Ask Lemmy

I work to have money for shelter and food and, just as importantly, some spending money for hobbies and travel. The freedom to be able to drive basically anywhere any time is a great thing to have.

The inequalities today are large but also the standard of living for even the lower class is probably higher than any other time in history. You can go your entire life without holding a shovel or hammer or piece of firewood Imagine instead having to build your own house, grow your own food, and cut firewood to stay warm. Things aren't so bad.

Maybe try to find a small business you care about or interests you? I own a small business. It's me, my wife, my sister-in-law and two friends I made in the industry. We all get paid $16/hr. We got to create the environment we wanted to work in. Its a lot of work but we're happy and feel more free than we would elsewhere.

I know I'm coming from a point of privilege writing this but I like to think we're all on equal footing at my place and we're doing our best to grow together rather than making me rich. I've worked for a lot of small businesses as well and they often have more respect for skills and individuals - not all - but a lot. If you find a place you like or even love it can become like a second home.

Capitalist Wage-Labor is a scam. Surplus value comes from labor. Labor is a commodity just like anything else on the market, but the price of labor itself is tied to general subsistence plus replacement, it isn't tied to how much value is created. Differences in wages come from various factors but regulate around cost to replace, ie training requires a lot of time, so this is represented by higher wages.

Instead, we should be advocating for public ownership, so that the people get the spoils of their labor, and can pay into a general fund of sorts to provide safety nets, infrastructure, and more that don't rely on the profit motive. In other words, we should transition to Socialism.

I recommend you read theory. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism if that appeals to you or anyone else.

For a while there I was a homeless alcoholic. Now I'm an alcoholic. Given the choice between the two I know which I'd rather.

you unironically just have to cope with it in whatever way makes sense to you

I personally think of my career as: "some things I do are interesting and keep me from blowing my brains out, the rest I don't care about"

when it comes to the company I work for: I treat everyone I meet well, no corporate bs, no yes sir yes ma'am. I do whatever I'm assigned and meet deadlines

but I never go above and beyond (because of burnout)

everything you've thought about hard work = reward or better pay is a scam

put everything into work-life balance and when you go home focus on things you really want to do, such as hobbies or hang outs

don't do unpaid overtime, don't bend over for anyone, don't offer yourself up when shit goes down

you want to be as invisible as possible while not burning out AND not working your ass off (everyone has different standards for what this means)

tldr: just find some way to cope because there isn't really anything else you can do

If you can swing the training, even at the CNA or EMT level, there is healthcare. Purposeful work. Knowledge that helps your daily, and is never entirely useless. If nothing else it will save you from spurious trips to the urgent care or emergency room, or tell you when to use the urgent care instead of the emergency room, and save you money there. Even before ACA there were shortages. There’s potential here for fallout as with everything else, but if hospitals can retain nonprofit status I don’t see much changing in terms of need.

For now anyway, until nonprofit status/benefits get yanked, hospitals pay part of education upgrades. They typically offer better health insurance too, if you stay in their corporate system and don’t have kids.

I’m sure there’s other purposeful professions that don’t have an impossible buyin.

I usually recommend trades. Building something with your hands, again with a skill set that carries over into your household, has purpose. But with immigration policy, a sizeable piece of the grunt work force may be kicked out, so I’m not sure what will happen there but I suspect house building will slow down.

It is a scam, but we need to eat and have a roof over our heads. So you have to find something that you can tolerate and try to get paid as much as you can for as little time as you can give. This is the game we are in. Unfortunately in the current system money talks, it is not fair but that is how it is.

Get offline, and simplify. Start doing things that are good for you. There is yet joy to come.

The amounts of copium in this thread are extinction-level.

Everything you just said is 100% valid and you are simply correct.

The thing is, it's not a measure of a healthy mind to thrive in a profoundly sick society where the worst of the worst have won long ago.

There's this thing called depressive realism which posits that depressed people, by and large, perceive reality much closer to how it really is than neurotypical people.

