Asklemmy

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

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours 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.