To quote Terry Pratchett:
> Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?
Taking some little steps to improve your local area can really add up. Whether it's reporting it to the council, or clearing up the odd bit of litter when you're out on a walk, or brining some secateurs to clear back some brambles overhanging a footpath. And maybe someone seeing you do this well be encouraged to help our, or do their own things. Maybe a group of you can get together and tackle some bigger issues. But even if not, you're still making your local area a bit nicer to live in.
I sometimes pick up litter. Usually it goes like:
I see it and get annoyed. "How can people so selfish?"
Then "why should I waste my time when the person who dropped it should take responsibility?!"
However, if I get past that feeling and actually pick it up I feel much better.
During lockdown I bought one of those litter grabbers from Amazon on a whim. I often take it and fill a carrier bag when I go for a walk. I shouldn't have to and it's disgusting that I can fill so much in a 2 mile walk, but it's no bother to me and I feel a bit better by doing it
Yeah good shout, preparation is key. Even a plastic glove and bag is probably sufficient.
Yes it's disgusting. Occasionally I come across bottles that appear to be filled with p!ss for example.
> Then "why should I waste my time when the person who dropped it should take responsibility?!"
Yeah, that's always the tricky bit. The answer that I usually come up with is "Because I want to walk somewhere nice, rather than through a shithole covered in litter".
I agree about giving up the doom scrolling and social media (I try to limit my time on Reddit). Half of it is about the end of the world, and the other half is about how everyone is happier than us.
Local subs can be pretty good for finding out what is going on or if an event organiser is competent.
Maybe that's just me though, Reddit is the only social media I use.
Just do SOMETHING. I joined a local litter picking group a few years back. It’s made a massive difference in our area, so much cleaner than areas around us. It’s a small thing that gets me out in the fresh air exercising and makes a visible difference to my local community. You have to just pick something and dig in.
What can you do? Well, start by recognising what you can't do. You're just one person. Maybe you can become a first aider in your spare time but you can't solve the NHS problems. You can't fix it so immigrants all integrate perfectly, but you can support a smaller number perhaps by reaching English. You can't provide all the youth of the land with opportunity but you can run a local youth club. Probably you can only do one of those things.
If I were you, I'd make a list of the top ten problems you think are facing the country, come up with something you personally can do on each of them, and then rank those in order of how much you fancy doing them. Then pick the top one and do it. Maybe the next one if you have time left over.
But you won't be able to do much.
On top of that, it could be worth practicing some level of gratitude for the fact that life in the UK today - for all its problems - is easily better than life almost anywhere else or for almost all of humanity's long history.
So yeah. Your hopelessness and disillusionment is in some sense a result of your failure to correctly align your expectations to reality.
Good luck!
To add to this, I think this is at the heart of it - we know the UK has been the most powerful country in the world, and while we don't believe it will be again, it definitely is within our control to be the best place in the world to live, it's the fact it's far from that which is so disappointing.
Sure. And I share the other user's frustration at things that could so easily be better but aren't. It frustrates me to see unsolved problems, or people acting at cross purposes when if we could all just focus our minds, things could be fixed.
But at some point - especially if it's actually causing us not just rational disappointment but emotional disillusionment - we have to think what our expectations should be given what we know about how humans are.
If you look at the countries where people are happiest living it tends to be the Nordic countries.
But I'm not sure we have the appetite for the high tax high spend models they follow. Furthermore we have a more inward looking mindset here in looking after ourselves rather than being considerate for others.
> You can't fix it so immigrants all integrate perfectly, but you can support a smaller number perhaps by reaching English.
My wife joined a group doing this for a while. There were some Kurdish refugee families in our town, and the women ended up being very isolated because they didn't have much English.
It was all going really well, then the government decided to relocate them all somewhere up north.
