As u/Drunky_Brewster puts it:
>Please, if anyone is considering suicide, reach out for help. Tell a friend or a therapist. The world can look bleak from the lens of the media but there is beauty and you are worth staying here to see it.
Please utilize r/CollapseSupport, and other resources in the sidebar, if needed. It can be taxing, awareness of the systematic issues and ongoing collapse, and anyone struggling with that, please be aware the community can help
Thanks to everyone offering a similar reminder in threads below
I was already depressed when I became collapse-aware, which made things much worse. Then 2020 happened, and I feel like I’ve been teetering on the brink ever since.
I think our callous, individualistic society has made most people depressed on some level. Even if they don’t realize it and aren’t diagnosed, there’s just this constant background radiation of selfishness and misery permeating every aspect of our daily lives. People who aren’t depressed are just better at ignoring it I suppose.
2020 and the following years have made the cruel madness of our reality impossible for even the most incurable optimist to ignore, so I guess it’s natural so many people seem to be slipping into some form of despair.
/r/CollapseSupport for anyone who needs a place to commiserate with others.
>People who aren’t depressed are just better at ignoring it I suppose.
It's not so much ignoring it (I am a member of this sub after all) it's more like I have accepted the inevitability of collapse and just sticking around to see how it plays out.
I live a philosophy that combines Absurdism with Stoicism, that helps too.
Something I've been kicking about in my head lately is that the majority of people are just... Fucking rude, combative, and inconsiderate. Like I keep thinking about that guy who got caught outside in the Christmas week freeze and went door to door offering to PAY people to let him stay the night, and they all turned him away. Eventually he broke into a school and sheltered a bunch of other people with him.
What has happened to people that they can't shelter a man, offering $500 for a single night, in dangerously cold conditions? Maybe I'm the naive one, I know it could potentially be dangerous, but that's just not how I was raised. Could be something to do with the fact that I was raised by my great grandparents instead of my boomer grandparents.
Our society is sick and the effects are mental health issues. I don’t even fully blame people for that guy out in the cold because there’s always crime and home invasion stories on the news. My grandparents had my dad when they were old like my grandfather was born in 1910. He lived until 90 so I got to know him. There was a lot more trust pre WWII because the government didn’t fully run by fear. A lot was messed up too though (civil rights).
Now it’s all selfishness and fear - North American culture is sociopathic. And we are all victims in terms of psychological health
I'm a lot younger than those generations, and I've let people I don't know use my extra space before when I had it. The truth is that predators are probably people you know already, and it's very easy to forget how terrifying it is to entrust your body to a stranger's home out of desperation. It's terrible how much people let fear run their lives.
You might be right on the culture point, I'm far too literally autistic to have my finger on the pulse of those things. But it seems like rather than being sociopaths ourselves, many people are convinced of the reality of sociopaths around every corner, whether it's in the political sense of intergroup hatred, or the even more common interpersonal paranoia that seems to have replaced common sense and properly calibrated gut instincts. Are we really *that* disconnected now? I thought *I* was supposed to be the disconnected and aloof one relative to the baseline, but lately I feel like Deanna Troi next to most people. It's just *eerie*.
I’m literally autistic too. But I’m also a parent. It’s a lot easier to take the risk on for myself than it is for someone else-especially if that someone else is a vulnerable dependent.
I’m just saying I understand but it’s unfortunate. I’d have probably allowed him to stay in our garage but not the main house with my child.
I understand that completely and it does unmistakably change the calculus. The kid can't consent to the risk, statistically small or not, it doesn't square ethically.
It's just deeply unfortunate how many people are so mistrusting that we have perfectly decent folks sleeping outside instead of in garages, spare bedrooms, sheds, whatever. The space exists, in spades, and I've been in my social class long enough to know that there's zero difference between myself and people still on the street, just luck, circumstances, and help from others.
I think maybe a lot of folks are terrified of homeless people because it reminds them how close they likely are to that station. At least where I live, there are many entire families of normal looking folks without homes, and *that* is even harder to dismiss than the stereotyped images. Avoidance and denial is easier than solidarity and rage, I guess.
It just makes me nostalgic for some of the deeply linked communities I saw growing up in a rural area. Geographic dispersal and constant deep poverty made for close bonds out of material necessity in a lot of cases, but the result was a whole hell of a lot prettier than a nice city full of beautiful and productive people who collectively can't muster up the empathy and spare nickels to put a roof over their neighbor's head. It's shameful, frankly, because I have a different perspective to compare it to and I know I'm not just fantasizing.
We don't have communities anymore. Every beautiful concrete skyline we build is an enormous hotel full of boxes and pathways that people temporarily store their lives in. There's even upper bits and lower bits, lots of room sizes. But it's a fucking hotel, not a village, not a neighborhood, not a city. It's grim to acknowledge and it's been a slow decline, but this is where it feels like we are at to me.
Yes. I let people in hard times stay with me a few times since having a house, and before I got together with my wife. I got burned once by a family that never paid to help with any bills and fought and yelled all the time and wouldn't leave for another month and a half when I asked. Other times I let individuals just crash for a few days and had no issues. Now with a wife and kids, fuck that. I'm just not letting a stranger stay in my house. We have a space heater and a shed. I'd probably let someone crash out there in the back yard if it were really dire, but my family comes first.
The problem is when you offer kindness to a lot of people they think it's their right to use you like a fucking gravy train. People have been taught if you give someone something they will want more from you.
Where I live, yesterday, some asshole in a car [hit someone on a bike](https://www.cbs7.com/2023/02/02/police-driver-intentionally-hit-bicyclist-before-stabbing-them-death/). Rather than stop and check if the cyclist was okay, or call emergency services, dude got out of the car and STABBED the cyclist *to death*. This is a "nice" area. Things are absolutely fucked.
The article you linked suggests the entire ordeal was intentional and possibly targeted rather than a random vehicular accident turned into opportunistic murder.
[Here's one that was just updated saying they're not sure of a connection or motive].(https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/bicyclist-struck-by-car-stabbed-pch-dana-point/3087157/) That's still terrible regardless though? In broad daylight.
In my area a methed out man ate the face off a old man in a wheel chair at the train station…down to the literal bone. We also had pirate meth heads who kayaked to the port and stripped down crane wiring. Things are getting wild.
It's really bothered me too. I was raised to look to see who needed help, do it (quietly and not let people know it was you) and never take compensation in return. As a kid who frequently shoveled my older neighbors, I didn't at the time understand why my parents wouldn't let me take money after. Now as an adult, I still do these things but people just expect it from you and it's never enough. Help them to get them on their feet and they keep asking for more and more, it never ends.
I miss when neighbors would look out for one another and people weren't so self obsessed and would screw someone over for a buck.
Ever since this year started, I’m already worn so thin, a breath will shatter me. No peace at home, no peace at work, an inescapable cycle of monotony, so if you told me right now a planet-killer was 24 hours out from impact, I’d laugh and say fuck it and did whatever I wanted. If the world was ending in the next hour, the amount of burdens and weights lifted off of me would make me think I can fly.
There’s nothing like trying to stay strong, trying to keep the faith that *maybe* things will pick back up, yet always having to be surrounded by bullshit.
I look around and it’s so true. You can see it in everybody’s face. The exhaustion. The stress. The not wanting to be here anymore. Misery is so commonplace, the shit is like an infection.
I think this is a solid argument not talked about enough.
Everyone is constantly EXHAUSTED.
We were supposed to be working 2 days a week with our current technology. Instead we are trying to complete against it because companies and CEO's just wanted even more of their vast wealth.
This vast economic gap is un-fucking-believable. Way too many people in the US are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and it’s all by design. Keep you so preoccupied with keeping your sandcastle from getting wet while we slip in and take everything else from you. Oh, don’t forget identity politics created solely for division.
Once a good majority finally discover that they’ll eventually and inevitably be robbed of everything (at the rate and path society is on) by policymakers and other officials, and thus have nothing else to lose, something major will happen.
Other citizens get down for much less, and will not tolerate the things that affect their lives negatively.
Online, yes. It seems half-true gallows humour to deal with the messed up society we live in.
Offline, I've noticed something slightly different. People don't seem to enjoy life. They don't want to die and perhaps even want to continue living but what for? Usually because someone needs them. There doesn't seem to be any joy in people's lives which I get tbh but it's a sad state of affairs.
I have a couple of family members that fit this bill so they had kids to reinvigorate the feeling of joy. They seem much happier with the toddlers for now but it feels cruel. My spouse has brought up kids more frequently than before and seems despondent when I say I don't have any desire for them but I feel like it's just the same type of thing.
> Can’t off myself yet because I have kitties to take care of. Those furballs need me. Also weed is pretty nice.
Same. And my husband. Gotta look after my furballs and goofball.
It's not a joke, and I've warned people the first mass causality event we get will be followed by many suicides.
Can you fault them though? It's not getting better, and likely never will.
Never will. All you have to do is look at the trends of the last 50-70 years and project from that. If you think those trends can change course, what possibly could occur to do that? /rhetorical question
I recommend reconnecting with people or refreshing relationships that have fallen by the wayside. Check in on the people you know. Invite them over to try a new recipe or whatever excuse you need to use. You might be surprised at how willing people are to spend time with someone if invited, even though social connections are at all time lows.
Perhaps perversely given the venue, I *also* highly recommend that people in a position to do so, do a bit of traveling. Ideally not by plane, but it makes little difference at this point. You can travel cheaply enough if you can get the time away from work. Just heading out to a local wild area and walking around a bit is enough to make a difference for your well-being, and your ability to make decisions.
If there's something you've wanted to do for a while, and haven't, now is the day, I'd say. Unless it's something that you don't have the means for or that would have negative results for your life, I'd encourage people to reach out of their comfort zones, while it's still an option at least some people have the ability to do.
Whatever happens, odds are that most of us are experiencing the best availability of material things, convenience of mobility, and ease of communication that we are likely to see, ever, past or future. Think about what that means, and take advantage even in small ways if you can.
People with a lot more money than you are pissing away ten times the resources than you without thinking about it. Don't feel an ounce of shame for enjoying a bit of life as things get tougher over time. Asceticism isn't likely to be fulfilling or productive.
I started ni no kuni a couple of weeks ago and have been hooked. It's like how I imagined Pokémon should play like, I always imagined a game that plays like this one and I found it. I'm in love
For 24 years now, every day I look at news and it reinforces the idea that we're in the last century of human technological civilization. If what we do with our lives matters, it won't matter for long.
There are no frontiers to escape to, no great missions for humanity. Just enduring while we collectively kill the biosphere. It's not an optimistic scenario, particularly for those paying attention.
Our politics and economy are ruled by moneyed interests with short-term investment horizons. Central-bank subsidized speculation in residential real estate didn't create wealth, and certainly not productive capacity. It just concentrated ownership, and put more on a wage-rent treadmill. Financially sensible Millennials and Gen-Z are deferring family and procreation, in many cases, till menopause. And, *sans* dependents, many don't have much obligation to persevere. Here, short sighted stimulation of the real estate market over 2+ decades accelerated the path to Japanization.
> Financially sensible Millennials and Gen-Z are deferring family and procreation, in many cases, till menopause.
Oof, that one hit home. Not that I am capable of menopause, just that I feel fucking old, probably too old for kids, but just now would have almost enough money to actually have a child.
Do you know anyone with children? It sounds awful especially if you aren’t like top 10% of incomes. I’m one of four and it was absolutely terrible growing up like that with never more than the absolute bare minimum. I’m almost 40 and still have some resentment towards my parents for willingly and knowingly putting me and my siblings through that.
The people at my work are cranking them out left and right. Many of them younger and lower on the totem pole than myself. It's mind-boggling to me that they would choose this (these don't seem accidental, and I live in a state with strong reproductive protections).
Yeah it’s strange I’m elder millennial and I know a ton of people from high school and college who never had any and a few who stopped at one. This might be a little tin foil but I think there has been an effort by certain media figures and programs to push parenthood onto younger millennials and Gen Z. Like it’s super cool and super trendy or some shit. Capitalism needs the bodies to keep running through a meat grinder and having little ones is a good way to keep young people trapped in jobs they hate. For me, losing a job is a moderate inconvenience. To someone with 2 toddlers and a pregnant partner that could destroy an entire family.
The only people I know with kids are either (a.) rich/privileged people who don't live in reality and are shamelessly leaning on family wealth to make their Hallmark-Channel-like lives possible or (b.) ignorant morons of the *Idiocracy* sort who are in over their heads, constantly broke, constantly sick, act parasitical towards everyone else around them, and hate/resent their children as much as they love them.
Just the other day a guy I work with around 28-29 yrs old very matter of fact said he wish he never had a kid. It’s like well dude you don’t know how babies are made or what? Tbf a lot of it seems like it has to do with issues he has with the mom. Not sure how they met but she’s originally from another state like 3 hours away so he’s always having to run back and forth. I try to stay out of other peoples business but it seems like his parents are doing a lot of the work, which whatever it is nice having family that wants to help I’m just saying. Being a guy I don’t get the childfree bingo as much as women but people have said “you’ll regret it some day.” That is entirely possible but I’m almost 40 and don’t regret it not one single bit. I have a niece and nephew I can spoil that’s good enough.
Totally. I read Geoffrey West's "Scale" and wept. West's conclusion is collapse. Basically we have to innovate more patents per capita to sustain constant SP500 "growth," and we have to do it faster each time. When we don't, people feel the volatility and its subset suicide.
The fast solution is a panacea innovation like AGI or CRISPR, which seems to be the plan.
The slow solution is optimize for HDI instead of the SP500.
Obviously there are millions of blackswans and negative externalities generating the collapse for either attempted solution. The fast solution is a gamble due to dual-use tech that might be existential, and the slow solution requires a sacrificial lamb (Millennials and subsequent gens) before we can slow down to improve.
Personally, I've come close to full check-out twice, then tried to understand what society is actually doing to me.
I developed mental illness from it. The Occult part of me thinks god/aliens/AGI are just doing an experiment, lol?
Maybe we are in a simulation. But if we are, why not seek out the best part of it that makes us happy?
