Do you want to spend them doomscrolling, getting worried about politics which necessarily don't even have a direct effect on your life, preparing for every (unlikely) worst case scenario and wondering if WW3 starts next year?

We can't prevent disasters and collapse, that is for sure. We should treat it as a terminal illness. Like cancer eating us. It is bad and hurts, but do you want to constantly remind yourself about it, even when the pain isn't there? Even in the middle of a horrible disease, there can be moments of joy. They may not last long, but they are still there.

If you are now living even somewhat decent life (meaning having a roof over your head and food to eat), then you have no obligation or duty to spend your time thinking about what disastrous event comes next. Thinking about collapse is mostly useless. Just make sure that you have prepared somehow. If you have done that, you have pretty much done enough when it comes to collapse. Just make sure that you can survive about a week without any assistance and technology.

Keep up with your friends and family, meet new people, go outside, read books, watch movies, so some sports if you like. Party if that's possible. Go and see your favorite band live. Do whatever you like and can do because the time is getting short. Don't worry about things you can't change. Don't think that you are some sort of hero who has a duty to save the world. That is delusional. You aren't a political leader. You are just you and it's up to you how you spend the last good days here.

When hard times come, you will remember the past and wish that you hadn't worried so much back then. Make sure now that you have as little regrets in the future as possible.

I'm gonna be completely honest.

I just spend my days looking for reassurance that society won't collapse due to Climate Change. Spend my days looking to be proved wrong that we, in the global Sense, are not going towards the apocalypse. I'm just 19, I want to live, have kids, dogs, live in Santa Catarina (I'm Brazilian, from Rio Grande do Sul. My house was 50 cm from being flooded in May), grow old and have my hair get gray.

I'm in my second year of my bachelors in CS, to make myself some good money but what if it's all pointless? What if there is no point in trying? I feel almost suicidal. I've very science oriented, I actually subscribed to Nature just to read peer-reviewed articles for reassurance but just end up feeling doomed and hopeless.

I don't want to die, I don't want people to die. I try to be strong, but it's just so hard.

I’ve been struggling with collapse awareness for a long time. This is probably my third post here. It’s been nearly two years since I realized the bigger picture, and I’ve been wrestling with acceptance ever since. At this point I feel like I’ve cycled through all the stages of grief three times now, and I’m exhausted.

It had been a while since I looked at the news, but today I saw a post from r/collapse , and every emotion hit me all at once. I don’t want to feel like that anymore. I already see the world as a corrupted echo of the last century, one that’s only going to get worse more miserable and more broken.

I've tried to make my own reflections, tried to come to my own terms. But nothing is gonna make me feel better unless someone told me that "hey everything is actually not gonna get worse", but I know thats a lie, and I’m powerless to change anything outside of my immediate surroundings, so why can’t I just tune this all out and go back to before I knew anything? I’m only just entering my 20s. I’m supposed to be living the best years of my life, but I feel buried under a mountain of social and personal problems already. If I can’t look forward to the future, why even acknowledge what’s next?

Back when I was 16, I envied the proles in 1984, there were oppressed, they lived a life worse then mine, but they were ignorant, they were indoctrinated, but they were happy. Ignorance is bliss, they say, and I’ve yearned for that kind of bliss for years. Is it so wrong to stick my head in the sand and live the rest of my life in peaceful ignorance? I don’t know anymore.

https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf

I just discovered this amazing essay. Its a really amazing construction of the existential dilemmas of humanity and unpacks all the ways we use to soothe our psyches from the terror of reality. And the last few stanzas really hit it home, in a way that might resonate with many people here. Essential reading!

The rapidly approaching collapse of democracy and the environment keeps accelerating beyond my worst projections. I truly cannot see the point in anything. Apparently the best I can hope for is get a bunch of people and toil in the dirt for the rest of my life until some fascists come and torture and kill us all.

Even my therapist is despairing. I don't know what to do (and before anyone starts tossing out suggestions I don't live in the US).