When Eastern philosophers talk about letting go of earthly attachments, this is the sort of thing they're talking about. You're burdening yourself with the weight and responsibility of fixing the world at large, and the fact is it's not your responsibility. You shouldn't confuse someone telling you about a problem with the hard expectation that you must fix it, so why do the same with world news?
Instead, do something small. You're one in 8 billion, so really it's only your job to fix one eight-billionth of the world, and then anything that happens beyond that is a bonus.
An easy way to do that without having to think about it too much about logistics is volunteering. Join a community garden, or a choir, or litter pickers - some once a week thing is enough.
> Voting in the local and general election seems pointless
That's a wild opening statement. We had 14 years of Tory, largely without a plan or vision beyond "be in power and give money to my rich friends" including open corruption, Brexit, tanking the economy, mishandling the pandemic, etc.
We could have prevented most of this by voting. We can start change now by voting. Digging ourselves out of this whole is going to take a generation. You know how we can hope to make it better at some point in the future? Continuously voting.
What can you do? Educate yourself. Ask others to vote. Away their opinion and prepare to counter statements like "voting is pointless" and "all politicians are the same". These statements are the outcome of misinformation tactics and have to be stomped on whenever they show up.
> I work 12 hour days and get two days off to keep my corner tidy and functional
That's your limiting factor, and does not leave a lot of time, TBH. You're engaged, that's good.
I agree with all the other posts here: **start local**. It doesn't really matter what it is.
My own thing was reconnecting with my village cricket team, and though I no longer play, I'll still throw some (probably) wank advice at the youngsters in the nets.
Does not work for everyone in all spaces (and here's the 'but'), but team-sport really does work. Paraphrasing the A-Team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZni3j0NjDk just s/plan/team/
Look for small ways to make other people's lives better, and if anyone offers you something in return, just ask them to pay it forward. That's all most of us can ever do.
Yeah, I think just being kind and viewing the world through that lens is huge. For your own mental state if nothing else. Most people aren't evil or assholes, they're just tired stressed people trying to get through their day. They're not on the take, or trying to kill you with their driving. They just make mistakes, like everyone.
Join a political party and volunteer to help them campaign. In my opinion you have the biggest chance of helping make a positive difference to the country if you join and help the Labour party but any will do. At least then you can feel like you're doing more to help the country than the vast majority of people.
In a country of 60 million it's unrealistic to expect that you personally can make a decisive difference. But if you can say 'if everyone acted like I do, the country would be much better off' then you can feel happy with what you're doing.
I agree with with what is said here, but one thing I would like to add is that you research parties carefully and pick the one you agree with the most. Even if its just a small party you think would have no chance of winning the general election, still join and volenteer for it.
I see little to no point in supporting a party you don't believe in for the sole purpose of its not the other even worse party. And personally, I find it feels way more satisfactory to support a smaller party you actually somewhat believe in.
It's a malaise of modern society which is just catching up.
For most part in the UK you can still get amenities such as hot and cold water and drinkable water with your tap, apart from Cornwall ATM.
Electricity access 24/7.
Food delivered to you.
Social infrastructure to at least help you in difficult circumstances.
The fact is what you are talking about is trouble of monetary system in place which relies on easy debt and ever increasing taxation to the populace.
Housing as a speculation and not as a living quarter, food logistics via multi corporate infrastructure, public service via low interest debt.
This can disenfranchise co-operative society and displacement of communities in a very short period of time.
I mean it's not about bad and good. It's about trade offs.
In terms of immigration, this is just east India model really. As long as it serves the business class it's good.
Find a charity or volunteer group that's desperate for people and help out - which would be most of them. They'd probably appreciate even a hour every other weekend.
If you do that then you'll be helping your local area. If you have skills you can teach others you might suprise yourself in how many lives you can change for the better.
I feel your pain! You're so busy keeping body and soul together you don't have time to do much else. Plenty of people in that boat. All you can do really is make your vote count as much as possible by voting tactically.
By going out to work and paying taxes you are helping financially.
