How do I stop being a lib who feels powerlessness and pessimism about everything going on? Snap me out of this satanic spell!
Edit: maybe it’s just depression :what-the-hell:
50 years from now most of the world will be too hot to grow grass.
getting involved with other people, collective projects, build relationships and social bonds. isolation is what breeds doom.
I’m too inept to make meaningful social bonds. Best I can do is surface level relationships at work. I have no hobbies or interests to seek out fellow nerds in my area.
as someone that has built a social life from zero a couple of times, just start showing up. I had decent luck with MeetUp.com, running groups and drinking groups, etc.
:meow-hug:
What about asking people you know to chill over some coffee during your offdays?
Praxis. Join an org even if it's DSA, check out the organizing guides in c/labour and agitate among your coworkers, check if there's a Food Not Bombs chapter in your area, if there isn't try and start one.
If it is depression it will help with that too, speaking from experience. It will help you focus on something and distract from invasive thoughts, it was a huge motivator for me to be less introverted and has had positive impact on my social life and general mental health, and there is no better feeling than making a positive impact on the material conditions of your community.
I agitate my coworkers all the time but we’ve all accepted the fact that unionizing is a dead end. I work at a massive grocery chain. They’ll do a mass layoff before any union forms at any store.
I should get involved though. I just doubt myself and have been wavering on the effectiveness of anything. Whether it be activism, labor organizing, or electoralism. I know it’s not a total dead end and that it does make things slightly less awful for people, and I try to remind myself of that. Guess my problem is I can’t motivate myself to do much of anything. But that’s a lifelong problem of mine that I’m not sure I’m mentally capable of fixing.
unionizing doesn't have to start and end with forming a legal union and yelling at your boss. there are dozens of steps before that. start bringing in home made bread. every week. become the bread guy. start checking up on people every week. be the checking on peoples mental health guy. start a trivia team, invite everyone to join, and go, every week. you can, and have to, build the connective tissue of a union first. get to know people and their problems. introduce people so they can help each other.
yelling at your boss is great. but it can start with sharing a costco membership, too. or whatever.
edit: things are 100% gonna get worse before they get better. plant the seeds now. start looking for useful people. start being a useful person.
gonna be honest it's gotta be an internal drive and not an external source to get out of the rut. Like for me it's a mix of spite towards the bastards that want me to give up (Put a cap in my ass, I ain't surrendering), a desire to build a better tomorrow no matter how small me chipping in is, a deep love for life and those living, and sheer stubbornness.
And I found that internal drive by living and exploring and talking and listening. I've helped drunk old hobo hitchhikers get to different towns as they pissed on my seats, ran into highway traffic to rescue runaway dogs, met natives who told me stories of how they lost their family when they were working away from home, I've gotten drunk and climbed mountains in snow storms while eating ice cream then drinking in how fucking vast and pristine the world is when I sat on the peak, etc and so forth, the point I'm making is you gotta do stuff to grow as a person. There's a vast world out there beyond your house, the workplace, and the route you drive every day between them. Go explore.
TL;DR Take a hike and touch a tree
people are saying organizing, but realize it doesn't have to the start of the revolution or anything to be "organizing." just getting people to talk to each other, or just meeting friends/neighbors/co-workers yourself counts as organizing. I've had great success "hosting" a happy hour at my work. I asked a few coworkers if they wanted to grab a beer after work and then pitched them on starting a weekly happy hour. I've basically cold called a bunch of people at work with "hey, you seem cool. there are a few of us that get together for drinks after work. no big deal, but if you ever wanna join, come on out"
and then just show up every week. i've made some good friends, people around me have made friends, and now my coworkers know each other slightly better as people.
Ask that group to help someone move or fix a fence or something and you’ve got the start of a community network
in my case that helped for a while but resulted in more doomerism eventually
Yeah being involved with a really dysfunctional org can be just as doom-inducing as not organizing at all
Go deeper. Get so doomerpilled on the futility of existence that you start living in the long, universal moment.
If you live a miserable isolating life and have no energy to do anything, then nothing.