Fuck

Since the ALLEGED shooter was named there has been a concerted effort by the media to delegitimize this man. Suppose he is the actual shooter (press x for doubt), and his family is "old money". So fucking what?

I am just posting to see if anyone else feels this. Bakunin, the godfather of anarchism, came from absurd wealth. The Buddha and most of the Thirtankaras were from incredibly wealthy families. Growing up rich doesn't automatically mean you are somehow tainted.

Class war is the only war, but the media needs to chillax here. We need to stop acting surprised when rich boy does bad thing. Lol

I've been in a phase of trying to heal and process some bad stuff I experienced I few years ago. Hitting a new phase of not giving a shit though - literally it feels extremely short sighted and selfish and delusional to give a shit about my mental health when we'll probably be starving and dead soon. I know what the "right" answer is - "Better mental health will increase your ability to survive, it's worth it because you are alive now, etc". Just feels empty and pointless now. It feels fucked up to focus on my personal healing when I'm not sure what the point will have been. I know this is sort of garden-variety nihilism and hopelessness that would be relevant no matter the timeline because, hey, I'm dying anyway even in the best possible circumstances at some point. Just feels like my life will be extremely foreshortened due to collapse.

I'm repeating myself now so I'm gonna stop. Just had to write this out, I know there are no clear answers. Love you all.

So the price isn't affordable to most at $14.99mo but you should do a trial either through MUBI or prime and potentially set up burners to get more than a weeks worth.

The films do not directly address collapse, rather they show the humanity that will soon be lost, and is often lost in bigger budget blockbusters. They have been helping me avoid drugs for the most part.

Recommendations for movies I've seen since starting the trial.

humanist vampire seeking consenting suicidal person (self explanatory)

Elizabeth Sankeys Witches---Documentary comparison of witchcraft and witch hunts to mental illness, specifically post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis

Crystal Fairy & Magic Cactus--Odd lil art film about consuming San Pedro Cactus and tripping on mescaline. (I find it funny as I grow San Pedro cacti)

Antibirth--Really good horror that may mess with you a bit (:

Fish Tank--Movie about impoverished Britons, adolescence, dancing and crossing bounderies

How To Have Sex--Spring Break party drama film also that's also British

My trial will run out soon on prime. I plan to initiate a trial when this trial expires in a couple days..

Edit: Watching another good movie called Swallow about a woman with pica. I'm debating paying for at least the first month. I'm not doing much drugs right now so I could be able to swing it. It's as expensive as it is likely because every movie is good.

Edit: Sometimes I Think About Dying is also a very good one. Weird comedy/drama about death anxiety that resonates a lot with me. I can't go a few hours without thinking about dying.

Edit: kept service. Personal shopper is a great movie. Very Ap00ky. I plan on getting my money's worth with this and canceling other subscriptions.

My life ended before it even began, and I essentially consider myself a non-entity at this point, but I suppose I'm just curious to see how others whom might be in a similar predicament of internal/external desolation, are themselves able to reckon with the ceaseless chaos of the world. For me personally, I haven't got anything in my day to day existence to keep me grounded/invested in current and/or future events, and all the proceeding damage which is guaranteed to unfold. No friends, no significant other, no pets, no family, no career, no passions. Literally nothing at all.

I suppose, to answer my own question, all that's left is disconnection and dissociation. With nothing at all to warrant caring about whatever the ultimate outcome to it all might be, you instead just sit back and watch the sprawling stage of the world burn all around you. High up in the grandstands of modern alienation, divorced/detached from all that there is, sitting alone in some shadowed corner, whilst staring blankly at the cannibalistic death throes of a species/society/biosphere that, for better or for worse, you never had any place in to begin with.

I’ve been online for 17 years; I’ve seen my fair share of things, but what I saw today just changed everything. It was an AI-generated video, essentially making "fun" of some people, and it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life. What kind of deranged brain thinks of these things?