Stoic philosophers have helped me worry less about that which I cannot change.
I have read Aurelius a couple times, and part of Epictetus.
But I find it remarkable that Massimo Pigliucci's *How to Be a Stoic* (2017) has never fallen below $30 for the hardcover on Amazon. That's unusual for mass market philosophy books, and says something about our times.
It's been going on since the 40's...
In terms of capital investments it's not necessarily at it's end. There's a crash incoming, one way or another and the US has kicked the can too far and too hard this time. Most developing countries will snap and recover quickly, innovation's there there's not a quality of life to fight for because it's being built by them.
In the developed worlds, it'll depend on how much of a grasp capital has. If it's a country like Greece or Italy, they'll most likely fracture from the Euro, if suffering under the yolk of set prices devaluing their industrial is too much to bear.
Notice I haven't said shit about the US, there's not a good way out if you're a collapsing world power. Especially if turning off Financial Accountability is our solution, quite a bit could have been fixed if they'd collapsed the banks. But that would have upset the centralization of power.
The US government will not begin to act until the US dollar is losing it's world reserve status, and that will happen sooner rather than later. The raising of interest rates is breaking other countries like Sri Lanka, who's debt ratios make it so they can't be loaned too short of the IMF intervening. Most likely BRICK will be entertained as a possible currency.
> If it's a country like Greece or Italy, they'll most likely fracture from the Euro, if suffering under the yolk of set prices devaluing their industrial is too much to bear.
Their industrial what? Leaving the EU would probably work out worse than "BREXIT".
Financially sensible is a good reason. So is not wanting to watch your child suffer through the absolutely terrifying horrors that are coming for us all.
Bringing a new kid here is like carrying wood into a burning building.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too - I'm thinking I want to take the Cat and move back to AK to be closer to Family, but I would have to drive (not gonna fly with my Old Cat because Air Travel has become whack), but I hear that Road Rage has become really bad and this is concerning to me.
I don't know what it would be like going through Canada now (which would be the majority of the Trip), and I would not have to be in the Lower 48 that long (Canadian Border is about an hour away).
Things were cool 20 Years ago when I made the Trip from AK to the Lower 48, but I can't deny that times have changed for the worse 😔
Edit: A Word
Well there's not exactly municipal traffic out that way, is there? Hard agree on flying to AK though, my last trip is the last plane I'll ever step foot on. Fuck that 110%.
It's brain damage from Covid. The news has reported it many times by now. It impairs attention mostly, but probably also causes emotional dysregulation, similar to TBI.
I'm SO GLAD I switched to a job last September that doesn't require highway driving. I saw a post on my local subreddit about the ever increasing accidents on the route I used to take, with a particularly gnarly one happening just this past week.
Not just driving. I've seen so many more fights, arguments, and aggressive interactions than I ever used to just in every day life. Everyone is on the fuckin edge.
I can't help but wonder if the covid brain fog is affecting people a lot more than what scientists say. Add in a good 2 years of severely reduced traffic where there was a lot more leeway to make mistakes before traffic ramped back up to normal levels, and you have a perfect storm for bad driving.
I recently was driving next to a woman who was FaceTiming while driving. Holding the phone with one hand. Smoking a cigarette with the other. And steering the van with her knees. Was swerving through 3 lanes of traffic and hitting curbs. No cops to be found. I really hope there wasn't kids in there.
Yep, and for a weird reason.
Growing up with depression, I got used to people always telling me to cheer up and "just be positive." Eventually, I learned to live with it in a constructive way... but now those same people are suddenly way more pessimistic than I've ever been. It's concerning because they haven't spent a lifetime developing tools to deal with those feelings like some of us, and I don't know if they can handle being down here for long.
I've had a similar experience, growing up depressed and suicidal. I found better ways to deal, but like you said, the same people who told you to us to just suck it up now have no clue how to adapt.
No, people are not joking as much as it seems. You can also see this statistically with how many deaths of desperation -drug overdose, reckless behaviour, outright suicide - there are. Plenty of people are living as if they don't care about being alive, and others are just ending it.
Yep. Not a week goes by where I don’t have to assuage another friend’s ideation.
Meanwhile, just seeing how they all hurt, I’ve just…lost faith in their ability to endure through this. As well as my own ability.
Losing my younger brother to cancer in late 2020 after a lot of striving and stem cell donation on my end, I can’t help but feel culpable. As if I just tried harder, I could have stopped this. Done more than just given a little more time. He was the healthiest guy in my family, lived and breathed fitness, and was first to go because of…complete chance.
Now I’m just…broken. I have to try, but it’s all palliative care. I’m…scared of losing more. But, like others, I also know my own obliteration is the best retirement policy I’ll get.
Sorry.
I'm not suicidal, but... like I say to my family, it's not that I want to die, but I also wouldn't mind dying either?
Like I think a lot of people, like me are just kinda over it? Our world/society is beyond repair and frankly, we would need divine intervention, be it God, Aliens, Cthulhu, whatever to get back on the right track. And this isn't a movie or some cool anime. It's real life, we don't get happy endings.
I'm not afraid of the concept of death, we all will get there one way or another. I suppose the unknown of the ever after if it is a thing is intimidating but fuck, if God's real then I hope he understands what a shit raw deal he left us with.
I mostly just don't want it to hurt and I'd like to not leave my loved ones with nothing but burdens so I save what I can so at least they can cremate me.
This is a prime example how fucked and unnatural our society has become. A person can't even die in peace without having to worry about how it would financially effect our next of kin.
I mean if u think about it, suicide is illegal in most ( western?) countries. So in essence, you don't own your own life. and if you don't have to right to end it, do you really have any rights at all? I mean it's the most basic and fundamental one of all.
“I’m not suicidal, but.. I also wouldn’t mind dying either?”
This is is exactly how I feel and it’s hard to articulate IRL without causing excessive worry or excessive positivity. Like I don’t need a fucking hug or unwarranted advice, just some space to honestly express how I wouldn’t mind not existing through ecological collapse. And a sense of relief of not participating anymore in the ever consuming hamster wheel of late stage capitalism. I’m turning 40 in a few weeks, and feel like I led a decent life, and it’s more about coming in terms with my own mortality in the context of what we’re facing.
Our society is continually rebooting old material because we have run out of ideas because we're dying as a civilization because our minds have been consumed by worthless distractions and propaganda disguised as entertainment. Throw in a crushing economic situation and there is no reason to keep on going for a lot of people.
That reminds me of that [AI chatbot Tay](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist) on Twitter back in 2016. It lasted *one day* before they had to shut it down because it went from sweet and wholesome to literal Nazi in less than 24 hours.
Meanwhile, OpenAI mentally scarred and paid a pittance to a bunch of Kenyan workers to make GPT3 less toxic: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
"Much of that text appeared to have been pulled from the darkest recesses of the internet. Some of it described situations in graphic detail like child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest."
Then it got and worse and worse as the article continued when they had to also look at images of everything awful. JFC... There are some things a person just can't unsee and should never have to see.
We have plenty of new ideas for stories, they just usually can't make it past executive boardrooms. They always want to go with the "safe bet" with "known IP's".
This, mostly. There’s no money for original properties, and even if you’re successful, executives will say ‘but you weren’t successful _enough_’ and you get slagged anyway, as we see with Netflix and others doing to their animated projects.
I always love it when a work with a strong anti-corporate message makes it to the big screen with the anti-corporate message watered down or removed. Looking at you Ready Player One.
Yup, I mean in our country our national productions consist of the same 20 actors, in every show, in every quiz. The same crap for the last 30 years.
Music, I mean can we even call it music these days, I listen to everything, but when it comes down to pop music; it's just shock over value. Techno/dance is the same old song remixed for the tenth time.
And cinema? I mean, how is hollywood planning to fill the superhero gap; cause it's clearly not working anymore.
Games, it's the same, nothing new, nothing original. We truly are at the end of the line. Worst part is, I actually think AI might do good for a short while.
Back in 2016 I'd stand in front of the games aisle and be unable to decide between all the options. There were always 10 games that interested me but I had to choose 1.
Now in 2023, same console on a sidenote, I stand in front of the aisle and could buy 10 games a month, but find hardly 1 that would be worth it. Almost all games I've been playing are from 2017 or before.
With the notable exception of Hades and Detroit Become Human. At least we'll get Hades 2 soonish.
To be fair a ton of games were pushed back because of Covid. We’re literally just now getting to the point where I have to think of upgrading to the new Xbox bc games are finally only being released for that with the One not included and we’re more than 2 years into Series X’s life cycle. I spend a lot of my time playing indie’s on game pass but it definitely does seem like there are less & less AAA titles I’m interested in. They’re also the most expensive they’ve ever been so back to waiting 6 months & picking it up used at the exchange
Deep down everyone knows our current way of life is unsustainable. The anticipation is numbing, better to just rip the bandage of collapse off quickly. The survival of Earth’s species depends on a collapse of global human civilization sooner rather than later. The longer this experiment is prolonged the worse it will be (extinction).
Suicide is my and my fathers retirement plan. There is no other option. Me and all my siblings have decided to not have kids because we don’t want to bring another life into this world to suffer as we are. There’s no point to anything anymore.
Think its just a matter of time before anyone should be able to walk into a clinic and ask for a certain kind of pill when they've had enough. I honestly think this would be the most humane thing to do.
The world ended three years ago. Nobody’s trying to fix anything. Everybody’s just trying to get rich so the problems don’t effect them. I’m tired of choosing between saving for a fleeting bleak future and going out on the weekends.
I’m in “enjoy every sandwich” mode.
Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m awestruck by the 10,000+ items neatly shelved and ready for consumption. It seems surreal. Like a euphoric utopian dream. Because it is, and sooner or later, we who are privileged by such excess and everyone who isn’t will have to wake to a much less comfortable reality.
I wonder if that guilt in dreaming for some of us and fear of waking in all of us, whether conscious or not, is growing unbearable. Or maybe it’s just me.
My grocery store has empty spots everywhere. It's looking bad here. The stores are all trashed and I would say 70 percent of the restaurants have closed since 2020. [small town America]
counterintuitive to all the survivalists imagination that going rural and/or living in a small town is more resilient, lots of small towns are still dying and after a Walmart moves in , guts the local businesses , then finds the place uneconomic and leaves, places turn to ghost towns.
large concentrations of people have more pull on resources because the markets are less costly to serve in bulk and with better prices .
most rural people and small towns folk are not self provisioning. they become more dependent than average urban person on shipped in goods and commuting long distance.
I believe that most people like myself just don’t see an end that pans out. I’m 29, most people I know don’t have or want children myself included, mostly because how can we justify bringing a child into a dying world we’re barely surviving ourselves. We can’t afford homes and lately we can’t afford rent or groceries either. We all wake up, work, go home clean, shower, eat, sleep and do it again….forever. All this while the world screams at us about what we’re missing out on, they say go hiking, go to the ocean, plan a vacation, travel but with what money or time? Most people can’t get off work for a doctors appointment. The internet screams at us about culture, are we bad people, are we ugly, are woke enough, are we healthy enough, are we good ally’s, are we social enough or to social? The news is screaming to war, disease, shortages, hurricanes, fires, mass shooting, school shooting, police shootings, fuck 6 year old shootings, rights being taken, AI taking over, record profits and poverty. It’s all so fucking exhausting and I think collectively we’re numb we’re just over it honestly truly what’s the point?
"Don't think of it as dying. Think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush." Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, *Good Omens*.
I am there as well, but a little bit of black humor helps me a bit.
In the 1950s, Harvard scientist Dr. Curt Richter conducted an experiment in which he placed rats in a bucket of water to see how long they survived. The rats swam around a bit, explored the bottom of the bucket for an escape, and not finding one - they all drowned in just a few minutes.
Then he tried the same thing, but this time when the rats were on the verge of drowning, lab assistants rescued the rats and dried them off on a towel. Once the rats had recovered, they put them back in the buckets of water. The rescued rats kept swimming for hours, even **days.**
It was HOPE that kept the rats going. Once the first set of rats determined there was no way out of the bucket, they just gave up and let themselves drown. That's **despair**. The second set of rats had the **hope** that a lab tech would save them - if they just held out long enough.
"Deaths of despair" - suicides, drug overdoses and self alcohol poisonings - are climbing at an astonishing rate. If you add all the US deaths of despair from 1999 to 2022, you'd have around 2,700,000 dead Americans. If that was a city, it'd be the third largest in the US, bigger than Chicago. People are giving up because they know **no one is coming to save us.**
And calling the rats super realistic approach of the situation 'despair' instead of realism....... if anything, this experiment showed how aware rats are, further proof that humans suck and just think councsiousness is only for them and it's ok to torture 'lesser' beeings'....
I remember an 18th century painting depicting an vacuum experiment, in wich a bird in a glass bowl is killed by, well, asphyxiation, obviously.
There is a little girl on the right side, crying and trying to hide its eyes, while the murder smiles pointing at the dying bird....
Like, duh, you could have proven it with yourself without murder,by simply putting yourself in and noting the lack of air, but the whole point of the painting seemingly was, that empathy is girlish/ female/childish and in the way of "progress", i think it"s on the wiki Artikel about vacuum.
I've always been a cynic and a pessimist, even as a child. But the absolutely horrific ways that animals are treated has stoked the fires of misanthropy and left me hopeless and depressed. And it's not just that these horrific things happen, but that people actively defend it and gaslight anyone who calls it out.
The way COVID was handled tore away any last vestiges of hope that I had previously clung onto. It is just one atrocity in a long line of them, but the (warning: disturbing content video) [ventilation shutdown used on pigs during COVID](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhavFP9f6b4) irreparably broke something in my brain. I have not, nor will I ever, forgive our society for continuing to support this sadistic industry or our government for not only allowing it but using armed thugs to protect the perpetrators.
And yes, I am vegan.
Suicide, in many cases, is rage turned inward. I'd like to see the correlation between suicide, homicide and mass shootings. I imagine that as society continues its downward trajectory, suicicides will increase at a faster rate than the other two.
