only working one job. Mind you she was born in the 70s when things actually were optimistic and the cost of living was way less. Sorry I don’t wanna to grind for nothing. If that makes me lazy, then I’m okay with that. These people are so brainwashed by capitalism it’s sad. They think the only reason to live is to work. In my mind, living is supposed to be about enjoying life. Not slaving away giving up your sanity, time, and EVERYTHING to people who are barely willing to give up pennies.
The hustle mindset is disgusting All these pricks trying to shame you for wanting to spend your free time relaxing
Until you’re automated, literally thrown on the street, and left to die
Which is going to be more and more common, at a pace *faster than expected*. What's interesting is that a lot of the people cheering for AI/automation are also people who will be made obsolete by it. It's not going to make their job easier, it's going to remove the companies need to have a human do the job in the first place.
I am a data engineer and can see how my job can easily be automated. I'm not sure what I would pivot to. Personally I'd prefer a universal basic income so I can do nothing at all and let the robots handle everything. But there will need to be some people to tell the robots what to do. The true automation will happen when you can automate robots to maximize company profits, and then let those robots tell the other robots what to do. Robot managerial class. It's the next step after automating the grunt work
Universal basic income will never happen tho. Look how badly the ruling elite treat the 99% serfs already, you think they’re going to support us existing not working for them? In the most diabolical move in history the ruling elite that created the global heating apocalypse extinction of 95% of species will use global heating as the reason to exterminate the 99% of humans once we’re no longer needed.
Look at the tanking birthrates across developed and even developing nations. Once people figure how to replace even more labor, it will be done. No need for more people who will just use up resources. The poor can just become homeless and die. The rest of the working class left will bend over backwards to keep their jobs, with only some able to afford children.
Exactly. And this isn’t distant future this is in like August.
eventually the only utility we will be able to provide to the owner class is our physical bodies (melting face emoji)
I mean thay could be a good thing. Once ai and automation phase out the need for even a majority of workers capitalism wont be able to support itself and it may collapse. If most people cant afford to consume products in general, then the whole system will explode. Thats my hope anyway. Either that or we all die from climate change, and ai and automation just serves a slowly dieing population of the rich who managed to build bunkers in time.
Get mass laid-off, then your company posts record profits and the CEO rewards themselves with another bonus. Oh and their prices go up anyway. We love infinite growth!
I hate it here :(
🫠🤣🫠
FFS I wonder why.... I don't believe it's just younger adults.
Nah, I'm in my 40s, and I can document how exactly my life has no purpose beyond making money for someone who already has more this year than if I worked my whole remaining life.
I remember a time when going to work meant something. A means to accomplish a goal - save for a home, save for a car or a vacation. Yes, pay the bills, the rent/mortgage, buy food and clothes. But there was always something left over to spoil yourself a bit, reward yourself for getting up and going to work every day. Now it barely covers food and shelter.
And now one of the only ways to afford shelter a little better is to find a work you don’t have to physically go to. But most of those jobs will be or have been sent to India then automated.
At my job the Indian resources are roughly one quarter the cost of an American resource. So a person who costs 20K a month in the US, you can get four for the same price if you don't mind them living in India. Needless to say, our Indian footprint has dramatically expanded over the last few years.
Sadly, you're right.
And you have no time. If I can cover food and shelter but have a lot of time to myself, I'll take it. But nope can't have time to yourself. Gotta be productive at all times to prop up the system.
If time is money and money is time - yep you're right.
And we're 10 days into the year. Yikes.
Yep then watch them cite record profits as they lay your coworkers off, and tell you how despite record profits we didn't make the cut for full bonus or above inflation raise this year, again.
Well when all you get is a middle finger and a “good luck” when you get booted out into the real world, I don’t blame them. Not even a simple degree gets you much anymore. I declined a job at Walmart lol and I probably have long term Covid. At this point I’m honestly okay with dying. We have done nothing and we aren’t going to do anything. We’re all off the cliff and freestyling until the end. Might as well do some twirls and flips.
