Not a troll post. Why is everything shit?
Because of “conservatives”.
Because of the collapse of the USSR. It was the only thing scaring capitalists into giving something to the people.
Not a troll post.
Fair enough. I’ll take your question seriously.
Without any context, it sounds as if everything that you’re perceiving right now is shit. Maybe your relationships are strained and you feel lonely or guilty. Maybe the news hits you harder every day. Maybe money is tight. Maybe you’ve suffered a great loss. Maybe nothing has happened at all and you’re sitting there, contemplating whether life is worth it. I don’t know your situation.
And whatever it is, it’s valid. Heck, I sometimes feel like life is shit.
Now, I’m not here to say we should look at reality with rose-colored glasses or to look at reality with naive optimism. No. I’m here to say that we have a choice. We can choose what to focus on and how to respond to reality.
Is it really true that “everything is shit”? Is the fact that your body has managed, against all odds, to sustain your life shit? Is the fact that humans can grow and change shit? Is the fact that we can be better as people shit?
Still, shit happens. And we have to be ready to accept that. Regardless of how much shit there is, we can always choose how to respond to it.
For one, we play a massive role in our interpretation of shit. There’s solid science behind this. You could look at theories of cognition such as the Theory of Constructed Emotion, Relational Frame Theory, or even the shallow but effective Cognitive Behavioral Therapy frameworks. All of those theories think it’s crucial to notice the lens that you and I are looking at the world through. Not only should we notice the lens, but sometimes we should clean it or direct it elsewhere. Otherwise we spend our whole lives stooped over a pile of crap, when we could stand, look around, and notice the world around us from a different perspective.
But that’s not the only thing that matters. We don’t just want to see the world differently. We also want to live valued lives. Once again, this is possible regardless of how much shit there is. How so? Well, what kind of person do you want to be? A kind person? A person that is reflexive and open minded? A person that notices and appreciates beauty when it appears? A person who is proactive about their future and that of others? A person who is compassionate towards others? A person that’s curious about the world and how to improve it?
It’s not easy, being kind, appreciative, and proactive when you’re bogged down by shit. But you’re not alone. There’s brilliant and insightful people who have dedicated their lives to finding out how to do it. If you’re interested, I’m happy to talk about empirical ways of doing it. For now, it’s more important to ask what the alternative is. Is a life spent stooping over shit a good life?
Well written, and exactly what I needed today, thank you sir.
It’s not. You live in what is probably by most metrics the best time in human history.
If you read unceasingly-negative material, you could develop a negative worldview.
You live in what is probably by most metrics the best time in human history.
If you live in one of the rich countries. Otherwise it’s shit and you’re lucky to get a job picking the fruit that feeds those rich countries which pay almost nothing (still better then opportunities back home). Basically they’re picking up the scraps left behind by us, who live in those rich countries and think things like “this is the best time to be alive in human history”, completely ignoring all the human suffering that supports our lifestyles.
If you live in one of the rich countries.
Nah, I mean globally. Take your hypothetical fruit-growing country. Are things in 2025 in that country bad compared to 1925? 1825? 1725? 1625? If not now, when is the better time?
Why do you delete your posts? Or is an admin/mod deleting them?
Shitposting.
Thank you. Thats helpful. I don’t need to be someone’s disposable foil. I’ll just block them.
oh society has lots of problems.
trying to fit it into one comment can be difficult but i can list some issues that i perceive:
- there’s no long-term plan. none at all. nobody has an idea what humanity will look like in 100+ years. that leads to considerable uncertainty in the youth, which definitely makes their mental health difficulties more severe.
Because too many people wouldn’t vote for anything less than a perfect candidate.
And too many people wouldn’t vote for anything more than a rapist conman.
Hey hey hey, that’s autocratic megalomaniac rapist conman, can’t leave out his best stuff.
The short answer is our legal system was not designed to withstand the stress the ultra rich can put on it as a result a lot of laws were over turned.
Im on mobile so it’s hard to type and explain in more depth.
And that’s only one facet.
But there are good things in the world too. And there are people fighting for what’s right. It’s easy to slip into despair but as mr rogers use to say
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping
We forgot we could regulate capitalism like we did 100 years go. Let’s make taxes great again. Then take that money and pour it into education. If the states really want to control that, fine, that’s a compromise that can probably still end up working out in the end.
This, exactly.
Boomers grew up with a 91% top-tier tax rate.
Nobody ever paid that rate; anyone who was close to that line found some tax deductible way of spending their excess. That “tax deductible way of spending” was, ultimately, someone else’s paycheck.
Without that punitively-high top tier, there is no need for them to actually spend their excess income. They invest it, creating a debt owed back to them.
We tolerate this horseshit out of fear that “they’ll go away, and take the jobs with them”. Which won’t happen: When we restore our 91% top-tier tax rate, the rest of the world will follow.
Because the economic conditions of the modern world allow for tyranny and the people haven’t figured out that we need to unite and overthrow the tyrants to build a better society.
We forgot to perform maintenance on everything.
It’s designed that way so that your work goes to others. That’s the base of all of the world’s problems.
Private equity buying companies and sucking them dry to make a profit is also big factor
Late-stage capitalism and a mix of grossly undereducated people in at least one major country and apathy.
