daunted by many problems, not doing anything to help, paralyzed by apriori concerns
It's all too much sometimes.
What is ?
All of the problems in the world, all of the problems I have in my life, the things I'd like to do weighed against the things I end up doing. How shitty people are. Y'know...all of it?
That does sound like a lot. How do these things affect you here and now, though? Results require time and effort. They're incremental! So, what progress can you make today?
I'm not sure...
Well then, of course it'll seem like a lot!! You're just thinking of problems, not solutions. You can't think of a single thing to actually do. There's therapy and clarity in action. What're the two most important things to you right now? Personal, local or global? Maybe join a group that does some work in your community?
Like what? A soup kitchen?
Sure. If you care about homelessness that'd be a great way to get connected. If you want to help people who are down on their luck, collect food or clothing donations. If you want to foster a more general "sense of community", become a sports coach.
Hm, yeah, ok. But what do those things actually accomplish? Do we really need more sports coaches? Or, I feed a few people, but they're still drug addicts, y'know?
More coaches will just make everything run more smoothly, then the overall community will improve and that'll have widespread, albeit subtle, benefits! For the drug concern, you could help out with safe injection sites and rehab programs.
I guess...haha, but then they'll be hungry...
So do both: soup kitchen and rehab work.
That sounds like a lot of time...
Well, yeah, it would be. You don't have to do it all, doing a little is helpful too. I was just answering your question. You were having trouble identifying some ways to contribute.
the government and larger organizations role in 'change', segway into economics
My problem is some of these things we're talking about don't really address the underlying issues. I'd just be helping with the symptoms and it'd never end.
Ah, so you mean, like, causes of homelessness and poverty and such?
Ya!
Oooooooh, yeah, ok. I'm not an expert, but those are pretty broad. They probably can't just be "solved" so easily. They might require lots of people putting in lots of work over long periods of time. Maybe some of them are reflective of the overall health of the economy? The types of jobs we have and various historical factors. Without knowing exactly which branch or how, I think the government would be a good place to get started with those.
The government? How so?
Find out if it's a local or federal concern and put pressure. Keep track of how the issue is handled and vote accordingly. Over time, get more resources in the right places.
I don't know, it just seems like such a circus; dramatics meant to distract us.
They're definitely inefficient and probably corrupt in a variety of ways, but on the whole they still do quite a lot. Our general progress and current infrastructure are pretty damn good!
Hmmm, maybe, but it's so slow! Also, it's nothing compared to the impacts of industry and commerce. When they're not being bought out, they're just so behind. What kind of progress can they make when they're always playing catch-up?
Incremental progress! The "catch-up" is still useful, even through the corruption. There's always gonna be a gap, because industry and commerce are probably much stronger levers.
So we just accept this "stacked deck" and continuously get cucked by the strongest economic forces and selfishness of entrenched power?!
That's a bit dark. The economic forces are just people! Extracting, making, transporting, buying, selling. It's all just people.
skewed economic forces/power structures influencing the world, one-way door
Economic forces aren't "just people".
Uh, what are they, if not people?
At this point? Gigantic companies and generational wealth/dynasties with clear priorities that are at odds with the best interests of the public.
Ahhhh, so like, are you talking about a shadow council? The Illuminatti? Masons?
No, nothing as extreme as that. Even if those do exist, I don't think that level of coordination is necessary. I'm just talking about big organizations and long-standing power structures. They are composed of people, sure, but operate with such strong incentives and insane access to resources that they have incredibly skewed influence compared to an average person or government, even. They can push on levers that we can't even access and with more force than we could dream of. Elon's tweets change the economy!
Ok. Yeah, so that IS true. They have really strong influence, but not complete control. Eventually, the chain of value comes down to a bunch of individuals actively choosing to go places, buy things and cast votes. Yeah, they'll skew it, but we get final say. Revolutions happen.
Ack, no no no. That underplays it way too much. It's not a free choice if your options are limited or if you're being manipulated. Historically, governments would distribute propaganda in newspapers and on TV, while companies would just lie with false advertising or covert actions like toxic waste dumping.
Which the government oversees and regulates.
Hah, right, they eventually did, but how long did it take and what was the cost?
A bunch of harm to the environment, widespread lung cancer from smoking, birth defects from Nestle's baby formula. A lot terrible things. We stopped it, though. That's the cost of progress. That's us catching up.
Now it's happening all over again. Lies about plastic recycling are of the "old school" variety, but what about big tech? Content suggestion, feeds and digital advertising make widespread manipulation even easier for those with money or tech resources. We have predictably biased ways that we operature and the levers are very closely intertwined with our minds. So much so that EVEN CLOSE FRIENDS can be hard to reach because, while I'm speaking to them every now and then, they're consuming content constantly. How do you compete with that? The 2016 election and facebook? The variety of shitty content during the pandemic? The constant tempation that some stupid new product will fix all their problems, instead of actually putting in work? Consumerism is now degrading our basic ability to think, which we would NEED to deal with its other effects. The synergy is growing stronger.
We still catch up. We regulate ads, we promote healthy interaction with digital spaces. I don't think the degradation is that bad. The byproducts of these big tech innovations have been incredible software technologies that do a lot of good. If we consistently take these good things, while trimming the bad, we'll make progress. If our relationships and communites are strong enough and focused on positive outcomes, we can consistently do this. The "needle" will bounce back and forth in the short-term, but we can still move its center point forward.