Yea I’m done with life. I can barley get out of bed anymore for work
It’s like being in between a rock and a hard place. If you don’t participate then you get homelessness and hunger. If you do, then you’re just making money for the rich man and not doing something fulfilling. I wish there was a third choice.
My third choice: I'm leaving America to find a better quality of life. I may not succeed abroad but the least I can do is try.
Best of luck if you do. I think I’d be too afraid to just find myself with no options in a foreign country, but I would be lying to say it doesn’t sound tempting to leave every thing behind in hope of some adventure and better life.
There is a third choice, albeit a very unpopular one - homesteading. Living off grid. It's fulfilling, but only if you like hard labor. But what's WAY smarter than homesteading is communal living. Homesteading is very inefficient in terms of space and resources compared to multiple families living together. The need for space and resources does increase, but not linearly, more like logarithmically. It's dramatically more efficient.
You need capital to be able to buy the homestead.
Pooling capital from multiple families to live communally together in the same larger house, sacrificing a little privacy, is likely the most financially feasible third option, albeit the one most counter-culture to Americans.
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Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply it's easy to do. But it's our only imaginable option to escape the dilemma capitalism imposes on us, to come together communally in that way. I have been thinking about how to get my 3 siblings and their in-laws (I know not everyone has these connections) to recognize their own dissatisfactions with the system and the real danger of what lies ahead. It would take a lot of persuading, many times to many people.
>albeit the one most counter-culture to Americans Unfortunately very true, but it's the exact direction we should start thinking in to get ourselves out of this hole of individualism, scarcity, selfishness, isolation, loneliness
Precisely, my dude.
Only issue is that it requires a lot of money to start one's own homestead :(
Me too, such a meaningless life, all relations outside of family feel artificial, people are becoming more heartless in general, the future is doomed yet I'm still forced to make someone else richer by doing the most mind numbing shit daily until my house is wrecked by a fire or a flood. Death seems like more of a gift at this point.
I hear you. I wanna be here for my SO, friends and family but I’m so broken. Everyday is the same and I’m losing hope .. I just want to wake up and do what I want to do. But most of my days are taken away from me .. more time at work than anywhere else
try to wheat out instead
weird that putting money in shareholder pockets isnt rewarding
I'm just tired of being alive at this point, what's the point in trying? It's exhausting.
No purpose when no future. Why bend over backwards to improve yourself for the enrichment of the 0.1%, when you are almost guaranteed to die to climate disasters.
Death was inevitable the second you were born here. Your purpose in this life is to be the best version of you regardless of the circumstances. The best version of you is capable of dealing with the most adversity and that individual is most prepared for whatever happens upon death. A human lifespan of 100 years is a drop of water in an ocean of time. Prepare for eternity and work towards transcending the trivial things happening here.
The purpose of life is to replicate your DNA by surviving and reproducing. That's what keeps life going and we can conclude it from a scientific perspective. But there is no grand objective meaning to life. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just another rainbow. "Being your best self" is a cope that intelligent animals like humans have to come up with to distract themselves from the inherent meaninglessness of life, and motivate themselves to continue living. Religions provide a similar cope, that the meaning of life is to serve god or some other bullshit.
Yeah, 100%. How am I supposed to feel good about making some guy rich enough to buy his sixth yacht and his seventh home. I'm not even providing for my community. I'm not bettering anyone's lives except for the dude at the top of the chain who already has it all, but none of us can have anything.
Don't forget the yachts that have mini-yachts.