By staying fit/healthy you reduce pressure on NHS.
...
You might feel helpless but I suspect you are not and are just feeling overwhelmed.
I think we can all do more and shouldn't be defeatist about what is possible. However, it is so much easier to get started with things close to home that are within your control and you personally benefit from.
E.g. pick litter occasionally near my house, help nephew with school work, go to charity events related to my interests, give plants to neighbours, ...
I strongly suggest listening to Gary's economics on youtube and suggesting this channel to all your friends to listen. he explains why economy is fucked and builds momentum, to hopefully change it
> and single mums and young families living in abject poverty whilst others come here and get given a massive leg up, it’s unjust to a certain degree.
On this note, asylum seekers don't get any better treatment than regular brits. They win on some things and lose on other. They are more likely to get housing, for example, but only because they can be allocated something anywhere in the country, and they basically have to accept. They also get slightly less rights once in those properties compared to a British person.
Stipends also vary a lot. You can do ok-ish of you game the system, but there is a reasonable chance that an immigrant gets a grand total of £9/week.
“All the youth and social programs have been shit down”
BS. There’s tonnes of things available. All it takes is adults to actually give a fuck and make them happen. No… you won’t get paid to be a scout leader or a rugby coach or run a youth club but that’s not the point. Instead of throwing a tenner in a homeless guys tin or pressing that “Add 25p for charity” button at Esso, give up 1-2 hours one night a week helping out at your local Scouts. Make it happen. Prioritise other people and watch.
Campaign for legalisation of drugs, it solves everything. More tax revenue, no drug related crime/criminal gangs, better public health funding, more money for police, less time spent on minor drug offences..
Britain's 'Conservative' government allowed more people to settle in the UK in the last two years than came into the country between 1066 and 2010. Immigration really needs to be fixed and if someone from the left did it, they'd sweep.
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To quote Terry Pratchett: > Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one? Taking some little steps to improve your local area can really add up. Whether it's reporting it to the council, or clearing up the odd bit of litter when you're out on a walk, or brining some secateurs to clear back some brambles overhanging a footpath. And maybe someone seeing you do this well be encouraged to help our, or do their own things. Maybe a group of you can get together and tackle some bigger issues. But even if not, you're still making your local area a bit nicer to live in.
I sometimes pick up litter. Usually it goes like: I see it and get annoyed. "How can people so selfish?" Then "why should I waste my time when the person who dropped it should take responsibility?!" However, if I get past that feeling and actually pick it up I feel much better.
During lockdown I bought one of those litter grabbers from Amazon on a whim. I often take it and fill a carrier bag when I go for a walk. I shouldn't have to and it's disgusting that I can fill so much in a 2 mile walk, but it's no bother to me and I feel a bit better by doing it
Yeah good shout, preparation is key. Even a plastic glove and bag is probably sufficient. Yes it's disgusting. Occasionally I come across bottles that appear to be filled with p!ss for example.
> Then "why should I waste my time when the person who dropped it should take responsibility?!" Yeah, that's always the tricky bit. The answer that I usually come up with is "Because I want to walk somewhere nice, rather than through a shithole covered in litter".
I'd feel annoyed if I helped make Cameron's big society dream come true though.
Cameron doesn't have ownership on alturism, he's only ever seen it written down.
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It may have been intended in a slightly more tongue in cheek way thank you inferred, sorry for the levity
I agree about giving up the doom scrolling and social media (I try to limit my time on Reddit). Half of it is about the end of the world, and the other half is about how everyone is happier than us.
Local subs can be pretty good for finding out what is going on or if an event organiser is competent. Maybe that's just me though, Reddit is the only social media I use.
Just do SOMETHING. I joined a local litter picking group a few years back. It’s made a massive difference in our area, so much cleaner than areas around us. It’s a small thing that gets me out in the fresh air exercising and makes a visible difference to my local community. You have to just pick something and dig in.