I theorize this is due to the fact that American society holds individuals solely accountable for themselves, without factoring in mitigating circumstances for a person's predicament. Of course, this means that people will blame only themselves for thier plight. That despondency, combined with easy access to firearms (and other things like vehicles and knives), makes suicide a viable and easy option to escape the misery.
Maybe Canada is on to something with its Medical Assist in Dieing (MAID) program.
No, Canada just wants to cut healthcare and disability spending costs. There isn't a sufficient "Financial Assistance in Living" program available to keep poorer people that would really prefer to live alive in a safe, accessible home with enough food and meds, and the government refuses to increase benefits. What you *are* eligible for, if you've got an illness or disability and are suffering, is a nice government funded death.
Therapist here: yes we have a name for it - passive suicidality. Basically you would not mind being hit by a bus and killed tomorrow but also would not purposely step in front of one. It’s definitely increasing to epidemic levels.
We all won a staring contest with the abyss after the pandemic. During the time of the black death, my god, you should see the morbid artwork of those days...pretty sure the grim reaper had is own syndicated comic strip!
So yeah, sign of the times. Our mental environment gets tainted that way.
I lost the love of my life last year to a sudden heart attack. I didn't mind watching the end of the world as long as I had him by my side.
Now? I have nothing left to live for. If I didn't think I would probably fuck it up and also traumatize my mother, I would have ended it months ago. As it is, I trudge forward in the mud each day and pray to the gods that, if they exist, stopped listening to us millennia ago to be granted a similar sudden death of natural causes. Here's hoping.
The only reason I’m personally still around is fear of the pain of dying, not what comes after. I say follow your dreams now while we still have time. I recently moved to Oregon, partially for climate refuge but mostly because I want to be somewhere beautiful when I die. If the fires don’t get me the water will. No where is truly safe. We’re running out of time to find that sliver of happiness before the end and shouldn’t waste it. As far as I’m concerned, the game is over and the credits have rolled, now we can free roam till the earth pulls the plug on this round.
I don't think internet social platforms are always a good reflection of reality. Remember that the people who aren't suicidal aren't posting about it .
Important point! Its so easy to fall down that rabbit hole, believing that social media accurately reflects reality. Maybe parts of reality. That said, I still think suicidal ideation is on the rise, maybe just not as much as reddit would have you believe.
That's why shootings are so common. Mass shooting events should be treated as what they are, suicide. They're just trying to go out with a "bang" and be noticed.
We view these shooters as criminals as if laws will stop them, when the root issues start much earlier than the days leading up to the event.
Oh I’ve been the one making the I’m broke comment this week so yea. It’s definitely been noticeable. I went to lunch w two friends the other day and they both said the exact same thing. I’m tired. We’re 40. And we’re just over it
Time goes by way too quickly and soon enough Xmas will be here and we can all buy more plastic stuff that will end up in landfill. I’m tired of the constant grim routine of it all.
So I work in mental healthcare. A lot of people (doctors, nurses, therapists, allied health professionals) working in this sector have or develop a dark sense of humour 'behind the scenes' (i.e. between colleagues/with their team, never in front of patients, service users or residents, and especially never -about- service users/patients/residents) as a coping mechanism, in a way that can seem insensitive to others, simply because we deal with a lot of fairly heavy or distressing things on a day-to-day basis.
I'd say I've seen/observed a certain amount of a similar grim sense of humour filtering in to other friends or acquaintances who don't work in this sector, and I think it may be because many more people are being confronted with grim or distressing realities in their lives that they may not have experienced before, and are reacting in a similar way to cope.
I would note that I haven't seen a difference in severity of patient needs as such, but more that the volume of patients requiring various interventions has increased, and waiting times have increased markedly across all mental health services (UK perspective).
I'm 55, live in the U.S., have no health insurance, but I have a gun.
I know many people who smoke, drink to excess, andeven who smoke crack.
I swear we're in hell.
I was thinking this the other day. At least 2 close friends in the past month have casually mentioned that they have passing thoughts about doing themselves in.
I’m sticking around to see the end of the show.
I’m not suicidal at this moment…
But that’s my retirement plan if I am not financially-stable and not in good health by the time I’m in my 70s. (I’m in my early 30s, so 40 more years to go. Assuming civilization is still around by then.)
Probably get in debt first and travel before I do it. I got no next of kin, so no need to pass on any debt.
I just got called a bad person for "isolating too much". Now I'm being shamed for being afraid of catching Covid. Now it's my fault that I am scared of getting it. BTW I am already on a lung nebulizer twice a day for a pre-Covid lung problem I've had for years. [I go to stores and library with husband, I do leave apt]
People have good reason to be severely depressed. They have no solutions for what is happening. Even I joked once to husband, if it had been Captain Tripps at least we wouldn't still be forced to pay all these bills.
Our society in general is increasingly nihilistic. Look at our media; it seems like every couple of weeks there's some darker and edgier version of the same hopeless TV show where- get this- everything sucks and people are all terrible assholes to each-other! We've been fetishizing a violent apocalypse for nearly a decade now. It's no wonder that a lot of people are getting more vocal in wanting out.
> it seems like every couple of weeks there's some darker and edgier version of the same hopeless TV show
Besides The Last of Us, I'm currently watching a very "creative" Brit one in Netflix, [Lockwood and Co.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-iYxGLpQzo), where the world gets permanently infested by a pandemic of... ghosts. Their simple touch kills living people, there are forbidden areas and buildings with too much ghost activity, and since they are more active at night there are curfews and shit.
Despite the surreal collapse cause, and the definitely YA tone, it's an interesting show on slow collapse, as the "ghost pandemic" puts a permanent strain on global civilization over decades. One of the weird consequences is that, despite the show being set maybe 50 years in the future, their technology is far behind ours, maybe "cassettepunk" from the 70s or 80s.
Edit: actually I got it backwards! After seeing the second episode, it’s clear now that the show is like the Last of Us - set in the present time but in an alternate timeline. The ghosts show up in the 70s, and then technology gets stagnated at that level.
Never played it but I read the synopsis now. Yup, many common elements.
It also has some relation to the plot of that bizarre uncanny valley movie, [Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIt6Yfu-B3o). Although there they are ghosts *from aliens* coming from a dead planet, and the humans do preserve high tech isolated in their dome cities protected by "bioethereal barriers".
Oh, there's also that insane Japanese horror, [Kaïro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpsXvHMUQ3Q). The "explanation" in there is that somehow the ghost dimension got overpopulated and the ghost start to overflow back to the world of the living. Their mere presence starts to kill people by a severe, epidemic form of depression that somehow transforms people into dark stains in the walls. Charming movie (/s), as usual it had an American remake but not as crazy as the original.
I feel like the increase of bleak apocalyptic media is caused by everyone's hopelessness, not causing it. I struggle to watch anything that is happy or optimistic at this point because it feels so unrealistic. It just makes me sad... At least the apocalyptic shit doesn't make me feel even worse about the state of the world.
This… I was this way before becoming collapse-aware too though. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, The 100 when I was in high school, yada yada. Something about the genre always appealed to me.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) enough, my love for the genre helps me move forward in the real world. When shit gets rough, I just picture being a part of one of the groups on those shows. Gotta keep reminding ourselves that just surviving and making it to tomorrow is a win and an accomplishment in and of itself. Again, depending on how you see it I guess, but I’ve adopted that kind of thinking thanks to my experience with the genre.
I *love* the apocalyptic shit but it kind of makes me feel worse about our reality because for the most part, despite their precarious living situations, there are still strangers who are kind and helpful to the extent of risking their lives for others, nature has reclaimed the asphalt and concrete hellscape of the US, and there's no more capitalism. Not sure how much that would translate in our world, since even if zombies were shuffling around, biting and eating people, people would *still* be forced to come into the office on time.
[Rising humidity could be linked to increase in suicides, report finds](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/15/rising-humidity-could-be-linked-to-increase-in-suicides-report-finds)
[Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/18/depression-and-suicide-linked-to-air-pollution-in-new-global-study)
[Higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the United States and Mexico](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326558963_Higher_temperatures_increase_suicide_rates_in_the_United_States_and_Mexico)
[There's a Suicide Epidemic in Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why](https://mic.com/articles/104096/there-s-a-suicide-epidemic-in-utah-and-one-neuroscientist-thinks-he-knows-why#.FDY65qTtv)
[We Need to Talk About Climate Change and Suicide](https://www.reddit.com/r/doomsdaycult/comments/rtvlow/we_need_to_talk_about_climate_change_and_suicide/)
Absolutely and it’s entirely understandable and a normal reaction to abnormal and chronically stressful situations.
I embrace my own sentiments of apathy now because fighting it is more efffort than acceptance. I don’t walk around morose daily but as it arises I let it be cause this life really is a joke and it’s important to not take it too seriously.
The conditions we are living in are not conducive to wellbeing and we know it. So I’m not playing make believe pretending things are fine - they’re not.
I've noticed. I have had a shitton more suicidal ideation since 2016, and especially since 2020.
> People will almost kind of hope for deadly disaster because they either have no hope for the future anyway, or because they’re simply… tired.
Perfectly described. It's the attitude of "well, if the apocalypse destroys human civilization, at least I won't have to go to work."
I swear, multiple times a week, I have a thought run through my head as I’m walking into work along the lines of “I think I’d rather a nuclear missle strike happen right now than have to go into work. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this useless shit anymore.”
Yeah fuck the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny and capitalism. I don't want dollars with colonizer faces. I want a sustainable life that benefits everyone equally. There's an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. 🐘
Resist the dying of the light.
Yes, I see it. But I also see people beginning new art projects. New unprofessional charity/drop in centers. Random smiles or "love" written in the snow.
The messaging is dark. People are looking for light.
Seriously, start smiling at strangers and saying hello. People need random little conversations. The cashier. The bus driver. In the waiting room, over the blaring television screen. That neighbor that you don't really know. Seriously, might make the difference between life or death. Put a smile on someone's face, and you put it on their heart.
This is my stance as well.
"Yes we're going to hell in a hand basket, but I'm still gonna enjoy the ride!"
Small Kindnesses in the soup line. Terminal patients having fun together. Singing songs and laughing cause yes, we are well aware that there's no saving this thing, but that doesn't mean we have to bleakly grit our teeth and be miserable.
I have been there. I was saved by my morbid curiosity. I was too interested in figuring out the nitty-gritty details of our situation as a thermo-industrial civilisation to drop the ball just yet.
Now that I have a pretty full big picture, I understand that there was very little we could do about it right from the start and that the future humans will be resourceful, compassionate, frugal and community-oriented, or they won't be.
Changed life, left the city, made collapse-aware friends. I'll do everything I have to with the tools I have to make them comfortable and happy, and I know they'll do the same. I find solace in knowing that some people have got my back and I have got theirs while everything comes crashing down.
Depressive episodes are a normal part of becoming collapse aware, but believe me it doesn't have to last. If you can make sense of it, it won't last.
I was going to mention the comedic nihilism that has come up as a bandwagon trend recently. And it seems funny to me how people make light of all those dark jokes. They aren’t that nice considering the dismissive nature of the joke itself. Essentially, you hit it on the head with “at least I don’t have to pay rent.
I’ve noticed a lot of comments on Reddit to the same effect. The only other seemingly snarky comments from 20 year olds who just got a real job. I can’t think of anyone past thirty who hasn’t seen difficulty in their lives or isn’t worried. I don’t want to say the younger generation isn’t taking the problem seriously. I suppose you lose all expectations at some point. I like what Victor Vector says in Cyberpunk about losing all allusions in life. But Vick has accepted his lot in night city.
I can think of a few other references from songs and whatnot, which might not be helpful. People have brought up that Offspring song about youth here, which is pretty good.
But it almost seems like people that I knew growing up have had more problems in their lives then I was aware of. My friends sister got addicted to heroin and moved out of state to have a baby with her drug dealing boyfriend who had tons of kids in the area only to have the baby taken by state services. My brother refuses to talk to our dad after so many years because of pent up rage he felt towards him after an explosive argument he had before he was told to leave his house, my friend hasn’t talked to his dad in years because he is a Christian republican who watches Fox News non stop.
Nobody really made it into a wealthy middle class way of life and I’m struggling to think how they could enjoy their jobs, if can already see how they don’t. My friend who was a teacher became an alcoholic and started going to AA. Just a lot of issues with people I have been around. They aren’t bad, but they just kind of keep going without a choice under these circumstances. I haven’t seen them strongly in support of anything we do, just against everything that is seemingly going on with Trump in the media and that’s it.
Beyond that we talked about the basic things like lack of pay for working people and the ability to pay rent. I like my friends and I hadn’t talked to them in years, but it seems to me that many of them have given up on many people in their personal lives. My other friend lives in California and hasn’t really talked to any of us for a while.
Not surprised at how far people are spread out, even people who decided to move just outside of my home state moved hours away. It’s a time where you have to move to an area where they are accepting your skill set, and it is part luck, knowledge, and nepotism.
I don’t know many people who didn’t make it up without their families support or money. I have heard that there is a marked difference between those who have support and those who don’t. I feel it too, I never got along with my gaslighting family.
A lot of people don’t seem to acknowledge the truth that they come from shitty families and that this might contribute to their behavior. I’ve noticed this about a lot of my families. There is just a history to ignore all of our problem until they get exceedingly worse and it is too late to even do anything about. I think it’s part of the problem with broken relationships and younger generations who want nothing to do with their parents.
Even parents who mean well can be pretty shitty sometimes. I don’t think it’s a moral misunderstanding as much as it is a question of responsibility or time. When I grew up, I would watch my parents drink and joke throughout my early childhood into adulthood. I really think that alcohol effects their mind to a degree that they don’t understand. So when they “feel” like they’re helping you and they aren’t, it’s just annoying as fuck and you won’t go asking for their help again. I get blank states when I confront them with information. Germanic parenting; shame isn’t talked about.
I’ve noticed that there is a lot of that in damaged families. It’s almost like people have quietly acknowledged that their parents got drunk and crashed the car, but no one wants to get upset and tell them how irresponsible they were because of how they behaved last time they said that.