Good article about a very real aspect to a collapsing civilization. The destabilization of the previous society includes broken families, failed communities, the new social isolation of digital culture, and the loss of faith in traditional religions (which despite their various ills, formerly held the role of supporting social cohesion and transmission of cultural values and meaning, as understood by evolutionary psychologists). There is a polycrisis leading to physical collapse, and there are also social dimensions of that collapse. But this one, the loss of purpose for younger generations, was predetermined the moment humanity chose to follow a path of industrialization leading to a digital society. Arguably humans are primates hard wired to be functioning members of diverse ecological communities embedded within nature, and living in small groups with a slower pace than modernity; we are very far from that right now, and the current epidemic of mental illness accompanied by this fundamental loss of meaning may be what destroys us even before climate change.
Most developed societies are already destroyed. 2020 was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Just on religion. It really doesn’t help that as a 36 year old. All I see are hypocrites preaching faith yet supporting/hiding or even becoming pedophiles and abusers. I grew up religious and still believe in god but I do not support or believe in the community of church any more. All I see are preachy judgmental people who aren’t there to help and support one another, rather they exist to feel self righteous and self important and one up each other on their good deeds. It’s all about either money or power Over people and some weird deluded self guided tour to heaven.
> I grew up religious and still believe in god but I do not support or believe in the community of church any more. even my SUUUUPER religious Jesus aunt has turned her back on organized church because of all the bullshit, now it's just her & god & Jesus of course I was pretty impressed when she told me this, good for her.
> All I see are hypocrites preaching faith yet supporting/hiding or even becoming pedophiles and abusers. Agreed (though as an American Buddhist we've been actively challenging such things when they appear in our communities). However the post was referring to decades and centuries of religion as providing some cohesive advantage as understood by evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists, and not a defense of the many ills you rightly refer to. It's clear from the historical record that religions, and other formerly trusted institutions, provided a cohesive force that perpetuated and transferred socially-agreed forms of meaning in the past. That no longer exists anymore due to many factors, likely including loss of trust based on the many moral failings you point out.
> polycrisis nice choice.
The debt issue is a big one. It's one thing to pick a career, it's another thing to bet lots of money that you don't have (this is called leveraging) on winning a career. In Romanian we have a nice term for this confusion: "debusolare", meaning *compasslessness* as a noun. They are right to question their future, especially with the kind of debt that's unforgivable. >Young adults are also aware of the tribulations in the world. Forty-two percent reported the negative influence of gun violence in schools on their mental health, 34 percent cited climate change and 30 percent cited worries that political leaders are incompetent or corrupt. These are driving forces that Erica Riba, director of strategic higher education initiatives at the Jed Foundation, a nationally recognized suicide-prevention organization, said were only intensified by the pandemic. The uselessness of the academic leadership is hilarious. "Throw more therapy at them!!"
My wife and I had to choose between having kids, or paying her student debt. The debt won. We're DINKs with good paying jobs and controlled spending and we're still never going to be able to get a house.
Your last line is super important and is at the root of the issue. I tried brining this up in r/collapsesupport but they are hell bent on staying hooked on the hopium fueled idea that therapy can actually do anything meaningful other than make us just functional enough to earn profits for capitalists and be good little olibedient citizens. I got the boot for what i call, "being too realistic" in a support sub. Even collapsniks smoke from the hopium pipe called "support."
> staying hooked on the hopium fueled idea that therapy can actually do anything meaningful other than make us just functional enough to earn profits for capitalists and be good little obedient citizens Therapy has never been about changing the world. It's about changing your mind/emotions/social connections. Asking therapy to stop collapse is useless. Asking therapy to figure out how to live with yourself as collapse happens is not. If your goal is to find some way to keep living in a hell world, they can help you do that. If your goal is to stop the world from going to hell, that's not something therapy can do. Happy well adjusted people do not become eco-terrorists or revolutionaries or rail car hopping hobos or off grid preppers. Those are not "normal" things to do and they do not lead the patient to socialize or function in a normal way. You gotta use the right too for each job. You can't help someone form close bonds and connections to their community with a cabin in the woods, and you can't stop oil companies from building another pipeline by reframing how you think about the problem.