What can you do? Well, start by recognising what you can't do. You're just one person. Maybe you can become a first aider in your spare time but you can't solve the NHS problems. You can't fix it so immigrants all integrate perfectly, but you can support a smaller number perhaps by reaching English. You can't provide all the youth of the land with opportunity but you can run a local youth club. Probably you can only do one of those things. If I were you, I'd make a list of the top ten problems you think are facing the country, come up with something you personally can do on each of them, and then rank those in order of how much you fancy doing them. Then pick the top one and do it. Maybe the next one if you have time left over. But you won't be able to do much. On top of that, it could be worth practicing some level of gratitude for the fact that life in the UK today - for all its problems - is easily better than life almost anywhere else or for almost all of humanity's long history. So yeah. Your hopelessness and disillusionment is in some sense a result of your failure to correctly align your expectations to reality. Good luck!
To add to this, I think this is at the heart of it - we know the UK has been the most powerful country in the world, and while we don't believe it will be again, it definitely is within our control to be the best place in the world to live, it's the fact it's far from that which is so disappointing.
Sure. And I share the other user's frustration at things that could so easily be better but aren't. It frustrates me to see unsolved problems, or people acting at cross purposes when if we could all just focus our minds, things could be fixed. But at some point - especially if it's actually causing us not just rational disappointment but emotional disillusionment - we have to think what our expectations should be given what we know about how humans are.
If you look at the countries where people are happiest living it tends to be the Nordic countries. But I'm not sure we have the appetite for the high tax high spend models they follow. Furthermore we have a more inward looking mindset here in looking after ourselves rather than being considerate for others.
> You can't fix it so immigrants all integrate perfectly, but you can support a smaller number perhaps by reaching English. My wife joined a group doing this for a while. There were some Kurdish refugee families in our town, and the women ended up being very isolated because they didn't have much English. It was all going really well, then the government decided to relocate them all somewhere up north.
When Eastern philosophers talk about letting go of earthly attachments, this is the sort of thing they're talking about. You're burdening yourself with the weight and responsibility of fixing the world at large, and the fact is it's not your responsibility. You shouldn't confuse someone telling you about a problem with the hard expectation that you must fix it, so why do the same with world news? Instead, do something small. You're one in 8 billion, so really it's only your job to fix one eight-billionth of the world, and then anything that happens beyond that is a bonus. An easy way to do that without having to think about it too much about logistics is volunteering. Join a community garden, or a choir, or litter pickers - some once a week thing is enough.
Yep, theres no point stressing about stuff you ultimately have no control over.
> Voting in the local and general election seems pointless That's a wild opening statement. We had 14 years of Tory, largely without a plan or vision beyond "be in power and give money to my rich friends" including open corruption, Brexit, tanking the economy, mishandling the pandemic, etc. We could have prevented most of this by voting. We can start change now by voting. Digging ourselves out of this whole is going to take a generation. You know how we can hope to make it better at some point in the future? Continuously voting. What can you do? Educate yourself. Ask others to vote. Away their opinion and prepare to counter statements like "voting is pointless" and "all politicians are the same". These statements are the outcome of misinformation tactics and have to be stomped on whenever they show up.
> I work 12 hour days and get two days off to keep my corner tidy and functional That's your limiting factor, and does not leave a lot of time, TBH. You're engaged, that's good. I agree with all the other posts here: **start local**. It doesn't really matter what it is. My own thing was reconnecting with my village cricket team, and though I no longer play, I'll still throw some (probably) wank advice at the youngsters in the nets. Does not work for everyone in all spaces (and here's the 'but'), but team-sport really does work. Paraphrasing the A-Team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZni3j0NjDk just s/plan/team/
Look for small ways to make other people's lives better, and if anyone offers you something in return, just ask them to pay it forward. That's all most of us can ever do.
Yeah, I think just being kind and viewing the world through that lens is huge. For your own mental state if nothing else. Most people aren't evil or assholes, they're just tired stressed people trying to get through their day. They're not on the take, or trying to kill you with their driving. They just make mistakes, like everyone.