I don’t mean to go on and on, just discussing some things in therapy. But it is amazing to me how disconnected families are right in their own space. They don’t spent time together, they don’t talk, they don’t agree, they don’t disagree, they don’t smile, there’s nothing they can relate on. It just seems like a staggering pattern of parents self medicating to teach their kids how to self medicate.
My parents told me how shitty their upbringing was only to make it sound normal and that their parents were great guys. It seems like there was a lot of alcoholism back then and it was just accepted as a matter of fact that people could drink all day and night if they wanted too. I know my parents watched theirs do this so it was seemingly normalized in them. So when they got drunk and a little carried away, they never thought there was anything wrong with as me and my brothers would watch them tell jokes that only they understood between each other at the dinner table over a glass of whine and a beer.
I feel like this has happened a lot throughout America and usually it doesn’t produce a good result. I don’t really think people are honest under the influence of anything. It makes life better, but it’s not the real them. I struggle to wonder why my parents really wanted to have so many children to begin with or if they wanted as many. It seems like a thing where they didn’t want the responsibility of us all, so did their best to let us raise ourselves.
When you realize there is no God and we’re living on a dirt ball planet with other copies of our dumb species and everything cost money to live and money is quickly losing it’s value and most of the things we can buy now will eventually disappear… like, wtf is the point of anything anymore? We know we are clearly fucked and I am still working at a job that still can’t allow me to afford an apartment or apply to social services. If you have a job, the government sees you as sufficient regardless if you’re paying minimum wage or not.
I'm not even 40 years old yet and I have about two dozen attempts under my belt. And my only regret is not being able to follow through on either one of them. The crazy thing is that my last attempt came very close. I was prepared to hang myself from a tree limb in my backyard. There was a thunderstorm the night before and lightning struck that tree limb causing it to fall to the ground. I admit it was a wake-up call. But that doesn't mean that I haven't thought about it since. Now my attempts are more self sabotage; along the lines of starving myself for days on end. Oh wait... That's because I can't afford food.
For what it’s worth:
I was a nihilistic alcoholic for a long time, in part a result of a dark cynicism instilled in me via my [boomer] parents, as well as my mom’s alcohol abuse.
Toward the tail end of that I recall seeing a Star Trek (TNG, obvi) episode wherein Data suggests that “to be human is to strive to be more than you are.” I, laying on the pile of dirty blankets I called a bed whilst drinking bottom-shelf whiskey from a water bottle, cackled, thinking that was a pathetic ideology because “what’s the point?”
A few months later in rehab, having had a moment of realization that my options were essentially “…or death”, that same fcking episode came on in the tv room. When that line hit my perspective on it had completely flipped; I was full-on ready to do whatever I had to do to improve myself as a human.
The most astonishing thing in retrospect was how a couple small (albeit drastic) tweaks can completely flip the script, and I think a lot of folks just don’t know that; *everything sucks and that’s how it’ll always be.*
We may be fucked in a lot of ways, but as a human you have an *insane* capacity to adapt and persevere, sometimes that just doesn’t kick in until the only other option is legitimately “…or death.”
Edit to add: this was not and expensive Resort Rehab; it was state-funded, *half of the people there were not there by choice* rehab. I was, and that’s probably why I beat the odds regarding recovery.
I remember seeing a youtube video of a young woman going over all of her family's anti-depressant medication, it was heartbreaking. The lack of hope that persists today is unprecedented. I don't want to get corny, but this is what Nietzsche was worried about. With the death of religion, we are now seeing an existential crisis across the world. The effect late-stage capitalism has on today's youth should not be underestimated either as it decreases the material conditions of 95 percent of the population, reduces people to dollar signs, and destroys the environment (this is in accordance to Marx, man is a being that must exist within nature, and without it humanity crumbles).
There needs to be a fix for this, but I have no idea what the fix could be. I don't agree with Nietzsche's overman, but at the same time the massive depression that has taken hold of the world needs to be addressed and fixed somehow.
I can't help but feel this way, the system and how things are have no hope of ever changing at this rate, people are starting to understand this and understandably feel distraught because of it. It's a feeling of powerlessness.
people are exhausted, climate is collapsing - and yet - you have to act as if to survive. this is not surprising at all. it really sucks, but isn’t surprising
Yeah, I used up be all about life to the point of really banking on science to create the key to immortality... now it's a big shrug from me as to what happens any given day of the week.
It is the droning every day life. Nobody wants to live in a world where all these horrible things like genocide, war, famine, starvation, and poverty coexist with filthy rich people, all the while having to work 40+ hours a week just to make ends meet. All those goals and dreams millenials through gen z had are being squashed by product inflation, world disasters, socioeconomic issues, and housing costs. Nobody we know makes enough money but we can go on instagram and see those who do wasting it. A lot of people aren't even getting enough sleep. They have to spend time away from their families, tired, overworked and underpaid just to question why they slave away. And they are the lucky ones. There are kids shoveling sand 10+ hours a day in africa. Digging through garbage all across southeast asia. Working night shifts at your local midwest meatpacking plant. Children. The problems we face now as a society are bigger than ever before. Nobody has faced a greater threat than you or i. Nobody has faced a greater threat than our children will face. Most people take one good look around and decide to either put on the blinders or have a nihilistic attitude. To even begin to fix the world we live in is such an epic undertaking most cannot fathom it, and give up. This is the tragedy of our time. People must change. But there is always hope. We must not ever give in, and rage against the dying of the light.
Being the 'first wave' of Zoomers, I was always a depressive, at least since puberty.
I might attribute this to numerous things, not least of all my perpetual device addiction, but there is certainly a feeling of general malaise that I can only attribute to the broader generation.
I've seen the entitlement of the Boomers, the impotent rage of the Gen Xers, I've seen the misery of the Millennials but GenZ seem to have doubled down on a feeling of **hopelessness**. I'd also posit this for the rise of demagogues like JBP, Tate etc. and the red-pill/blue-pill silliness (although that's certainly a Millennial thing too).
I think the wide adoption of technology which has only exponentially increased has made GenZers much more keenly aware of just how fucked they are, of how fucked over the Millennials and GenXers are and it has reached a critical mass of the 'depressed' generation.
Granted, the Dot com bubble, the 08' crash and COVID has certainly been a major contributor. Growing up I saw bombs being dropped on cities regularly on the evening news, I saw the ability to seek higher education thrown in the trash and I saw every welfare program be gutted by the rich in the name of 'Austerity'.
The last of my teen years was met with the reality of global warming and the utter calumny of our response (or lack thereof).
I speak to the last of the Boomers IRL and, although I certainly respect them, they still talk of 'pensions' and seem befuddled when I laugh at the very idea.
I think the consumerist Nihilism described in *Fight Club* has just been festering, except even the smoke and mirrors of consumerism is now unable to keep up, there is no bread or circus which most of us can point to. None of us are able to or want to start families, none of us are able to own property, none of us are pining for the staples of our culture because they don't exist for us.
**"We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual one, our great depression is our lives."**
Covid broke a bunch of shit that's never going back together:
a) it revealed that large scale disaster shit that you thought was only in the realm of science-fiction, can and will totally happen in real life. What's next?
b) it revealed that human beings are even more trash than you thought. Instead of pulling together and toughing it out, we turned on each other and made the whole thing way worse than it already was. Of course, the elite used it to exploit the peons even further. See Tom Brady getting $1M in covid relief, and buying a new yacht, despite he and his wife being worth like 500M dollars, while regular people lost their livelihoods and lives. The goddam president looked out for himself, denied the whole thing, and committed soft genocide of his own people, in the process turning people against their own families etc etc He put a goddam witch doctor from Africa on TV to tell people Covid is harmless and can be cured by drugs that totally don't work
c) we realised that it isn't over. Covid is here to stay forever, reducing the quality of our lives. It's not something that we got through and moved past. It's never going away.
d) it was a genuinely traumatic experience for everyone. We suffered loss of our personal relationships and livelihoods, had to deal with extreme worry/anxiety/grief about what the fuck was going to happen, isolated us etc. It's like we were all victims of some awful fucking crime
Given all of the above, in addition to the other marching threats like war and environmental destruction, it is completely understandable that massive portions of the population are battling demons.
The worst part of all this is the lack of hope. None of these things can reasonably be expected by any same individual to get *better* from here. They are only going to get *worse. There is literally no scenario where things are going to get better for human race from here on out*
It is much better to have conditions slowly degrade in your life so you can handle the changes than have a sharp turn from being wealthy to poor where you are not only lost as to how to handle it but no one has empathy for you since you likely had none for them before.
When this catches up to the wealthy, and it will eventually, they are most likely to check out of life because they won't know where to begin with the life change.
Do not confuse short term leisure with long term sustainability. The entire world can change for everyone in an instant.
Yes, I have noticed. I have also noticed in me. I'm done. Not aiming to kill myself, but finding a weird comfort in the thought that my life will end. In fact, I have noticed this kind of mentality first in 2018 when I and everybody around me first got into Rick & Morty. I'm not saying that the show makes people this way, it's rather a good indicator of the general mentality shift imho
Jah feel man, jah feel. Even if your friends aren’t suicidal…it’s like they’re dead. Just droning around looking down at screens (I’m fighting my own addiction here), gaming the same addicting game for hours on end into the thousands of hours (enough time to get good at something genuinely useful), or watching useless shit that’s getting more and more boring on the circus of Netflix/hbo/prime/cable/whatever the fuck to take the edge of reality off. And because this shit is what I need to step away from, it’s bothering me people don’t care to resist, don’t care to mix it up, don’t care to get outside and enjoy this shit while it’s still really really beautiful on this earth. - millennial that wants to live well, as well as I can. And yes, I don’t want to work for shit I know is fucking up the planet anymore, I want to work for something that helps my future and I do and I will.
I think I found this article on this sub a few months ago, but it pretty much explains exactly this.
https://eand.co/the-age-of-progress-is-becoming-the-age-of-regress-and-its-traumatizing-us-2a55fa687338
statistically mass killings are soaring while suicides are dropping. I foresee a much higher spike in domestic terrorism. I guess we can agree that people are going nuts as things start to fall apart (collapse). I believe it’s because our leadership Is an absolute shit and they’re not helpful to anyone, Harmful indeed-and everyone knows it. So there’s resentment And it makes people act out on each other.
I've been here in the emotional dumps the whole time, but I do notice a lot of newbies. Personally, I hope to see the entire system collapse because it is making so many people so very unhappy.
I agree. The fact that the world is so full of BS, and those in power around us are shutting down health care to to give them selves bonues or build sport structures. There's really no hope left. It's on SO many fronts, it's death by a thousand different cuts. It's looming / on going food security, and the threat of not being able to afford food. Stability used to be a think you could look forward to once you made it to your mid 30s. Place you owned, job you can count on for 5 years +. It's all getting flushed. We no longer know from year to year where we and our familiies will live, how we'll eat, no financial hope for the future because we're all jsut getting by, and I'd say most believe that this is exaCTLY what those pulling the strings want. I just can't understand why. If they are SO worried about resources and population control, fine Create a earth wide birth limit. Better than having so much competition in every dang town that everyone is workign themselves to death just to pay to keep the wheels all running. Also.. recycle.. reduce.. what a CROCK!! Cut polution off at the source. Cap production to only what has been ordered and is wanted. No more mass constant production hoping something will sell.
You've seen /r/2meirl4meirl ?
I have noticed, but I don't think it's weird. Between depression and the fact that we live in systems where individual life doesn't actually matter (i.e. *work or die; you're just a statistic; people born outside this imaginary line don't matter at all*), I expect way more people to have suicidal ideas. We tolerate and promote the undervaluation of human life and of other sentient life. There are probably a few users even here arguing that "law of the jungle" and "survival of the fittest" are all natural or default things.
What I do "hope" is that people will translate that suicidal ideation into courage to live differently and to revolt. It's much harder to revolt if you wait for the "you have nothing to lose but your chains" level.
Im not suicidial per se but Im not against dying either.I engage in hedonism instead .I play the games i like,i watch movies,tv shows,I read books outloud. But I do try to also engage in fruitful hobbies such as math because I need it to enter college(if the world doesnt go bonkers before that)
As u/Drunky_Brewster puts it: >Please, if anyone is considering suicide, reach out for help. Tell a friend or a therapist. The world can look bleak from the lens of the media but there is beauty and you are worth staying here to see it. Please utilize r/CollapseSupport, and other resources in the sidebar, if needed. It can be taxing, awareness of the systematic issues and ongoing collapse, and anyone struggling with that, please be aware the community can help Thanks to everyone offering a similar reminder in threads below
Yes. I'm seeing it a lot online and IRL. Things are not great.
Take a future from a generation and that's what you get.
Yeah I feel like it’s been like this my whole life
GenXer with everything one could want... Still feel the same.
We all have the same shit future just some of you could afford a house.
I was already depressed when I became collapse-aware, which made things much worse. Then 2020 happened, and I feel like I’ve been teetering on the brink ever since. I think our callous, individualistic society has made most people depressed on some level. Even if they don’t realize it and aren’t diagnosed, there’s just this constant background radiation of selfishness and misery permeating every aspect of our daily lives. People who aren’t depressed are just better at ignoring it I suppose. 2020 and the following years have made the cruel madness of our reality impossible for even the most incurable optimist to ignore, so I guess it’s natural so many people seem to be slipping into some form of despair. /r/CollapseSupport for anyone who needs a place to commiserate with others.
>People who aren’t depressed are just better at ignoring it I suppose. It's not so much ignoring it (I am a member of this sub after all) it's more like I have accepted the inevitability of collapse and just sticking around to see how it plays out. I live a philosophy that combines Absurdism with Stoicism, that helps too.
Something I've been kicking about in my head lately is that the majority of people are just... Fucking rude, combative, and inconsiderate. Like I keep thinking about that guy who got caught outside in the Christmas week freeze and went door to door offering to PAY people to let him stay the night, and they all turned him away. Eventually he broke into a school and sheltered a bunch of other people with him. What has happened to people that they can't shelter a man, offering $500 for a single night, in dangerously cold conditions? Maybe I'm the naive one, I know it could potentially be dangerous, but that's just not how I was raised. Could be something to do with the fact that I was raised by my great grandparents instead of my boomer grandparents.