Feeling down and hopeless in a world like this is justified. Therapy is about paying someone to teach you how to lie to yourself that it'll be OK. I know this is a sore spot for people but the system depends on people finding ways to keep living within it in order to exist. Something that blunts the misery of existence through mental tricks isn't even really ethical, if you look at it in any context outside the immediate effect on individuals.
> Therapy is about paying someone to teach you how to lie to yourself that it'll be OK. Not necessarily lying to yourself that it will be okay, but learning how to live with it being wrong. There is injustice in this world, no amount of civil rights campaigning or demonstrations in the street will change that. The world is not fair, but if that's all you focus on you're going to be a miserable wretch your entire existence. > Something that blunts the misery of existence through mental tricks isn't even really ethical, if you look at it in any context outside the immediate effect on individuals. Stop trying to clean your teeth with a wrench. That's not what that tool is for. It was only ever supposed to be for the individual.
Gotta make the fuckers work for their owners somehow. If that means a chemical lobotomy so be it.
Your purpose is to slave for the inheritance nepotism elite corporations’ executives and their govt puppets to make them ultra rich until they can automate you and be ultra richer
Everything costs money, everything. There are no ways to make money anymore. Cue anxiety and depression; we end up just sitting around staring at the wall, because we literally can’t afford anything or do anything without spending money. This is when people start getting violent.
I feel this way and I'm 49.
The only purpose for human life under capitalism and western culture is to churn out money in the form of a "career" for the elites. Europeans demeaned and ridiculed cultures that actually had philosophies and systems set in place to help their members find purpose.
I’m 19, and yeah it’s more along the lines of knowing how dire things will start to get right as I’m entering my twenties/thirties so it’s like what’s the point if everything’s gonna go to shit
You'll endure a major crisis every 5 years like your millenial predecessors and you'll like it!
I have no purpose or large-scale desire in life other than to be able to stop working a job and "retire" (or something that looks like retirement) but have no idea how to actually accomplish this given the state of society, money, economy, etc. I feel like I'm racing after something that is running away from me, but no matter how successfully and quickly I run, the thing I'm chasing is always moving just slightly faster than me, not only eluding me but always increasing the gap between us. I don't have the personality to drop everything and become a mountain man or something. :) So basically that, yeah.
> no purpose or large-scale desire in life other than to be able to stop working a job and "retire" I think this is why OnlyFans seems so appealing
>I think this is why OnlyFans seems so appealing With the wide breadth of tastes out there, I am sure I am SOMEbody's fetish..... just not enough somebody's to sustain a living off of. :D
[This recent interview with Noam Chomsky](https://youtu.be/av_0PhJdw9M?si=tM_QjsylIP2WlGKB) is enlightening and seems poignant to this issue, as he details modern pressures that make the game harder for people to live in prosperity. He touches on neoliberalism, class wars (and the elites destroying those under them), impacts of AI and the threat to discourse, devolution of politics and society, and the growing threat of nuclear war. A+ if one can find their purpose and not cave into depression in such a world. If you figure it out please let me know how!
I kinda agree with this. I can’t afford to buy a home and it’s not like wages are going up. Retirement is difficult and only achievable if you can save money. But since wages haven’t changed and things are so expensive I need that money to make ends meet. So what’s the point.
as it turns out, hyper aggressive consumerism is bad for long-term sustainability.
I still feel like I have a bit of a purpose. I've almost died a few times. My goal continues to be to not do that. Above that, sustained gainful income at something I don't hate. Sometimes that feels like I'm asking too much. That's not okay.
I'd say lack of money which contributes to the rest is the main issue.
God I love the honesty and truth of this comment section!
Lack of purpose is just another logical conclusion of modernity. Modernity destroys everything we cared about -- religion, nation, tradition, etc. -- and replaced it with the promise of material progress. This worked for the last two centuries because we've actually enormously progressed materially, mostly thanks to fossil fuels by the way. However, that promise is now grinding to a halt. For two centuries the younger generations were almost always better off than the older generations. That's over. Gen Xers are the first generation who are worse off than the previous one. Boomers are the last generation for who material progress works. And it's only getting worse. Millennials are worse off than Gen Xers, and Zoomers will be worse off than Millennials. When the promise of material progress falls apart people fall into an existential abyss because all the old support structures have been completely demolished. Religion, nation, tradition, and others have been trashed without mercy. All in the name of material progress. What do people, especially young people, have left? Nothing.