Unless it's a one-way door. The climate crisis? Political extremism? World wars?
That's true. It could be a one-way door. I think we're all-in on our progress outwitting our problems, though.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
Neither do I. There are big problems that we're facing: wealth/resource gaps are widening, tech monopolies, climate change. The "meta crisis", as it were. Have some sympathy, though! We're accelerating so fast that all of this is very new. There has been progress, even if it's not optimal.
impotent feedback loop of criticism & no action
Shouldn't we be able to adapt to at least an existential threat? AT LEAST climate change, y'know? I just wish it could be better.
Same, but that's not a reason to treat everything as if it's terrible. Aside from potentially the climate, we should be able to keep going and make improvements slowly. You said before that you had these concerns, but again, what are you doing about them?
...
You're in an impotent feedback loop. Whatever your "small scale" thinking/logic, you need to acknowledge that when it all combines, it's not useful or productive to anyone. It's not rational because it doesn't progress or generate any actionable conclusions. Have these thoughts ever changed? Or do they just surface every now and then, make you depressed and then you cope in some way to forget?
Er...yeah...
I think you have two options. You can accept middlegrounds like "incremental progress" and "think globally, act locally". You can work on slowly improving the lives of those around you while being comforted by the overall "upward trend" of humanity that you're apart of via our general progress. OR, you can be more extreme and say "yeah well those'll work for most things, but for THESE I'm drawing a hard line". You can go "all in". That kind of endeavour takes a lot of time, effort and sacrifice, though, which you've previously stated you're not willing to give. It's also not a guarantee.
I think I might be up for that...
Well, think a bit more because it's reeeeeally easy to just toy with that idea while criticizing things. It's a lot harder to actually put in the work. Also, at some point you'll still have to deal with and change people.
curating environments to help people change
People fucking suck, though.
Generally and at large scales, probably pretty true. Again, we can move that needle over time! Also, try to think of individuals rather than groups. The closer they are to you, the more personal influence you have. Make changes yourself, then encourage others to do the same, then see if it sticks. It'll take awhile, but people can change.
Can they?! They do what's most convenient and act impulsively. Our impulses are mostly selfish, so that ends up with pretty shitty actions.
We definitely act in consistent ways. We take paths of least resistance, stick with our old/bad habits and have limited energy to dedicate to things outside our little bubbles. We adjust based on what others are doing. We conform to our environments. Can't we curate a better environment, then? Increase the baseline awesomeness of all things.
I dunno...even if we could change like that, it's a drop-in-the-bucket, ineffective compared to what the large forces are doing and not everyone will be on board with the changes.
Yeah, well we spoke about the balance of small and large forces. It's suboptimal, but can still result in progress. I consider it a fact that you'll never get everyone aligned on something. You can't change everyone and lots of people will require a lot of convincing or just need some selfish incentives to make a change. That's what I mean by "curate an environment", though. Change people who can change, add incentives to do good things, make the path of least resistance a better path. It's hard and will take time. It can get better, though.
summary of character traits and solutions
Ugh, it's just not enough!
Let me get this straight:
- you don't want to do small local changes because the broad forces make them feel insignificant
- you don't believe you have much influence over the broad forces
- you only want to dedicate a little of your own resources towards any kind of change
Can you see that this is a mental loop that's impossible to get out of and also accomplishes nothing? Does that really click? It sounds like you don't care that much. It sounds like you're critical but have nothing valuable to offer.
Well, if everyone was just better...
They won't be. That's not how anything works. Listen, I think it's a little bit of a "you problem". You might have some decent knowledge of "the way things are", but it sounds very detached. As if you've spent too much time thinking and too little time doing! You have these base feelings, but you're thinking yourself in cricles. In advance, you've decided that nothing can be done.
No no, if I could only explain to -
I think this trap stems from a little bit of a "main character syndrome". Your starting point isn't concern for any given issue, it's a personal feeling of dissatisfaction. You THEN look out and see some issues, which are important, but you don't really want to dedicate yourself to them. That kind of work is slow, often thankless and anonymous. You think that just by having some hypothetical solution which ignores ALL of the implementation issues and nuances of a problem that you can solve it. YOU want to be the one to solve it. You don't want to help, you want to feel good. It's a saviour complex mixed with some laziness. Maybe it's because we put individuals on pedestals? History and culture focus on amazing people, but fail to properly highlight how they were often just expressions of humanity's progress. They're very lucky or have incredible resources and often there are 10000 others like them who just happened to fail. Maybe it's also from your family or school telling you you're special. Maybe it's 20/20 hindsight vision. Whatever the source of it, it's arrogant!
I'm not arrogan -
Learn to highlight unproductive mental loops. Focus on outcomes. Always ask yourself, "what have I done in relation to this? What can I do? What's my stake in it? What actual experience am I drawing from? Do I actually care about this thing?".
I dunno if that'd help, you still haven't -
Reach out, get involved. Look at examples of positive changes, small and broad. In individual mindsets and big phenomenon. Learn fom those and try to apply some things to your own life. Decide how much you want to give to it. Drop-in-the-bucket is just a fallacy. The bucket does fill, eventually. Just because it's slow doesn't demean each drop.