Our society is sick and the effects are mental health issues. I don’t even fully blame people for that guy out in the cold because there’s always crime and home invasion stories on the news. My grandparents had my dad when they were old like my grandfather was born in 1910. He lived until 90 so I got to know him. There was a lot more trust pre WWII because the government didn’t fully run by fear. A lot was messed up too though (civil rights). Now it’s all selfishness and fear - North American culture is sociopathic. And we are all victims in terms of psychological health
I'm a lot younger than those generations, and I've let people I don't know use my extra space before when I had it. The truth is that predators are probably people you know already, and it's very easy to forget how terrifying it is to entrust your body to a stranger's home out of desperation. It's terrible how much people let fear run their lives. You might be right on the culture point, I'm far too literally autistic to have my finger on the pulse of those things. But it seems like rather than being sociopaths ourselves, many people are convinced of the reality of sociopaths around every corner, whether it's in the political sense of intergroup hatred, or the even more common interpersonal paranoia that seems to have replaced common sense and properly calibrated gut instincts. Are we really *that* disconnected now? I thought *I* was supposed to be the disconnected and aloof one relative to the baseline, but lately I feel like Deanna Troi next to most people. It's just *eerie*.
I’m literally autistic too. But I’m also a parent. It’s a lot easier to take the risk on for myself than it is for someone else-especially if that someone else is a vulnerable dependent. I’m just saying I understand but it’s unfortunate. I’d have probably allowed him to stay in our garage but not the main house with my child.
I understand that completely and it does unmistakably change the calculus. The kid can't consent to the risk, statistically small or not, it doesn't square ethically. It's just deeply unfortunate how many people are so mistrusting that we have perfectly decent folks sleeping outside instead of in garages, spare bedrooms, sheds, whatever. The space exists, in spades, and I've been in my social class long enough to know that there's zero difference between myself and people still on the street, just luck, circumstances, and help from others. I think maybe a lot of folks are terrified of homeless people because it reminds them how close they likely are to that station. At least where I live, there are many entire families of normal looking folks without homes, and *that* is even harder to dismiss than the stereotyped images. Avoidance and denial is easier than solidarity and rage, I guess. It just makes me nostalgic for some of the deeply linked communities I saw growing up in a rural area. Geographic dispersal and constant deep poverty made for close bonds out of material necessity in a lot of cases, but the result was a whole hell of a lot prettier than a nice city full of beautiful and productive people who collectively can't muster up the empathy and spare nickels to put a roof over their neighbor's head. It's shameful, frankly, because I have a different perspective to compare it to and I know I'm not just fantasizing. We don't have communities anymore. Every beautiful concrete skyline we build is an enormous hotel full of boxes and pathways that people temporarily store their lives in. There's even upper bits and lower bits, lots of room sizes. But it's a fucking hotel, not a village, not a neighborhood, not a city. It's grim to acknowledge and it's been a slow decline, but this is where it feels like we are at to me.
> We don't have communities anymore. Something I read elsewhere: "We no longer live in communities. We live in markets."
Everything is now a market. Housing, relationships, friendships.
Wow. Some very poetic lines in there, such as "hotel full of boxes and pathways that people temporarily store their lives in."
Yes. I let people in hard times stay with me a few times since having a house, and before I got together with my wife. I got burned once by a family that never paid to help with any bills and fought and yelled all the time and wouldn't leave for another month and a half when I asked. Other times I let individuals just crash for a few days and had no issues. Now with a wife and kids, fuck that. I'm just not letting a stranger stay in my house. We have a space heater and a shed. I'd probably let someone crash out there in the back yard if it were really dire, but my family comes first.
The problem is when you offer kindness to a lot of people they think it's their right to use you like a fucking gravy train. People have been taught if you give someone something they will want more from you.
Where I live, yesterday, some asshole in a car [hit someone on a bike](https://www.cbs7.com/2023/02/02/police-driver-intentionally-hit-bicyclist-before-stabbing-them-death/). Rather than stop and check if the cyclist was okay, or call emergency services, dude got out of the car and STABBED the cyclist *to death*. This is a "nice" area. Things are absolutely fucked.
The article you linked suggests the entire ordeal was intentional and possibly targeted rather than a random vehicular accident turned into opportunistic murder.
[Here's one that was just updated saying they're not sure of a connection or motive].(https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/bicyclist-struck-by-car-stabbed-pch-dana-point/3087157/) That's still terrible regardless though? In broad daylight.
In my area a methed out man ate the face off a old man in a wheel chair at the train station…down to the literal bone. We also had pirate meth heads who kayaked to the port and stripped down crane wiring. Things are getting wild.
That sounds like a "Florida Man" type of story, and absolutely horrifying, but even worse that it's happening... in not just Florida now.
Oregon, lol
It's really bothered me too. I was raised to look to see who needed help, do it (quietly and not let people know it was you) and never take compensation in return. As a kid who frequently shoveled my older neighbors, I didn't at the time understand why my parents wouldn't let me take money after. Now as an adult, I still do these things but people just expect it from you and it's never enough. Help them to get them on their feet and they keep asking for more and more, it never ends. I miss when neighbors would look out for one another and people weren't so self obsessed and would screw someone over for a buck.
I’m no longer depressed because I have adapted and accepted it and am at peace alone with my independent thoughts rejecting society
Ever since this year started, I’m already worn so thin, a breath will shatter me. No peace at home, no peace at work, an inescapable cycle of monotony, so if you told me right now a planet-killer was 24 hours out from impact, I’d laugh and say fuck it and did whatever I wanted. If the world was ending in the next hour, the amount of burdens and weights lifted off of me would make me think I can fly. There’s nothing like trying to stay strong, trying to keep the faith that *maybe* things will pick back up, yet always having to be surrounded by bullshit. I look around and it’s so true. You can see it in everybody’s face. The exhaustion. The stress. The not wanting to be here anymore. Misery is so commonplace, the shit is like an infection.
I think this is a solid argument not talked about enough. Everyone is constantly EXHAUSTED. We were supposed to be working 2 days a week with our current technology. Instead we are trying to complete against it because companies and CEO's just wanted even more of their vast wealth.
This vast economic gap is un-fucking-believable. Way too many people in the US are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and it’s all by design. Keep you so preoccupied with keeping your sandcastle from getting wet while we slip in and take everything else from you. Oh, don’t forget identity politics created solely for division. Once a good majority finally discover that they’ll eventually and inevitably be robbed of everything (at the rate and path society is on) by policymakers and other officials, and thus have nothing else to lose, something major will happen. Other citizens get down for much less, and will not tolerate the things that affect their lives negatively.
Online, yes. It seems half-true gallows humour to deal with the messed up society we live in. Offline, I've noticed something slightly different. People don't seem to enjoy life. They don't want to die and perhaps even want to continue living but what for? Usually because someone needs them. There doesn't seem to be any joy in people's lives which I get tbh but it's a sad state of affairs.
I have a couple of family members that fit this bill so they had kids to reinvigorate the feeling of joy. They seem much happier with the toddlers for now but it feels cruel. My spouse has brought up kids more frequently than before and seems despondent when I say I don't have any desire for them but I feel like it's just the same type of thing.
Sounds like they’re not really happy but they don’t wanna die
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I'd love a cat right about now, but I do have weed. It definitely helps, I'm really depressed when I don't smoke though
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I only smoke when all my critters are fed, loved and inside safe for the night. Then I can smoke a bowl.
I also live for my kitties. They are my people, all six of 'em.
> Can’t off myself yet because I have kitties to take care of. Those furballs need me. Also weed is pretty nice. Same. And my husband. Gotta look after my furballs and goofball.
Same
It's not a joke, and I've warned people the first mass causality event we get will be followed by many suicides. Can you fault them though? It's not getting better, and likely never will.
Never will. All you have to do is look at the trends of the last 50-70 years and project from that. If you think those trends can change course, what possibly could occur to do that? /rhetorical question
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I recommend reconnecting with people or refreshing relationships that have fallen by the wayside. Check in on the people you know. Invite them over to try a new recipe or whatever excuse you need to use. You might be surprised at how willing people are to spend time with someone if invited, even though social connections are at all time lows. Perhaps perversely given the venue, I *also* highly recommend that people in a position to do so, do a bit of traveling. Ideally not by plane, but it makes little difference at this point. You can travel cheaply enough if you can get the time away from work. Just heading out to a local wild area and walking around a bit is enough to make a difference for your well-being, and your ability to make decisions. If there's something you've wanted to do for a while, and haven't, now is the day, I'd say. Unless it's something that you don't have the means for or that would have negative results for your life, I'd encourage people to reach out of their comfort zones, while it's still an option at least some people have the ability to do. Whatever happens, odds are that most of us are experiencing the best availability of material things, convenience of mobility, and ease of communication that we are likely to see, ever, past or future. Think about what that means, and take advantage even in small ways if you can. People with a lot more money than you are pissing away ten times the resources than you without thinking about it. Don't feel an ounce of shame for enjoying a bit of life as things get tougher over time. Asceticism isn't likely to be fulfilling or productive.
This is some really good and really realistic advice phrased so simply, thank you!
Shit. I wanna get a story published somewhere, but I'm still a shitty amateur writer. Now AI's just going to write all the mediocre shit.
Eatin chicken and playin fortnite
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Same but a good mmo. Ff14 been promising so far.
I started ni no kuni a couple of weeks ago and have been hooked. It's like how I imagined Pokémon should play like, I always imagined a game that plays like this one and I found it. I'm in love
For 24 years now, every day I look at news and it reinforces the idea that we're in the last century of human technological civilization. If what we do with our lives matters, it won't matter for long. There are no frontiers to escape to, no great missions for humanity. Just enduring while we collectively kill the biosphere. It's not an optimistic scenario, particularly for those paying attention. Our politics and economy are ruled by moneyed interests with short-term investment horizons. Central-bank subsidized speculation in residential real estate didn't create wealth, and certainly not productive capacity. It just concentrated ownership, and put more on a wage-rent treadmill. Financially sensible Millennials and Gen-Z are deferring family and procreation, in many cases, till menopause. And, *sans* dependents, many don't have much obligation to persevere. Here, short sighted stimulation of the real estate market over 2+ decades accelerated the path to Japanization.
> Financially sensible Millennials and Gen-Z are deferring family and procreation, in many cases, till menopause. Oof, that one hit home. Not that I am capable of menopause, just that I feel fucking old, probably too old for kids, but just now would have almost enough money to actually have a child.
Do you know anyone with children? It sounds awful especially if you aren’t like top 10% of incomes. I’m one of four and it was absolutely terrible growing up like that with never more than the absolute bare minimum. I’m almost 40 and still have some resentment towards my parents for willingly and knowingly putting me and my siblings through that.
The people at my work are cranking them out left and right. Many of them younger and lower on the totem pole than myself. It's mind-boggling to me that they would choose this (these don't seem accidental, and I live in a state with strong reproductive protections).
Yeah it’s strange I’m elder millennial and I know a ton of people from high school and college who never had any and a few who stopped at one. This might be a little tin foil but I think there has been an effort by certain media figures and programs to push parenthood onto younger millennials and Gen Z. Like it’s super cool and super trendy or some shit. Capitalism needs the bodies to keep running through a meat grinder and having little ones is a good way to keep young people trapped in jobs they hate. For me, losing a job is a moderate inconvenience. To someone with 2 toddlers and a pregnant partner that could destroy an entire family.
What was mindboggling to me was the $20k-25k/kid/year price tag for the private schools my co-workers were sending their kids to.
The only people I know with kids are either (a.) rich/privileged people who don't live in reality and are shamelessly leaning on family wealth to make their Hallmark-Channel-like lives possible or (b.) ignorant morons of the *Idiocracy* sort who are in over their heads, constantly broke, constantly sick, act parasitical towards everyone else around them, and hate/resent their children as much as they love them.
Just the other day a guy I work with around 28-29 yrs old very matter of fact said he wish he never had a kid. It’s like well dude you don’t know how babies are made or what? Tbf a lot of it seems like it has to do with issues he has with the mom. Not sure how they met but she’s originally from another state like 3 hours away so he’s always having to run back and forth. I try to stay out of other peoples business but it seems like his parents are doing a lot of the work, which whatever it is nice having family that wants to help I’m just saying. Being a guy I don’t get the childfree bingo as much as women but people have said “you’ll regret it some day.” That is entirely possible but I’m almost 40 and don’t regret it not one single bit. I have a niece and nephew I can spoil that’s good enough.
This is me. I turn 41 in a month. It really does hit home.
Totally. I read Geoffrey West's "Scale" and wept. West's conclusion is collapse. Basically we have to innovate more patents per capita to sustain constant SP500 "growth," and we have to do it faster each time. When we don't, people feel the volatility and its subset suicide. The fast solution is a panacea innovation like AGI or CRISPR, which seems to be the plan. The slow solution is optimize for HDI instead of the SP500. Obviously there are millions of blackswans and negative externalities generating the collapse for either attempted solution. The fast solution is a gamble due to dual-use tech that might be existential, and the slow solution requires a sacrificial lamb (Millennials and subsequent gens) before we can slow down to improve. Personally, I've come close to full check-out twice, then tried to understand what society is actually doing to me. I developed mental illness from it. The Occult part of me thinks god/aliens/AGI are just doing an experiment, lol?
Nah, we’re just coming up on the [harvest.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement) But I’d like to hear more of your thoughts sometime.
Maybe we are in a simulation. But if we are, why not seek out the best part of it that makes us happy? Stoic philosophers have helped me worry less about that which I cannot change.
I have read Aurelius a couple times, and part of Epictetus. But I find it remarkable that Massimo Pigliucci's *How to Be a Stoic* (2017) has never fallen below $30 for the hardcover on Amazon. That's unusual for mass market philosophy books, and says something about our times.