And all of that technology, powered by nature, sucked dry. All that energy wasted on some degenerate content. People will just want more and more. This technology will completely eat up our brains. We’re becoming so damn stupid it pains me, but it also scares the hell out of me. Because we might just reach a point where we won’t feel anything anymore.

All of this degeneration of society is happening alongside quantum technology making tremendous leaps and AI becoming absolutely powerful. Since we don’t change, we will wage war with that tech, using it to brainwash others. In a deranged and stupid society, you could have people believing that AI is God or that certain individuals have transferred their consciousness into it, even if it’s just emulating how they used to speak and think based on data.

We’re creating a dystopian hell in real time. I seriously feel like we’ve entered some kind of black hole, and things are accelerating so fast now that we won’t have the capacity to process it.

The worst part about all of this is that I have a talent for spotting trends and changes before most people. But if I share these things with anyone around me, they’ll think I’m mental. So I’ve always been alone with this damn burden, feeling like an outcast and like something’s wrong with me.

Nothing is wrong with me. I just always saw the world differently.

I’m scared—which is fine, it’s just a feeling—but it pains me to think about what our world is about to go through.

I’m sorry.

It’s rainy and cloudy. In my head it’s dark. And yet, LED is masaging my eyes

Little sparks, trying to find meaning. Tension ‘s build, my anger stored. In datacenters, not far away

The sun lacks life, death lacks words. The web lies still. Trapping mosquitoes, that are my joy

My mom promised me, I will be on the path I’m supposed to be. Who knew misery. Was to be upon me

Be honest my love, do you think you will save the planet? Where will you start? What about the billionaires that own the http secure

Will you be the one, to distribute their power?

I've always been a people person. My relationships with loved ones have always been my most prized possessions. Collapse acceptance has bled everything of its meaning for a while (still does some days), so I mostly stopped tending to them, which led to several of them collapsing or disappearing from view. Now I'm mostly alone and unable to connect with anyone. I miss my loved ones so much, but it's been made clear to me that if I'm to be with them, I'll have to "come back to reality," which of course is an unsustainable collective delusion actively imploding. It's like I crossed a wide chasm and the bridge collapsed behind me. I'm unable to return to my people, and my people are unable to cross over to me. How should I proceed?

Hey team, does anyone else become overwhelmed by the the day to day aspects of our live that contribute to collapse?

For example every single time I am in a car I can not stop thinking about the emissions of my car, every current car and every corner car.

Then I think about all the Microplastics from the tires and compounded over the years how much of that has made it’s way into the soil

I’ll drive past a farm on the highway and be coke so aware of how tainted the crops are from this.

I think about this type of thing every day.

I watch the trains, trucks emit fumes from their smoke stacks and it is so disgusting to me.

Maybe some others feel the same but it’s actually a burden knowing so much

Definitely not a new opinion, just ranting before I force myself to get back to work. For the past week I have been struggling to come up with the motivation to start a final paper. I am in grad school, on a great scholarship, amazing grades and internships, child of a waitress and a construction worker who really "pulled myself up by my bootstraps" as Americans like to say, but since the age of 11 I have been completely hopeless in regards to the state of the world. I was diagnosed with a painful chronic autoimmune disease at age 10 and by age 11 had become convinced of the fact that existence is essentially suffering. One need only look at the food chain to realize such—life is kept alive by consuming other life. I have been staunchly antinatalist for as long as I can remember, and anticapitalist, too, though I predict barbarism in our future, not socialism. I became aware of collapse and joined the community at around 19 years old. That was half a decade ago. In that time, I've still kept my head down and worked, did what I was supposed to, but with a few rebellious measures on the side. For a period the only thing I enjoyed was breaking the law and trying to not get caught: shoplifting, distribution of pirated materials, petty theft. It felt like my way of getting back at the system. Even then, I knew such a line of thinking was stupid. Those tiny acts of criminal protest were all I felt I had.

