Asklemmy

44151 readers

1197 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

251

How do you be aware of major issues in the world and locally without becoming deeply depressed and cynical? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

102 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As someone in the US it’s so easy to see so many depressing issues from the ravages of capitalism, to war, imperialism, and genocide. How can one care about these issues and hope for change without allowing themselves to be affected mentally?

I’ve been considering this for the past week, connecting it with Buddhist compassion towards the world and a need for mindfulness. But it’s so easy to fall into emotionlessness.

I’ve also thought through the world has always had issues and though some are getting much worse some are getting better.

I have gone to counseling before but they just make it an individual problem when it’s the world.

Edit: doesn’t have to be US centric. Just I’m writing from that pov

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Yeah for me the inescapable fact seems to be that humanity is currently facing a series of somewhat existential crises (climate change, looming authoritarianism, a global pandemic etc.) and we've utterly failed to meet each one by backsliding into selfishness and idiocy. With climate change especially there doesn't seem to be any fixing or avoiding it now, it's just a matter of how bad it's going to be, and a lot of predictions seem to be pointing towards "worse than we thought."

So I dunno, for me the logical response to that would be depression and cynicism. We knew it was coming, we had every chance to avoid it, we didn't, now we're fucked.