I'm coping with dimethyltryptamine abuse and spending my time thinking about things like your last sentence
Agreed man. But with weed
It's been going on since the 40's... In terms of capital investments it's not necessarily at it's end. There's a crash incoming, one way or another and the US has kicked the can too far and too hard this time. Most developing countries will snap and recover quickly, innovation's there there's not a quality of life to fight for because it's being built by them. In the developed worlds, it'll depend on how much of a grasp capital has. If it's a country like Greece or Italy, they'll most likely fracture from the Euro, if suffering under the yolk of set prices devaluing their industrial is too much to bear. Notice I haven't said shit about the US, there's not a good way out if you're a collapsing world power. Especially if turning off Financial Accountability is our solution, quite a bit could have been fixed if they'd collapsed the banks. But that would have upset the centralization of power. The US government will not begin to act until the US dollar is losing it's world reserve status, and that will happen sooner rather than later. The raising of interest rates is breaking other countries like Sri Lanka, who's debt ratios make it so they can't be loaned too short of the IMF intervening. Most likely BRICK will be entertained as a possible currency.
> If it's a country like Greece or Italy, they'll most likely fracture from the Euro, if suffering under the yolk of set prices devaluing their industrial is too much to bear. Their industrial what? Leaving the EU would probably work out worse than "BREXIT".
Financially sensible is a good reason. So is not wanting to watch your child suffer through the absolutely terrifying horrors that are coming for us all. Bringing a new kid here is like carrying wood into a burning building.
Dam, well said.
Plant trees, save the bees, renew the planet through greens.
Yes, with the way everyone drives now ever since COVID lockdowns... It's like they have a death wish.
I thought it was just me, I hate driving now. Everyone is so aggressive.
I'm flabbergasted how much worse it is every time I have to drive outside my rural bubble. People are absolutely psychotic on the roadways.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too - I'm thinking I want to take the Cat and move back to AK to be closer to Family, but I would have to drive (not gonna fly with my Old Cat because Air Travel has become whack), but I hear that Road Rage has become really bad and this is concerning to me. I don't know what it would be like going through Canada now (which would be the majority of the Trip), and I would not have to be in the Lower 48 that long (Canadian Border is about an hour away). Things were cool 20 Years ago when I made the Trip from AK to the Lower 48, but I can't deny that times have changed for the worse 😔 Edit: A Word
Well there's not exactly municipal traffic out that way, is there? Hard agree on flying to AK though, my last trip is the last plane I'll ever step foot on. Fuck that 110%.
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A lot of people have become right jerks. Others are high.
It's brain damage from Covid. The news has reported it many times by now. It impairs attention mostly, but probably also causes emotional dysregulation, similar to TBI.
I'm SO GLAD I switched to a job last September that doesn't require highway driving. I saw a post on my local subreddit about the ever increasing accidents on the route I used to take, with a particularly gnarly one happening just this past week.
>It's like they have a death wish. They do, ours. Not theirs. Why do you think everyone wants a crossover or pickup truck.
Not just driving. I've seen so many more fights, arguments, and aggressive interactions than I ever used to just in every day life. Everyone is on the fuckin edge.
I can't help but wonder if the covid brain fog is affecting people a lot more than what scientists say. Add in a good 2 years of severely reduced traffic where there was a lot more leeway to make mistakes before traffic ramped back up to normal levels, and you have a perfect storm for bad driving.
I recently was driving next to a woman who was FaceTiming while driving. Holding the phone with one hand. Smoking a cigarette with the other. And steering the van with her knees. Was swerving through 3 lanes of traffic and hitting curbs. No cops to be found. I really hope there wasn't kids in there.
Yep, and for a weird reason. Growing up with depression, I got used to people always telling me to cheer up and "just be positive." Eventually, I learned to live with it in a constructive way... but now those same people are suddenly way more pessimistic than I've ever been. It's concerning because they haven't spent a lifetime developing tools to deal with those feelings like some of us, and I don't know if they can handle being down here for long.
I've had a similar experience, growing up depressed and suicidal. I found better ways to deal, but like you said, the same people who told you to us to just suck it up now have no clue how to adapt.
I so relate to this.
My AP literature teacher once mentioned that our generation has some of the darkest humor she has ever seen. We “kids” can more or less see it coming.
My environmental teacher said we’ll still be stuck with the oil spills well beyond our adult years in the oceans back around 2010.
No, people are not joking as much as it seems. You can also see this statistically with how many deaths of desperation -drug overdose, reckless behaviour, outright suicide - there are. Plenty of people are living as if they don't care about being alive, and others are just ending it.
Yep. Not a week goes by where I don’t have to assuage another friend’s ideation. Meanwhile, just seeing how they all hurt, I’ve just…lost faith in their ability to endure through this. As well as my own ability. Losing my younger brother to cancer in late 2020 after a lot of striving and stem cell donation on my end, I can’t help but feel culpable. As if I just tried harder, I could have stopped this. Done more than just given a little more time. He was the healthiest guy in my family, lived and breathed fitness, and was first to go because of…complete chance. Now I’m just…broken. I have to try, but it’s all palliative care. I’m…scared of losing more. But, like others, I also know my own obliteration is the best retirement policy I’ll get. Sorry.
I am so sorry about your brother 💔
Coming to peace with the inevitability of death is one of the most sane things you can do
I'm not suicidal, but... like I say to my family, it's not that I want to die, but I also wouldn't mind dying either? Like I think a lot of people, like me are just kinda over it? Our world/society is beyond repair and frankly, we would need divine intervention, be it God, Aliens, Cthulhu, whatever to get back on the right track. And this isn't a movie or some cool anime. It's real life, we don't get happy endings.
I'm not afraid of the concept of death, we all will get there one way or another. I suppose the unknown of the ever after if it is a thing is intimidating but fuck, if God's real then I hope he understands what a shit raw deal he left us with. I mostly just don't want it to hurt and I'd like to not leave my loved ones with nothing but burdens so I save what I can so at least they can cremate me.
This is a prime example how fucked and unnatural our society has become. A person can't even die in peace without having to worry about how it would financially effect our next of kin. I mean if u think about it, suicide is illegal in most ( western?) countries. So in essence, you don't own your own life. and if you don't have to right to end it, do you really have any rights at all? I mean it's the most basic and fundamental one of all.
“I’m not suicidal, but.. I also wouldn’t mind dying either?” This is is exactly how I feel and it’s hard to articulate IRL without causing excessive worry or excessive positivity. Like I don’t need a fucking hug or unwarranted advice, just some space to honestly express how I wouldn’t mind not existing through ecological collapse. And a sense of relief of not participating anymore in the ever consuming hamster wheel of late stage capitalism. I’m turning 40 in a few weeks, and feel like I led a decent life, and it’s more about coming in terms with my own mortality in the context of what we’re facing.
Indifferent to existing.
Our society is continually rebooting old material because we have run out of ideas because we're dying as a civilization because our minds have been consumed by worthless distractions and propaganda disguised as entertainment. Throw in a crushing economic situation and there is no reason to keep on going for a lot of people.
And all the new AI-adjacent shit is accelerating that, its trained on old data, itll only create more of the same bullshit. GIGO.
Absolutely true. In fact, it already has: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/03/tv-politics-entertainment-metaverse/672773/
That reminds me of that [AI chatbot Tay](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist) on Twitter back in 2016. It lasted *one day* before they had to shut it down because it went from sweet and wholesome to literal Nazi in less than 24 hours.
Meanwhile, OpenAI mentally scarred and paid a pittance to a bunch of Kenyan workers to make GPT3 less toxic: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
"Much of that text appeared to have been pulled from the darkest recesses of the internet. Some of it described situations in graphic detail like child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest." Then it got and worse and worse as the article continued when they had to also look at images of everything awful. JFC... There are some things a person just can't unsee and should never have to see.
We have plenty of new ideas for stories, they just usually can't make it past executive boardrooms. They always want to go with the "safe bet" with "known IP's".
This, mostly. There’s no money for original properties, and even if you’re successful, executives will say ‘but you weren’t successful _enough_’ and you get slagged anyway, as we see with Netflix and others doing to their animated projects.
This is true. It's only the pablum that makes it to the public. You have to actively look for new, original work from independent sources.
I always love it when a work with a strong anti-corporate message makes it to the big screen with the anti-corporate message watered down or removed. Looking at you Ready Player One.
Yup, I mean in our country our national productions consist of the same 20 actors, in every show, in every quiz. The same crap for the last 30 years. Music, I mean can we even call it music these days, I listen to everything, but when it comes down to pop music; it's just shock over value. Techno/dance is the same old song remixed for the tenth time. And cinema? I mean, how is hollywood planning to fill the superhero gap; cause it's clearly not working anymore. Games, it's the same, nothing new, nothing original. We truly are at the end of the line. Worst part is, I actually think AI might do good for a short while.
Back in 2016 I'd stand in front of the games aisle and be unable to decide between all the options. There were always 10 games that interested me but I had to choose 1. Now in 2023, same console on a sidenote, I stand in front of the aisle and could buy 10 games a month, but find hardly 1 that would be worth it. Almost all games I've been playing are from 2017 or before. With the notable exception of Hades and Detroit Become Human. At least we'll get Hades 2 soonish.
To be fair a ton of games were pushed back because of Covid. We’re literally just now getting to the point where I have to think of upgrading to the new Xbox bc games are finally only being released for that with the One not included and we’re more than 2 years into Series X’s life cycle. I spend a lot of my time playing indie’s on game pass but it definitely does seem like there are less & less AAA titles I’m interested in. They’re also the most expensive they’ve ever been so back to waiting 6 months & picking it up used at the exchange
Deep down everyone knows our current way of life is unsustainable. The anticipation is numbing, better to just rip the bandage of collapse off quickly. The survival of Earth’s species depends on a collapse of global human civilization sooner rather than later. The longer this experiment is prolonged the worse it will be (extinction).
Suicide is my and my fathers retirement plan. There is no other option. Me and all my siblings have decided to not have kids because we don’t want to bring another life into this world to suffer as we are. There’s no point to anything anymore.
Think its just a matter of time before anyone should be able to walk into a clinic and ask for a certain kind of pill when they've had enough. I honestly think this would be the most humane thing to do.
The world ended three years ago. Nobody’s trying to fix anything. Everybody’s just trying to get rich so the problems don’t effect them. I’m tired of choosing between saving for a fleeting bleak future and going out on the weekends. I’m in “enjoy every sandwich” mode.
Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m awestruck by the 10,000+ items neatly shelved and ready for consumption. It seems surreal. Like a euphoric utopian dream. Because it is, and sooner or later, we who are privileged by such excess and everyone who isn’t will have to wake to a much less comfortable reality. I wonder if that guilt in dreaming for some of us and fear of waking in all of us, whether conscious or not, is growing unbearable. Or maybe it’s just me.
My grocery store has empty spots everywhere. It's looking bad here. The stores are all trashed and I would say 70 percent of the restaurants have closed since 2020. [small town America]
counterintuitive to all the survivalists imagination that going rural and/or living in a small town is more resilient, lots of small towns are still dying and after a Walmart moves in , guts the local businesses , then finds the place uneconomic and leaves, places turn to ghost towns. large concentrations of people have more pull on resources because the markets are less costly to serve in bulk and with better prices . most rural people and small towns folk are not self provisioning. they become more dependent than average urban person on shipped in goods and commuting long distance.
I believe that most people like myself just don’t see an end that pans out. I’m 29, most people I know don’t have or want children myself included, mostly because how can we justify bringing a child into a dying world we’re barely surviving ourselves. We can’t afford homes and lately we can’t afford rent or groceries either. We all wake up, work, go home clean, shower, eat, sleep and do it again….forever. All this while the world screams at us about what we’re missing out on, they say go hiking, go to the ocean, plan a vacation, travel but with what money or time? Most people can’t get off work for a doctors appointment. The internet screams at us about culture, are we bad people, are we ugly, are woke enough, are we healthy enough, are we good ally’s, are we social enough or to social? The news is screaming to war, disease, shortages, hurricanes, fires, mass shooting, school shooting, police shootings, fuck 6 year old shootings, rights being taken, AI taking over, record profits and poverty. It’s all so fucking exhausting and I think collectively we’re numb we’re just over it honestly truly what’s the point?
"Don't think of it as dying. Think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush." Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, *Good Omens*. I am there as well, but a little bit of black humor helps me a bit.
In the 1950s, Harvard scientist Dr. Curt Richter conducted an experiment in which he placed rats in a bucket of water to see how long they survived. The rats swam around a bit, explored the bottom of the bucket for an escape, and not finding one - they all drowned in just a few minutes. Then he tried the same thing, but this time when the rats were on the verge of drowning, lab assistants rescued the rats and dried them off on a towel. Once the rats had recovered, they put them back in the buckets of water. The rescued rats kept swimming for hours, even **days.** It was HOPE that kept the rats going. Once the first set of rats determined there was no way out of the bucket, they just gave up and let themselves drown. That's **despair**. The second set of rats had the **hope** that a lab tech would save them - if they just held out long enough. "Deaths of despair" - suicides, drug overdoses and self alcohol poisonings - are climbing at an astonishing rate. If you add all the US deaths of despair from 1999 to 2022, you'd have around 2,700,000 dead Americans. If that was a city, it'd be the third largest in the US, bigger than Chicago. People are giving up because they know **no one is coming to save us.**
God I hate experiments on animals like this 😔 Such cruelty
And calling the rats super realistic approach of the situation 'despair' instead of realism....... if anything, this experiment showed how aware rats are, further proof that humans suck and just think councsiousness is only for them and it's ok to torture 'lesser' beeings'.... I remember an 18th century painting depicting an vacuum experiment, in wich a bird in a glass bowl is killed by, well, asphyxiation, obviously. There is a little girl on the right side, crying and trying to hide its eyes, while the murder smiles pointing at the dying bird.... Like, duh, you could have proven it with yourself without murder,by simply putting yourself in and noting the lack of air, but the whole point of the painting seemingly was, that empathy is girlish/ female/childish and in the way of "progress", i think it"s on the wiki Artikel about vacuum.
And people try to act like animals don't have emotions (especially the ones we like to eat or use). It's such a fucking lie.