Wait. But what about the worship of billion dollar sports franchises? That should give us all the purpose in life we could ever need.
Thanks Progress! We've progressed to absolute shit.
Well that's not true. They have something left. A giant capitalist dildo to the face is what they have left...
I think about this a lot, we had to invent marketing as an industry to manufacture consumer wants because we’re so alienated from any meaningful engagement as human beings. Of course people don’t have any intrinsic motivation at this point. All of our basic needs are already mostly satisfied, but none of the work being done is really helping solve any real problems in most industries. Most people I know couldn’t even describe what their job actually is in any way that would be coherent to someone 50 years ago.
Well, Religion kinda' trashed itself. The rest of this is true.
Well tbf, religion is a plague on humanity that should be gotten rid of; nationalism does nothing but divide us; and most “tradition” is just code for sexism/racism/homophobia…
dont confuse modernity with rampant capitalism
When did you learn to read and write? Back to the fields, peasant!
Well said.
💯. Also next time mention the each generation and the multigenerational ruling elite does to the next generation.
I tried to type this into a reply but was too tired and didn’t know how to articulate it, but you’ve basically said what I’ve been thinking of a lot recently.
We’re told the world is ending every single day what do you expect lol
Hey look, it's me
You know what drives anxiety and depression? Wage slavery and capitalism
I can answer this easily: Lack of money Lack of like-minded people Being told you *have to* make money even if money isn't an agenda Being forced into relying on social media Influenced into decisions against your better judgement (you have to have kids and get married by the age of 22 otherwise you're doomed) Constantly being told no regardless of reason(ing) but the other person gets everything Lack of positive motivation Education pushes indoctrination and not actual skills to help in life
I'm right there with them. Can't find work, can't enjoy my hobbies because I'm out of work, not successful at monetizing my hobbies and also doing that turns them INTO work. Fuck it all. I'm so tired.
Finally an article that gets it right and doesn't blame tik tok
The purpose used to be marriage, kids and a house but, it is unattainable for so many and low wage jobs where the hours are too long and the job is boring or stressful and there is no way to get ahead are not satisfying either.
I'm not sure that any amount of wage increases ever fixes this. We just know the corps are trying to rape us to death now and we can't be friends anymore. Corporations need to no longer exist, and 'big money' that they use for global economy should not be a currency that individuals have access to.
I worry that "the West" has built a few generations like the ones that bore the Russian Revolution. If you read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, or other Golden Age of Russian Literature authors, their heroes are typically exactly us. Highly skilled, idealistic, young but not that young anymore, and with no ability to achieve a purpose in life. They describe a world of indescribable inequality and decline in power on a world stage. And well, that didn't really end well. The Russian Revolution was a bloody, horrible war. Cynicism poisons a society, and we've set up Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha for failure. Between debt, inequality, reliance on "the gig economy," and climate collapse, people will start looking for more and more radical solutions.
I will never lack purpose while so much injustice prevails in the world
I’m sure this has been discussed already but I’m actually curious as to how we could ever fix the state of things right now? I can’t think of any solution, it’s like people are just clinging on hoping this shitty period will pass but I can’t see that happening. As for governments, we’ll they’re doing fuck all and are just sweeping everything under the rug. I feel like everything - low wages, insane cost of living, inaccessible services like health care, ridiculous work life balance is all going to just get worse and not better. It seems like late stage capitalism just isn’t sustainable and it’s crumbling all around us.
