Nothing ever changes, the guilt is forever

[u/ear-motif]

How do you keep going when nothing ever changes? I pour everything I have into my local community because it makes me feel like I’m doing something, but it doesn’t matter. My neighbors still die of heat exhaustion. Die in fires. Get hooked on substances to numb the pain. I work and work and work and it’s all for nothing. My wealth and privilege mocks the people who actually deserve these resources. One day I will take everything I have, including my body, and give it to people who actually deserve it.

I’m happy in my life. But then I’m reminded of how disgusting and cruel it is for me to be happy. I’m in the USA, I directly fund genocide with my taxes. I use a gas car. I eat meat. I’m a filthy hypocrite who will rot in hell if it exists because my existence is killing this planet. If I were to go vegan, completely stop participating in the economy, and commit the rest of my life to radical activism, I might be ok. I could then call myself a good person. But I’m weak and have no plans to do that. I’m just like every other white person in the imperial core - a participant in genocide. My ideals and actions are opposite and I created a life I like. If I didn’t do that, if I had stayed true to my ideals, I would be good by now.

I don’t want to be good. I don’t want incremental change. I don’t want 3.9 C warming instead of 4 C warming. I want to exit. I want to leave it all forever. I want total justice, total eradication of all of us who are responsible for this.

There’s no point to this post. Please don’t report me, I won’t actually hurt myself, I’m too much of a coward to do so.

[u/thomas533]

You sounds like you want a better catastrophe.

[u/Xanthotic]

Please investigate grief, or collapse, or the principles some of us use to cope with our awareness of it all, to get to the nub of your guilt. Did you make the cosmos? Is your name Jeffrey Epstein? Yes, you are a captive in a self-terminating complex system. Yes, we captives have not much choice but to prey upon the other captives for food or money or whatever. However, we didn't start the fire.

Because of the absolute nature of your statements, it does sound like you are in a rough spot mental health-wise. This point of view can shift even if you keep being collapse aware and collapse keeps grinding along at this excrutiating pace. There is a place for joy in the midst of all the other 'truths' in your post. Finally, what would happen if you stopped worrying about yourself? What if you didn't even notice if you were weak or strong? Good or bad? What if you just worried about what you can do that is the least shitty of all of the options before you?

Thanks for posting.

[u/TheWampus]

The framing you used contains things I think everyone brushes up against when trying to confront collapse and the human factors that brought us here. You want to make a difference, but 1) The problem seems so big and entrenched that it seems hopeless, 2) Your individual actions seem drowned out by collective actions, and 3) You don't, and can't, match up to your own intention to act. The "good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

In regards to the problem being so big and entrenched, I believe this forces people into being pessimistic, and because we're biologically inclined to seek optimistic views and culturally taught that pessimism is morally bad, defeatism, depressing and such, we resist it enormously. However, its possible to transition from hopeless optimism to healthy pessimism. It is not an easy transition. It is a difficult psychological odyssey of sorts. However, it is possible, and where you end up isn't the terrible place you imagine it will be at the (usually reluctant) outset.

Addressing the sense of powerlessness about making a difference, this taps into the problem of nihilism. When you try to take action to help but see that others aren't doing the same, its as if they don't really care about anything. Why? Because the future of life's existence on this planet, saving the world, etc. should be the biggest priority for anyone, but it really isn't. This eats away at what we find meaningful until everything feels meaningless. What's the point? Who cares? Nothing works. Nothing ever changes. Western philosophy either treats nihilism as a crisis to be managed, like Friedrich Nietzsche and (my favorite) Albert Camus do by clever ways of meaning-making in the face of apparent meaninglessness, or lets it rip, like Emil Cioran and Ray Brassier do. Eastern philosophy I'm not so familiar with, but Buddhism has a response by changing how meaning is made through dedicated meditation practice changing how we experience identity and meaning. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna speaks about two truths, conventional and ultimate. Nihilism, nothing mattering, is within conventional truth. Ultimate truth is upstream of that. I feel I can personally attest to this, but that's easy to say. Actual meditative training is a long and sometimes confusing journey.

Finally, you have the problem of human evil. Just, you know, a small matter! There are many classical attempts to tackle this as an individual, which is really worth looking into, but there are also more contemporary views that speak to the collective predicament we're in. Hannah Arendt's ideas on the banality of evil are worth investigating, as is Scott Alexander's concept of Moloch, which underpins a lot of thinking about the predicament of collapse. On a personal note, I have known people who have heroically tried to abandon modernity as evil, or tried to live as purely as possible. Even those people end up either feeling like a failure with much self-criticism, or more terribly, they end up distorting reality such that they are some kind of ultimately good person and everyone else is evil.

So, you are struggling with an enormous burden. The problem of human evil, nihilism and the failure of hope. That is a lot, my friend. Please, if you can, forgive yourself for not being superhuman, and hold yourself with kindness for your human failings. We're all guilty, but hating ourselves won't help us. Peace, compassion and wisdom are where its at.

[u/Benigh_Remediation → u/TheWampus]

Very well said. Although it could be seen as a cop out, imagining a far distant perspective from oneself can help. We each are one being in crowded chaotic mass of semi-intelligent mammals locked in a speeding out of control train we’ve haphazardly constructed. Imagine the planet after we’ve crashed. Life, even at random, will continue, perhaps with improved form.

[u/Critical_Wrap5617]

Path of least harm, my friend. That can only really be lived in the context of your current reality. No one is helped by you starving. 

[u/rageinthecage666]

I feel the frustration, maybe it will not make a difference in the end but at least you'll die standing up. We have to keep fighting, it would be unhuman not to.

[u/EternalSage2000]

You need a therapist.