Essentially, "normal" people have an (innate or learned) positivity bias. Which is usuallly a good thing. People like us are the outliers.

But positivity bias in a world where it's actually harmful is another thing. The majority of people are walking headlong into their own extinction while going "Ehh, it's not so bad", while we should ALL be positively irate and picketing the homes (not companies) of our owner class 24/7.

But it hasn't happened yet and at this point I don't know how bad things need to get before people realize what's going on.

You are not wrong. It’s a very unfair world we have build. And a lot of people are struggling even though there are plenty of resources to make sure every single person on earth could have their needs met and the opportunity to live a meaningful life.

BUT we have to dare to hope. Because otherwise we just give up and the people on top is counting on that. ”We have the power and there is nothing you can do about that”. I think David Graeber is one of the most hopeful people to read:

“Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.

His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit

Honestly, it sounds like you've been spending too much time in some online communities that are doom posting about everything. Do things suck right now? Yes, but they've literally sucked for as long as human society has existed. Things can always be better, or always be worse. However you can't just sit around passively waiting for the times to change, or your life will suck.

The single biggest factor in whether your life is good or not is you and your actions. Don't let things outside of your control convince you to give up. Do the best with what you have, and I promise you that you can find fulfillment and happiness in the life available to you.

I'd say qualitatively and quantitatively, this system is a scam. I get up and deliver by getting myself into interesting shit that matters no matter who's writing the check (excluding Raytheon or any of those other psycho motherfuckers).

Energy security is important, particularity environmentally compatible forms.

Medical services that don't bankrupt people are important.

Making processes easier is important even it comes to reducing/eliminating waste.

Even the seemingly mundane 'basic research' has a lot of interesting caveats buried below the surface.

Find what interests you in this one life you have, do the work to get there, make friends with people who want you to get there (and help them too).

Good luck, fuck capitalism.

TL;DR: The following is going to be dark and harsh but it all comes down to one thing. Life doesn't get better, you get better at dealing with shit. Hang in there.

You need to disconnect and find a way to focus on you.

It feels like the entire system is a scam and it's pointless to even try.

It has always been a game where the only way to win is to cheat. Always.

It feels all but certain that I won't be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire.

The system is not setup with rest (retirement) as its main goal. The system is setup for you to play until you die. Even if you hoard more money than you and your descendants could possibly spend in a hundred years, you would likely still want to play, because you are winning. If your end goal is mere prosperity and retirement, then you should prepare to be under the boot and a slave until you die.

All of the wealth is going straight to the top.

Always has been the case. It hasn't stopped people from finding a way.

All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled.

This has always been the case. You have to make your own opportunities and expect others to drag you down. We are all crabs in a bucket.

All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet.

Fantasy. These things has never existed in this country. At best, FDR gave us a yoga mat to land on when we fall off a cliff, where before it was a bed of nails. Fall hard enough in this country and you will get wrecked no matter what. It has always been that way.

We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.

Same as it ever was.

Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won't be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn't exist already.

Take a breath. Here is a truth that will sound harsh but it is meant as a kindness. You do not matter. Just about nobody knows you exist. Nobody is coming to get you. This fact applies to almost everyone.

Since all we can do is live the life we perceive with the meat in our skull, we tend to see ourselves as the main character in the story of life. We're not. We barely qualify for NPC status.

I myself have disabilities (which I don't think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job.

That's a problem, I am sorry. All problems have a solution, but one unlikely to be found here, with Internet strangers.

The problem is that I just can't bring myself to do it because I don't get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.

Again. Breathe homie. That's not going to happen.

Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it?

100%...often. I have lived with chronic, sometimes crippling, depression and fairly severe PTSD since 1989. Long story short, a lot of trauma broke my brain. Combo that with ADHD, borderline personality disorder, heart disease and cancer, and we are living the life baby! Still, I have been able survive and rise from poverty to wealth without hurting too many people...I hope.

If so, what snapped you out of it?