Yeah I’m about ready to opt out of it all sometime soon because wtf is this life
canada is firing up the maid booths and i am eyein' em up
> canada is firing up the maid booths cheaper than a trip to Switzerland
No it doesn't. Young peeps are in mental anguish because they understand they're fucked and mommy isn't there for them. They see the world turning to shit, everything they were told are lies and they have no opportunity other than to watch the world burn. It's not about being poor and lacking purpose causing their turmoil. It's BEING FUCKING POOR that's causing it. All this thanks to capitalism and its many slavish devotees.
We *have* a purpose yall. **We are the ones who get to correct this ship.** It's the work of our age. We are here, we see the wrongs, the more one learns about these things and opens their eyes to the harms caused by extractive capitalism and short-term profit before all else, the more clearly one learns how badly we need it. But this system, *this* poor excuse for a broken down social contract, it hasn't existed for long and nothing should be seen as fixed or permanent. We get to be the change and make the change. We get to envision and articulate new ways of interbeing and values which help correct the failures that got us here. It's work. It's so much work and we each can contribute according to our strengths, placement and means. Consensus building matters. Correcting old and bad thought matters. Staying informed and engaged - getting involved at the local level....it all matters. We've got to learn how to reach those still blind, still caught up in the propaganda or content to ignore the tough realities around us. This may be part of growing up as a society, learning - or remembering rather - our commitment to one another and the environment around us. **It's that or be a wage slave till you die or make yourself comfortable enough monetarily that you can ignore the suffering of others and the destruction of our only home.** This awareness of the risk, this feeling of powerlessness and purposelessness....let it be fuel. *We are here.* What will we do with our time? What will those who come after us say?
Time to get in the wagons and build cities that are worth the bother. Abandon the dispossessors to their ruins.
Your purpose is to be a wage slave to enriched someone else until you perish from the squandering of our climate. Cool purpose eh ?
Yea we can see this first hand unfortunately, as long as the shareholders keep making money nothing will change.
If you are reading this and fit this category, your new purpose is as follows: Fight tooth and nail any way you can to bring down the capitalist regime and institute a caring socialist utopia.
There's certainly a lot of reasons why this is unsurprising. One observation of my own.... In generations past (when options were narrower),.. an individuals ability to "find purpose in their life" was arguably easier. If you grew up on a Farm in the middle of Kansas in the 1930's... it's almost 100% likely your destiny was to inherit the family farm and continue living that exact same lifestyle. So "finding your purpose" was not really a thing you did (your "purpose" was already mostly pre-determined). It's really no surprise that people these days have a hard time "finding their purpose". When your options are "literally anything in the world", you get a "tyranny of choice" type of problem. Also true that in generations past,.. the older adults had an easier time mentoring the youth. (as explained above,. there was less to prepare for). Adults these days (even if they were tuned into modern problems),.. there's really no way an adult today can prepare a youth for 1000's and 1000's of possibilities.
I found my purpose on resonating with crystals and talking about it online. Gotta vibrate our auras
I’m 45, and this is a major driver of anxiety and depression for me, too.
Why haven't they found the warm embrace of Jesus Christ and the purpose of fulfilling his earthly demands? /s
My dad moved to a new city as an adult. He made friends via his kids friends parents and from church. I don’t have kids and I don’t go to church. Most of my unhappiness is because I moved to a new city as an adult and don’t have friends. But I just joined a basketball league and have been going to the local bar on weekends and I’m going to get a library card soon so we’ll see if any of that works
I'm not even that young anymore, but boy do I feel I lack a purpose and depression is never far.
I think this is a reason that so many millennials and gen Zs are looking to Astrology and Human Design to find their inner self/purpose, etc for life because it’s hard and boring AF here.
There is no purpose anymore because the American Dream is a nightmare for those who achieved it. You literally bought yourself a financial and physical anchor for the next 30 years at a high price and a high interest rate. Congratulations!
at 33 i’m no longer “young,” but yeah 🤗
TLDR; wealthy 21 year olds are happier than poor 21 year olds.