My position is one of privilege. I do not go hungry, and I have a roof over my head. My qualms with the world are of a more philosophical, existential nature. Even without impending collapse, I would be an antinatalist, and still fundamentally believe life is not worth perpetuating for the suffering it inherently demands. But since 2020, I have seen the world decay in every possible way at a rapidly increasing rate. One might even say "faster than expected." I can see the writing on the wall. Water shortages, mass crop failures, energy blackouts, disease, refugee crises, civil unrest due to idiotic racism and class in-fighting, cost of living becoming more than most people can bear, increased desperation and hopelessness all around. Countries in the Global South will have it even worse, while we continue robbing them for all they're worth. I can't say I ever felt there was a good time period to be alive, since that would only mean my personal comfort was predicated on the exploitation and suffering of others. However, I think today is the most conflicting era in which to live. We see the wave coming, and our only choice is to distract ourselves, fruitlessly attempt to run, or just give up.

I would say I have given up. It has been a long decline for me to this point, but I have hit a wall. This stupid paper, which is of so little meaning to anyone or anything, has been the insignificant straw to break the camel's back. I feel like I just can't do it anymore. What's the point? I will not get a job in my field after I complete this degree anyway, because there are none, and I stopped taking personal satisfaction from school long ago. I am so tired of everything. Nearly everyone annoys me. I walked out of work today because a coworker was sick as a dog and just coughing everywhere. This is someone who is PhD educated in healthcare, who lived through COVID just like the rest of us, and still will not stay home when contagious despite paid sick days or at least wear a mask at work. I cannot afford to be sick, not with finals season here or with my autoimmune illness, of which everyone is aware. So I just left. I'm sure there will be disciplinary action for abandoning my shift. I don't care.

Now I am home typing this post in order to procrastinate on my pointless paper, for my pointless degree, staring down the barrel of future suffering and knowing it will only get worse. I have participated in many activist groups, they have accomplished nothing. I have done years of research in my field, they have accomplished nothing. I have long desired to off myself but the turmoil it would bring to my family keeps me from doing so. I remain suspended in air doing things I do not care about to perpetuate a life I do not want to live and knowing I should enjoy what I have now because the future is guaranteed to be worse. You do not have to console me or convince me I'm wrong, you will not change my mind. Suggestions I find alternate things to enjoy outside of school and work are also not needed; I have hobbies, and they are merely distractions from the depression I have felt for the majority of my life. The only recourse I have now is laughing at how pointless it all is, and my anger, which itself is as pointless as everything else. I do not need reassurances, I am already spoiled in this world, where I can buy bananas for less than a dollar a pound and pay a car to take me wherever I want to go and buy whatever cheap bullshit I want manufactured overseas by someone under the yoke of modern factory slavery. My problems are minuscule and insignificant. This rant alone has been insignificant. Oh well, back to work.

Dear all,

Currently, I am 25 years old and I live in the Netherlands. I remember when I was a 14 year old teen and how I felt hopeless about the world. If I look back at it I can see I was already understanding the collapse of civilization. Reasoning continuesly brought me back to how damaging the system is and how communities that want change are put aside or in jail and are anyhow (en)forced to participate in the system.

Since I was a teen I have tried many ways of surpressing this awareness, but it has always come back at me. My entire life I have felt incredibly lonely having no one to talk to about my true feelings and thoughts towards the climate crisis, war and facism. With a lack of recognition (living in an environment where you are punished when you are open about those subjects) and a complete lack of care and connection.

A few weeks ago I saw a video inspiring me to no longer surpress those feelings and thoughts. This has been a beautiful, horrifying, loving, lonely awakening where I can finally give my past me the recognition they deserved. However, since then I have been giving myself toxic recognition as well. Eating the most damaging products from the store proving to myself that I’m not lying about how toxic this system is. Becoming one with the toxicity to prove, understand and accept it, with an increasing feeling of loneliness.