Nothing did. I just kept getting up out of spite and contempt for this life. As time went on, i got used to it. The bullshit bothered me less until it just became background noise. A nuisance from time to time.

Don't think too much, you get depressed. Do like everyone else, buy shit you don't need and get likes on social media by bored strangers.

And watch Fight Club.

Brother you need some help. The rate of decay is slow and steady and almost imperceptible to a normal lifetime. Finding a job may actually help. Now’s your chance to get in where you fit in. Love games? Get a job at local games store. Like animals? Go apply at a zoo. Find people that you can relate to. Good luck man. You can do it.

I hated the idea for the longest time. Then I realized a few things. I changed my outlook of working a hopeless job to a job being a tool for me to get the money I need to live a better life. I also accepted that life isn't fair and that not all the work I put in will equal the output. It feels like you have to do the work of 10 men to get anywhere. I accepted that and I put myself to work.

Sometimes you just have to get lucky and sometimes you have to grow. I worked many temp jobs and fast food restaurants until figured stuff out and landed a couple decent jobs. I started being able to hold a job for 1 year and then 2 years. I got lucky and found a temp job that decided to hire everyone perm. The catch was they waited to see who would sink or float. I floated. I wouldn't have floated if I hadn't had previous life experience.

Look at a job as an avenue or tool to achieve your goals. If you don't have any goals then just pick something. It could be as simple as you want to save up for something nice. Start small and pick bigger goals as you achieve them. And going back to the job as a tool thing, if you don't like the tool then get a new one. You wouldn't use a broken tool to fix something. Sometimes you have a bucket of random tools and you have to pull out a couple before you find the right or that isn't broken. Whatever to you pick, just try and keep trying. As long as you keep trying, you'll figure it out.

I would also add to try to improve yourself along the way. Whether it be working on self esteem, how to write a resume, interviewing skills, how to cook, how to improve your finances, how to fix a car, work on a computer..... Just work on something. You'll only help yourself and learn transferable skills along the way.

Get a STEM degree and move to a country that respects its citizens.

I know it's easier said than done, but try to find work that actually helps your community, but that you also find fulfilling - child, elderly, and or disabled care, working for a charity doing anything from fundraising to cooking to IT, working in a community centre or library, coaching, teaching, handy-work, gardening, and on and on. The pay may not be as high as it is other places, but at least you'll know that you're contributing to your community in a positive way.

Bonus points if the place you work is a non-profit, unionised, a co-op, or generally outside of the existing establishment (E: so not part of the state or a large corporation) - building dual power is imperative to changing society, we need communal structures and networks to fall back on once this shit collapses. You can be part of that.

Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!

E: while we're here, Mutual Aid

My kids work because they want money.

It is hard to find a job, even harder to get by without one; I do have some friends who have never been employed exactly, only hustling, working for themselves, with varying results. It's possible but not probable.

I'm really sorry you are hurting so bad but we can use every sane person, if we give up things just get worse.

A mentor once gave me an exercise to identify my "core values" or goals or motivators. Out of a list of 60, the task was to narrow down over time and conversation to my top 5.

E.g., I value financial stability. Not to be confused with other values of earning high compensation or achieving lofty corporate positions and recognition.

It helped me frame for myself that I'm going to work to be comfortable and stable and beyond that, my motivations lie elsewhere, like spending time with friends and working on personal projects. There are people who put greater value on achieving a high salary or earning the c-suite title or having their names on patents; that's perfectly valid and great for them, it's not me and that is also ok.

There are tons of similar exercises online. If it sounds like something that might help you define your perspective on work differently, to narrow it down to you instead of getting overwhelmed with the whole world's problems, please look into it and good luck.

lots of denial, nicotine, and THC

not a fix but will definitely smooth some of the rough edges out a tiny bit

if all else fails my grandfather says to run in circles screaming and shouting

I don't have any good advice for you. My company held an all-hands call today during which the CEO said "Now that the election is behind us we can look forward to political stability", among other equally insane things. You could say I'm feeling pretty down about the whole situation as well.