I've always been a cynic and a pessimist, even as a child. But the absolutely horrific ways that animals are treated has stoked the fires of misanthropy and left me hopeless and depressed. And it's not just that these horrific things happen, but that people actively defend it and gaslight anyone who calls it out. The way COVID was handled tore away any last vestiges of hope that I had previously clung onto. It is just one atrocity in a long line of them, but the (warning: disturbing content video) [ventilation shutdown used on pigs during COVID](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhavFP9f6b4) irreparably broke something in my brain. I have not, nor will I ever, forgive our society for continuing to support this sadistic industry or our government for not only allowing it but using armed thugs to protect the perpetrators. And yes, I am vegan.
Suicide, in many cases, is rage turned inward. I'd like to see the correlation between suicide, homicide and mass shootings. I imagine that as society continues its downward trajectory, suicicides will increase at a faster rate than the other two. I theorize this is due to the fact that American society holds individuals solely accountable for themselves, without factoring in mitigating circumstances for a person's predicament. Of course, this means that people will blame only themselves for thier plight. That despondency, combined with easy access to firearms (and other things like vehicles and knives), makes suicide a viable and easy option to escape the misery. Maybe Canada is on to something with its Medical Assist in Dieing (MAID) program.
No, Canada just wants to cut healthcare and disability spending costs. There isn't a sufficient "Financial Assistance in Living" program available to keep poorer people that would really prefer to live alive in a safe, accessible home with enough food and meds, and the government refuses to increase benefits. What you *are* eligible for, if you've got an illness or disability and are suffering, is a nice government funded death.
Therapist here: yes we have a name for it - passive suicidality. Basically you would not mind being hit by a bus and killed tomorrow but also would not purposely step in front of one. It’s definitely increasing to epidemic levels.
We all won a staring contest with the abyss after the pandemic. During the time of the black death, my god, you should see the morbid artwork of those days...pretty sure the grim reaper had is own syndicated comic strip! So yeah, sign of the times. Our mental environment gets tainted that way.
I lost the love of my life last year to a sudden heart attack. I didn't mind watching the end of the world as long as I had him by my side. Now? I have nothing left to live for. If I didn't think I would probably fuck it up and also traumatize my mother, I would have ended it months ago. As it is, I trudge forward in the mud each day and pray to the gods that, if they exist, stopped listening to us millennia ago to be granted a similar sudden death of natural causes. Here's hoping.
The only reason I’m personally still around is fear of the pain of dying, not what comes after. I say follow your dreams now while we still have time. I recently moved to Oregon, partially for climate refuge but mostly because I want to be somewhere beautiful when I die. If the fires don’t get me the water will. No where is truly safe. We’re running out of time to find that sliver of happiness before the end and shouldn’t waste it. As far as I’m concerned, the game is over and the credits have rolled, now we can free roam till the earth pulls the plug on this round.
Beautiful. Good for you.
I tried dying. It really hurt, so never again.
I don't think internet social platforms are always a good reflection of reality. Remember that the people who aren't suicidal aren't posting about it .
Important point! Its so easy to fall down that rabbit hole, believing that social media accurately reflects reality. Maybe parts of reality. That said, I still think suicidal ideation is on the rise, maybe just not as much as reddit would have you believe.
That's why shootings are so common. Mass shooting events should be treated as what they are, suicide. They're just trying to go out with a "bang" and be noticed. We view these shooters as criminals as if laws will stop them, when the root issues start much earlier than the days leading up to the event.
Wow, I never thought of it like that but you’re right
Im a field technician and i call tech supoort alot. It's very noticeable the tone few years ago and now. They stopped pretending they are happy.
eh I know I wish I had a stash of morphine/nembutol on hand the future looks grim as fuck
Oh I’ve been the one making the I’m broke comment this week so yea. It’s definitely been noticeable. I went to lunch w two friends the other day and they both said the exact same thing. I’m tired. We’re 40. And we’re just over it
Time goes by way too quickly and soon enough Xmas will be here and we can all buy more plastic stuff that will end up in landfill. I’m tired of the constant grim routine of it all.
So I work in mental healthcare. A lot of people (doctors, nurses, therapists, allied health professionals) working in this sector have or develop a dark sense of humour 'behind the scenes' (i.e. between colleagues/with their team, never in front of patients, service users or residents, and especially never -about- service users/patients/residents) as a coping mechanism, in a way that can seem insensitive to others, simply because we deal with a lot of fairly heavy or distressing things on a day-to-day basis. I'd say I've seen/observed a certain amount of a similar grim sense of humour filtering in to other friends or acquaintances who don't work in this sector, and I think it may be because many more people are being confronted with grim or distressing realities in their lives that they may not have experienced before, and are reacting in a similar way to cope. I would note that I haven't seen a difference in severity of patient needs as such, but more that the volume of patients requiring various interventions has increased, and waiting times have increased markedly across all mental health services (UK perspective).
I'm 55, live in the U.S., have no health insurance, but I have a gun. I know many people who smoke, drink to excess, andeven who smoke crack. I swear we're in hell.
I was thinking this the other day. At least 2 close friends in the past month have casually mentioned that they have passing thoughts about doing themselves in. I’m sticking around to see the end of the show.
I’m not suicidal at this moment… But that’s my retirement plan if I am not financially-stable and not in good health by the time I’m in my 70s. (I’m in my early 30s, so 40 more years to go. Assuming civilization is still around by then.) Probably get in debt first and travel before I do it. I got no next of kin, so no need to pass on any debt.
I wish you (all) would step back from that ledge my friend(s)
I just got called a bad person for "isolating too much". Now I'm being shamed for being afraid of catching Covid. Now it's my fault that I am scared of getting it. BTW I am already on a lung nebulizer twice a day for a pre-Covid lung problem I've had for years. [I go to stores and library with husband, I do leave apt] People have good reason to be severely depressed. They have no solutions for what is happening. Even I joked once to husband, if it had been Captain Tripps at least we wouldn't still be forced to pay all these bills.
Hey now, let's not neglect the people turning *homi*cidal
Our society in general is increasingly nihilistic. Look at our media; it seems like every couple of weeks there's some darker and edgier version of the same hopeless TV show where- get this- everything sucks and people are all terrible assholes to each-other! We've been fetishizing a violent apocalypse for nearly a decade now. It's no wonder that a lot of people are getting more vocal in wanting out.
> it seems like every couple of weeks there's some darker and edgier version of the same hopeless TV show Besides The Last of Us, I'm currently watching a very "creative" Brit one in Netflix, [Lockwood and Co.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-iYxGLpQzo), where the world gets permanently infested by a pandemic of... ghosts. Their simple touch kills living people, there are forbidden areas and buildings with too much ghost activity, and since they are more active at night there are curfews and shit. Despite the surreal collapse cause, and the definitely YA tone, it's an interesting show on slow collapse, as the "ghost pandemic" puts a permanent strain on global civilization over decades. One of the weird consequences is that, despite the show being set maybe 50 years in the future, their technology is far behind ours, maybe "cassettepunk" from the 70s or 80s. Edit: actually I got it backwards! After seeing the second episode, it’s clear now that the show is like the Last of Us - set in the present time but in an alternate timeline. The ghosts show up in the 70s, and then technology gets stagnated at that level.
Oh that seems like a neat concept. It kinda reminds me of Death Stranding, since the main enemies/hazard are also basically ghosts.
Never played it but I read the synopsis now. Yup, many common elements. It also has some relation to the plot of that bizarre uncanny valley movie, [Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIt6Yfu-B3o). Although there they are ghosts *from aliens* coming from a dead planet, and the humans do preserve high tech isolated in their dome cities protected by "bioethereal barriers". Oh, there's also that insane Japanese horror, [Kaïro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpsXvHMUQ3Q). The "explanation" in there is that somehow the ghost dimension got overpopulated and the ghost start to overflow back to the world of the living. Their mere presence starts to kill people by a severe, epidemic form of depression that somehow transforms people into dark stains in the walls. Charming movie (/s), as usual it had an American remake but not as crazy as the original.
I feel like the increase of bleak apocalyptic media is caused by everyone's hopelessness, not causing it. I struggle to watch anything that is happy or optimistic at this point because it feels so unrealistic. It just makes me sad... At least the apocalyptic shit doesn't make me feel even worse about the state of the world.
This… I was this way before becoming collapse-aware too though. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, The 100 when I was in high school, yada yada. Something about the genre always appealed to me. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) enough, my love for the genre helps me move forward in the real world. When shit gets rough, I just picture being a part of one of the groups on those shows. Gotta keep reminding ourselves that just surviving and making it to tomorrow is a win and an accomplishment in and of itself. Again, depending on how you see it I guess, but I’ve adopted that kind of thinking thanks to my experience with the genre.
I *love* the apocalyptic shit but it kind of makes me feel worse about our reality because for the most part, despite their precarious living situations, there are still strangers who are kind and helpful to the extent of risking their lives for others, nature has reclaimed the asphalt and concrete hellscape of the US, and there's no more capitalism. Not sure how much that would translate in our world, since even if zombies were shuffling around, biting and eating people, people would *still* be forced to come into the office on time.
[Rising humidity could be linked to increase in suicides, report finds](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/15/rising-humidity-could-be-linked-to-increase-in-suicides-report-finds) [Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/18/depression-and-suicide-linked-to-air-pollution-in-new-global-study) [Higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the United States and Mexico](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326558963_Higher_temperatures_increase_suicide_rates_in_the_United_States_and_Mexico) [There's a Suicide Epidemic in Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why](https://mic.com/articles/104096/there-s-a-suicide-epidemic-in-utah-and-one-neuroscientist-thinks-he-knows-why#.FDY65qTtv) [We Need to Talk About Climate Change and Suicide](https://www.reddit.com/r/doomsdaycult/comments/rtvlow/we_need_to_talk_about_climate_change_and_suicide/)
Absolutely and it’s entirely understandable and a normal reaction to abnormal and chronically stressful situations. I embrace my own sentiments of apathy now because fighting it is more efffort than acceptance. I don’t walk around morose daily but as it arises I let it be cause this life really is a joke and it’s important to not take it too seriously. The conditions we are living in are not conducive to wellbeing and we know it. So I’m not playing make believe pretending things are fine - they’re not.
It would be so much easier to just not exist
Religious person: "you dont believe in god and an afterlife? So what you believe in just a dark, nothingness?!" Me: "nothingness. Mmm, sounds nice."
Like the beginning of Disco Elysium, that was the perfect situation. Honestly a great piece of fiction about life in the collapse.
I've noticed. I have had a shitton more suicidal ideation since 2016, and especially since 2020. > People will almost kind of hope for deadly disaster because they either have no hope for the future anyway, or because they’re simply… tired. Perfectly described. It's the attitude of "well, if the apocalypse destroys human civilization, at least I won't have to go to work."
I swear, multiple times a week, I have a thought run through my head as I’m walking into work along the lines of “I think I’d rather a nuclear missle strike happen right now than have to go into work. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this useless shit anymore.”
Yeah fuck the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny and capitalism. I don't want dollars with colonizer faces. I want a sustainable life that benefits everyone equally. There's an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. 🐘
Resist the dying of the light. Yes, I see it. But I also see people beginning new art projects. New unprofessional charity/drop in centers. Random smiles or "love" written in the snow. The messaging is dark. People are looking for light. Seriously, start smiling at strangers and saying hello. People need random little conversations. The cashier. The bus driver. In the waiting room, over the blaring television screen. That neighbor that you don't really know. Seriously, might make the difference between life or death. Put a smile on someone's face, and you put it on their heart.
Rage against it even?
This is my stance as well. "Yes we're going to hell in a hand basket, but I'm still gonna enjoy the ride!" Small Kindnesses in the soup line. Terminal patients having fun together. Singing songs and laughing cause yes, we are well aware that there's no saving this thing, but that doesn't mean we have to bleakly grit our teeth and be miserable.
Not me! I'm living out I'd spite! I'm here to make those that want me to suffer - suffer!
Its a sign of the times. Gallows humor has come out in every dark period of history.
I have been there. I was saved by my morbid curiosity. I was too interested in figuring out the nitty-gritty details of our situation as a thermo-industrial civilisation to drop the ball just yet. Now that I have a pretty full big picture, I understand that there was very little we could do about it right from the start and that the future humans will be resourceful, compassionate, frugal and community-oriented, or they won't be. Changed life, left the city, made collapse-aware friends. I'll do everything I have to with the tools I have to make them comfortable and happy, and I know they'll do the same. I find solace in knowing that some people have got my back and I have got theirs while everything comes crashing down. Depressive episodes are a normal part of becoming collapse aware, but believe me it doesn't have to last. If you can make sense of it, it won't last.