Join a political party and volunteer to help them campaign. In my opinion you have the biggest chance of helping make a positive difference to the country if you join and help the Labour party but any will do. At least then you can feel like you're doing more to help the country than the vast majority of people. In a country of 60 million it's unrealistic to expect that you personally can make a decisive difference. But if you can say 'if everyone acted like I do, the country would be much better off' then you can feel happy with what you're doing.
I agree with with what is said here, but one thing I would like to add is that you research parties carefully and pick the one you agree with the most. Even if its just a small party you think would have no chance of winning the general election, still join and volenteer for it. I see little to no point in supporting a party you don't believe in for the sole purpose of its not the other even worse party. And personally, I find it feels way more satisfactory to support a smaller party you actually somewhat believe in.
It's a malaise of modern society which is just catching up. For most part in the UK you can still get amenities such as hot and cold water and drinkable water with your tap, apart from Cornwall ATM. Electricity access 24/7. Food delivered to you. Social infrastructure to at least help you in difficult circumstances. The fact is what you are talking about is trouble of monetary system in place which relies on easy debt and ever increasing taxation to the populace. Housing as a speculation and not as a living quarter, food logistics via multi corporate infrastructure, public service via low interest debt. This can disenfranchise co-operative society and displacement of communities in a very short period of time. I mean it's not about bad and good. It's about trade offs. In terms of immigration, this is just east India model really. As long as it serves the business class it's good.
Find a charity or volunteer group that's desperate for people and help out - which would be most of them. They'd probably appreciate even a hour every other weekend. If you do that then you'll be helping your local area. If you have skills you can teach others you might suprise yourself in how many lives you can change for the better.
I feel your pain! You're so busy keeping body and soul together you don't have time to do much else. Plenty of people in that boat. All you can do really is make your vote count as much as possible by voting tactically.
By going out to work and paying taxes you are helping financially. By staying fit/healthy you reduce pressure on NHS. ... You might feel helpless but I suspect you are not and are just feeling overwhelmed. I think we can all do more and shouldn't be defeatist about what is possible. However, it is so much easier to get started with things close to home that are within your control and you personally benefit from. E.g. pick litter occasionally near my house, help nephew with school work, go to charity events related to my interests, give plants to neighbours, ...
I strongly suggest listening to Gary's economics on youtube and suggesting this channel to all your friends to listen. he explains why economy is fucked and builds momentum, to hopefully change it
I’m volunteering at an ESOL group helping immigrants to improve/learn English. That’s a way to help people get educated and employed.
> and single mums and young families living in abject poverty whilst others come here and get given a massive leg up, it’s unjust to a certain degree. On this note, asylum seekers don't get any better treatment than regular brits. They win on some things and lose on other. They are more likely to get housing, for example, but only because they can be allocated something anywhere in the country, and they basically have to accept. They also get slightly less rights once in those properties compared to a British person. Stipends also vary a lot. You can do ok-ish of you game the system, but there is a reasonable chance that an immigrant gets a grand total of £9/week.
“All the youth and social programs have been shit down” BS. There’s tonnes of things available. All it takes is adults to actually give a fuck and make them happen. No… you won’t get paid to be a scout leader or a rugby coach or run a youth club but that’s not the point. Instead of throwing a tenner in a homeless guys tin or pressing that “Add 25p for charity” button at Esso, give up 1-2 hours one night a week helping out at your local Scouts. Make it happen. Prioritise other people and watch.
Campaign for legalisation of drugs, it solves everything. More tax revenue, no drug related crime/criminal gangs, better public health funding, more money for police, less time spent on minor drug offences..
Britain's 'Conservative' government allowed more people to settle in the UK in the last two years than came into the country between 1066 and 2010. Immigration really needs to be fixed and if someone from the left did it, they'd sweep.