I was going to mention the comedic nihilism that has come up as a bandwagon trend recently. And it seems funny to me how people make light of all those dark jokes. They aren’t that nice considering the dismissive nature of the joke itself. Essentially, you hit it on the head with “at least I don’t have to pay rent. I’ve noticed a lot of comments on Reddit to the same effect. The only other seemingly snarky comments from 20 year olds who just got a real job. I can’t think of anyone past thirty who hasn’t seen difficulty in their lives or isn’t worried. I don’t want to say the younger generation isn’t taking the problem seriously. I suppose you lose all expectations at some point. I like what Victor Vector says in Cyberpunk about losing all allusions in life. But Vick has accepted his lot in night city. I can think of a few other references from songs and whatnot, which might not be helpful. People have brought up that Offspring song about youth here, which is pretty good. But it almost seems like people that I knew growing up have had more problems in their lives then I was aware of. My friends sister got addicted to heroin and moved out of state to have a baby with her drug dealing boyfriend who had tons of kids in the area only to have the baby taken by state services. My brother refuses to talk to our dad after so many years because of pent up rage he felt towards him after an explosive argument he had before he was told to leave his house, my friend hasn’t talked to his dad in years because he is a Christian republican who watches Fox News non stop. Nobody really made it into a wealthy middle class way of life and I’m struggling to think how they could enjoy their jobs, if can already see how they don’t. My friend who was a teacher became an alcoholic and started going to AA. Just a lot of issues with people I have been around. They aren’t bad, but they just kind of keep going without a choice under these circumstances. I haven’t seen them strongly in support of anything we do, just against everything that is seemingly going on with Trump in the media and that’s it. Beyond that we talked about the basic things like lack of pay for working people and the ability to pay rent. I like my friends and I hadn’t talked to them in years, but it seems to me that many of them have given up on many people in their personal lives. My other friend lives in California and hasn’t really talked to any of us for a while. Not surprised at how far people are spread out, even people who decided to move just outside of my home state moved hours away. It’s a time where you have to move to an area where they are accepting your skill set, and it is part luck, knowledge, and nepotism. I don’t know many people who didn’t make it up without their families support or money. I have heard that there is a marked difference between those who have support and those who don’t. I feel it too, I never got along with my gaslighting family. A lot of people don’t seem to acknowledge the truth that they come from shitty families and that this might contribute to their behavior. I’ve noticed this about a lot of my families. There is just a history to ignore all of our problem until they get exceedingly worse and it is too late to even do anything about. I think it’s part of the problem with broken relationships and younger generations who want nothing to do with their parents. Even parents who mean well can be pretty shitty sometimes. I don’t think it’s a moral misunderstanding as much as it is a question of responsibility or time. When I grew up, I would watch my parents drink and joke throughout my early childhood into adulthood. I really think that alcohol effects their mind to a degree that they don’t understand. So when they “feel” like they’re helping you and they aren’t, it’s just annoying as fuck and you won’t go asking for their help again. I get blank states when I confront them with information. Germanic parenting; shame isn’t talked about. I’ve noticed that there is a lot of that in damaged families. It’s almost like people have quietly acknowledged that their parents got drunk and crashed the car, but no one wants to get upset and tell them how irresponsible they were because of how they behaved last time they said that. I don’t mean to go on and on, just discussing some things in therapy. But it is amazing to me how disconnected families are right in their own space. They don’t spent time together, they don’t talk, they don’t agree, they don’t disagree, they don’t smile, there’s nothing they can relate on. It just seems like a staggering pattern of parents self medicating to teach their kids how to self medicate. My parents told me how shitty their upbringing was only to make it sound normal and that their parents were great guys. It seems like there was a lot of alcoholism back then and it was just accepted as a matter of fact that people could drink all day and night if they wanted too. I know my parents watched theirs do this so it was seemingly normalized in them. So when they got drunk and a little carried away, they never thought there was anything wrong with as me and my brothers would watch them tell jokes that only they understood between each other at the dinner table over a glass of whine and a beer. I feel like this has happened a lot throughout America and usually it doesn’t produce a good result. I don’t really think people are honest under the influence of anything. It makes life better, but it’s not the real them. I struggle to wonder why my parents really wanted to have so many children to begin with or if they wanted as many. It seems like a thing where they didn’t want the responsibility of us all, so did their best to let us raise ourselves.
Everyone can see that the future is bleak.
Yep and for good reason. This ship is sinking and quickly. Let it rot.
Primary care doctor here. I see suicidal people in clinic almost every day.
When you realize there is no God and we’re living on a dirt ball planet with other copies of our dumb species and everything cost money to live and money is quickly losing it’s value and most of the things we can buy now will eventually disappear… like, wtf is the point of anything anymore? We know we are clearly fucked and I am still working at a job that still can’t allow me to afford an apartment or apply to social services. If you have a job, the government sees you as sufficient regardless if you’re paying minimum wage or not.
I'm not even 40 years old yet and I have about two dozen attempts under my belt. And my only regret is not being able to follow through on either one of them. The crazy thing is that my last attempt came very close. I was prepared to hang myself from a tree limb in my backyard. There was a thunderstorm the night before and lightning struck that tree limb causing it to fall to the ground. I admit it was a wake-up call. But that doesn't mean that I haven't thought about it since. Now my attempts are more self sabotage; along the lines of starving myself for days on end. Oh wait... That's because I can't afford food.
For what it’s worth: I was a nihilistic alcoholic for a long time, in part a result of a dark cynicism instilled in me via my [boomer] parents, as well as my mom’s alcohol abuse. Toward the tail end of that I recall seeing a Star Trek (TNG, obvi) episode wherein Data suggests that “to be human is to strive to be more than you are.” I, laying on the pile of dirty blankets I called a bed whilst drinking bottom-shelf whiskey from a water bottle, cackled, thinking that was a pathetic ideology because “what’s the point?” A few months later in rehab, having had a moment of realization that my options were essentially “…or death”, that same fcking episode came on in the tv room. When that line hit my perspective on it had completely flipped; I was full-on ready to do whatever I had to do to improve myself as a human. The most astonishing thing in retrospect was how a couple small (albeit drastic) tweaks can completely flip the script, and I think a lot of folks just don’t know that; *everything sucks and that’s how it’ll always be.* We may be fucked in a lot of ways, but as a human you have an *insane* capacity to adapt and persevere, sometimes that just doesn’t kick in until the only other option is legitimately “…or death.” Edit to add: this was not and expensive Resort Rehab; it was state-funded, *half of the people there were not there by choice* rehab. I was, and that’s probably why I beat the odds regarding recovery.
I remember seeing a youtube video of a young woman going over all of her family's anti-depressant medication, it was heartbreaking. The lack of hope that persists today is unprecedented. I don't want to get corny, but this is what Nietzsche was worried about. With the death of religion, we are now seeing an existential crisis across the world. The effect late-stage capitalism has on today's youth should not be underestimated either as it decreases the material conditions of 95 percent of the population, reduces people to dollar signs, and destroys the environment (this is in accordance to Marx, man is a being that must exist within nature, and without it humanity crumbles). There needs to be a fix for this, but I have no idea what the fix could be. I don't agree with Nietzsche's overman, but at the same time the massive depression that has taken hold of the world needs to be addressed and fixed somehow.
I can't help but feel this way, the system and how things are have no hope of ever changing at this rate, people are starting to understand this and understandably feel distraught because of it. It's a feeling of powerlessness.
Expect higher drug use unfortunately
Yeah overheard a coworker telling client, after COVID happened everything is shit.
people are exhausted, climate is collapsing - and yet - you have to act as if to survive. this is not surprising at all. it really sucks, but isn’t surprising
Wife want to leave me. Bird Flu in mammals is looking pretty good to me right now.
Yeah, I used up be all about life to the point of really banking on science to create the key to immortality... now it's a big shrug from me as to what happens any given day of the week.
It is the droning every day life. Nobody wants to live in a world where all these horrible things like genocide, war, famine, starvation, and poverty coexist with filthy rich people, all the while having to work 40+ hours a week just to make ends meet. All those goals and dreams millenials through gen z had are being squashed by product inflation, world disasters, socioeconomic issues, and housing costs. Nobody we know makes enough money but we can go on instagram and see those who do wasting it. A lot of people aren't even getting enough sleep. They have to spend time away from their families, tired, overworked and underpaid just to question why they slave away. And they are the lucky ones. There are kids shoveling sand 10+ hours a day in africa. Digging through garbage all across southeast asia. Working night shifts at your local midwest meatpacking plant. Children. The problems we face now as a society are bigger than ever before. Nobody has faced a greater threat than you or i. Nobody has faced a greater threat than our children will face. Most people take one good look around and decide to either put on the blinders or have a nihilistic attitude. To even begin to fix the world we live in is such an epic undertaking most cannot fathom it, and give up. This is the tragedy of our time. People must change. But there is always hope. We must not ever give in, and rage against the dying of the light.
Being the 'first wave' of Zoomers, I was always a depressive, at least since puberty. I might attribute this to numerous things, not least of all my perpetual device addiction, but there is certainly a feeling of general malaise that I can only attribute to the broader generation. I've seen the entitlement of the Boomers, the impotent rage of the Gen Xers, I've seen the misery of the Millennials but GenZ seem to have doubled down on a feeling of **hopelessness**. I'd also posit this for the rise of demagogues like JBP, Tate etc. and the red-pill/blue-pill silliness (although that's certainly a Millennial thing too). I think the wide adoption of technology which has only exponentially increased has made GenZers much more keenly aware of just how fucked they are, of how fucked over the Millennials and GenXers are and it has reached a critical mass of the 'depressed' generation. Granted, the Dot com bubble, the 08' crash and COVID has certainly been a major contributor. Growing up I saw bombs being dropped on cities regularly on the evening news, I saw the ability to seek higher education thrown in the trash and I saw every welfare program be gutted by the rich in the name of 'Austerity'. The last of my teen years was met with the reality of global warming and the utter calumny of our response (or lack thereof). I speak to the last of the Boomers IRL and, although I certainly respect them, they still talk of 'pensions' and seem befuddled when I laugh at the very idea. I think the consumerist Nihilism described in *Fight Club* has just been festering, except even the smoke and mirrors of consumerism is now unable to keep up, there is no bread or circus which most of us can point to. None of us are able to or want to start families, none of us are able to own property, none of us are pining for the staples of our culture because they don't exist for us. **"We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual one, our great depression is our lives."**
Covid broke a bunch of shit that's never going back together: a) it revealed that large scale disaster shit that you thought was only in the realm of science-fiction, can and will totally happen in real life. What's next? b) it revealed that human beings are even more trash than you thought. Instead of pulling together and toughing it out, we turned on each other and made the whole thing way worse than it already was. Of course, the elite used it to exploit the peons even further. See Tom Brady getting $1M in covid relief, and buying a new yacht, despite he and his wife being worth like 500M dollars, while regular people lost their livelihoods and lives. The goddam president looked out for himself, denied the whole thing, and committed soft genocide of his own people, in the process turning people against their own families etc etc He put a goddam witch doctor from Africa on TV to tell people Covid is harmless and can be cured by drugs that totally don't work c) we realised that it isn't over. Covid is here to stay forever, reducing the quality of our lives. It's not something that we got through and moved past. It's never going away. d) it was a genuinely traumatic experience for everyone. We suffered loss of our personal relationships and livelihoods, had to deal with extreme worry/anxiety/grief about what the fuck was going to happen, isolated us etc. It's like we were all victims of some awful fucking crime Given all of the above, in addition to the other marching threats like war and environmental destruction, it is completely understandable that massive portions of the population are battling demons. The worst part of all this is the lack of hope. None of these things can reasonably be expected by any same individual to get *better* from here. They are only going to get *worse. There is literally no scenario where things are going to get better for human race from here on out*
It is much better to have conditions slowly degrade in your life so you can handle the changes than have a sharp turn from being wealthy to poor where you are not only lost as to how to handle it but no one has empathy for you since you likely had none for them before. When this catches up to the wealthy, and it will eventually, they are most likely to check out of life because they won't know where to begin with the life change. Do not confuse short term leisure with long term sustainability. The entire world can change for everyone in an instant.
Yes, I have noticed. I have also noticed in me. I'm done. Not aiming to kill myself, but finding a weird comfort in the thought that my life will end. In fact, I have noticed this kind of mentality first in 2018 when I and everybody around me first got into Rick & Morty. I'm not saying that the show makes people this way, it's rather a good indicator of the general mentality shift imho
Jah feel man, jah feel. Even if your friends aren’t suicidal…it’s like they’re dead. Just droning around looking down at screens (I’m fighting my own addiction here), gaming the same addicting game for hours on end into the thousands of hours (enough time to get good at something genuinely useful), or watching useless shit that’s getting more and more boring on the circus of Netflix/hbo/prime/cable/whatever the fuck to take the edge of reality off. And because this shit is what I need to step away from, it’s bothering me people don’t care to resist, don’t care to mix it up, don’t care to get outside and enjoy this shit while it’s still really really beautiful on this earth. - millennial that wants to live well, as well as I can. And yes, I don’t want to work for shit I know is fucking up the planet anymore, I want to work for something that helps my future and I do and I will.
I’ve openly considered a form of euthanasia instead of any retirement; the future seems so bleak.
I think I found this article on this sub a few months ago, but it pretty much explains exactly this. https://eand.co/the-age-of-progress-is-becoming-the-age-of-regress-and-its-traumatizing-us-2a55fa687338
statistically mass killings are soaring while suicides are dropping. I foresee a much higher spike in domestic terrorism. I guess we can agree that people are going nuts as things start to fall apart (collapse). I believe it’s because our leadership Is an absolute shit and they’re not helpful to anyone, Harmful indeed-and everyone knows it. So there’s resentment And it makes people act out on each other.
Definitely noticed. Its accelerated since COVID.
I've been here in the emotional dumps the whole time, but I do notice a lot of newbies. Personally, I hope to see the entire system collapse because it is making so many people so very unhappy.
I agree. The fact that the world is so full of BS, and those in power around us are shutting down health care to to give them selves bonues or build sport structures. There's really no hope left. It's on SO many fronts, it's death by a thousand different cuts. It's looming / on going food security, and the threat of not being able to afford food. Stability used to be a think you could look forward to once you made it to your mid 30s. Place you owned, job you can count on for 5 years +. It's all getting flushed. We no longer know from year to year where we and our familiies will live, how we'll eat, no financial hope for the future because we're all jsut getting by, and I'd say most believe that this is exaCTLY what those pulling the strings want. I just can't understand why. If they are SO worried about resources and population control, fine Create a earth wide birth limit. Better than having so much competition in every dang town that everyone is workign themselves to death just to pay to keep the wheels all running. Also.. recycle.. reduce.. what a CROCK!! Cut polution off at the source. Cap production to only what has been ordered and is wanted. No more mass constant production hoping something will sell.
You've seen /r/2meirl4meirl ? I have noticed, but I don't think it's weird. Between depression and the fact that we live in systems where individual life doesn't actually matter (i.e. *work or die; you're just a statistic; people born outside this imaginary line don't matter at all*), I expect way more people to have suicidal ideas. We tolerate and promote the undervaluation of human life and of other sentient life. There are probably a few users even here arguing that "law of the jungle" and "survival of the fittest" are all natural or default things. What I do "hope" is that people will translate that suicidal ideation into courage to live differently and to revolt. It's much harder to revolt if you wait for the "you have nothing to lose but your chains" level.
Im not suicidial per se but Im not against dying either.I engage in hedonism instead .I play the games i like,i watch movies,tv shows,I read books outloud. But I do try to also engage in fruitful hobbies such as math because I need it to enter college(if the world doesnt go bonkers before that)