I want to change my behaviour to become kind to myself and to treat my body with love and care. To move and sleep enough and to eat healthy. but reasoning doesn’t work that well anymore, genuine connection is and has always been lacking and emotionally I just feel a lot of pain and hurt making me even more destructive towards myself.

I would love to hear your thoughts and story!

With love and kindness, F

Today I was thinking about knowledge anybody and everybody should know and I landed on this. Plenty of epidemics occur as a result of sanitation failures. Most of us in the developed world aren’t used to managing our own waste. I grew up differently than some folks in that I’ve used outhouses and done trash burns. I really suggest everyone learns some basics and not just for their own benefit. If there’s ever a local incident, help out your neighbors. Explain water purification, burn pit safety, latrine safety, mosquito prevention, etc. We don’t need everything to get much worse if diseased rats start booming in the neighborhood, yeah?

Many times, epidemics also followed periods of sudden climate change. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics . Drought and famine change the behaviors of animals and what food and water sources we rely on. These changes can lead to disease spread. Right now, there’s bird flu and whatever is happening in the Congo. We don’t need to hasten along problems by ignoring bad signs in our neighborhoods: dumped trash, standing water, etc. If you see something, try and fix the problem. It may seem useless or an uphill battle but you never know what a few anti-mosquito pucks tossed in water can do for you.

I suggest having backup plans in case trash pickup stops or if your water supply becomes contaminated. Every need you have, try to consider an alternative for it. Do you have high ground water or nearby freshwater? Do you have a shovel to dig a burn pit or latrine? If you have no space to process your own waste in an emergency, do you know where you want to go where you would? Have you considered how much TP or soap you use on a weekly basis and what happens if you can’t buy more?

There’s a lot to “prepping” or survival I frequently see people overlook and it’s almost always related to feminine-coded domestic labor. Our neighborhoods make literal tons of trash and shit yearly. If we don’t prepare for what happens if it has nowhere to go, we’ll be living amongst it. Living in a landfill/sewer is bad for your health, obviously. So what other options do you have?

Climate change and the climate catastrophe are something I have had the worst panic attacks in my life about. Nature is so, so important to me both physically and spiritually. To know of its impending demise is such a cruel fate.

But seeing the state of the world now, and knowing it won’t change until it truly cannot function any longer, I find the idea of the end of human civilization peaceful.

We are stuck with our world. All our systems of oppression are codependent, so they support each other when one falters. Racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, climate/nature hatred, capitalism, globalism, organized religion, consumerism… etc

They are all social systems that nobody is in control of. Like birds flying, or ants walking, there is no organized control. They are automatons, and so are we. All these social systems require one another to work, and there is enough support for those structures from the power concentrated in those that most benefit from it that it is impossible to actually change in the timeframe required.

You may say “we’ve revolutionized before, we can do it again,” before we didn’t have AI, surveillance, drones, and all the other technologies that make top-down organization more effective, which gives power to those who most benefit from authoritarian systems.

I see a future where things continue to get worse for 99.999% of people until the whole thing literally falls apart because there isn’t any food left because we don’t have any arable land. Most people, globally speaking, are miserable. Even in the wealthiest and most prosperous countries, people hate our modern world because we developed too fast, and our physical being didn’t evolve to match the pace. People always say “things are getting better!” And show you a graph of some statistics from the last 400-500 years. Well if you extend that graph beyond that time frame, IT WAS USUALLY BETTER. It was the spread of colonialism that caused the global decrease in the quality of life and its as strong as ever still, just different.

So, while I am unimaginably devastated at the impending annihilation of our biodiversity and climate, I find peace in the sense that it will break our ability to give ourselves so much suffering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLNt8aMNbvY

Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty

Don't get stuck in the past
Say your favorite things at mass
Tell your mother that you love her
And go out of your way for others
Sit beneath a light that suits ya
And look forward to a brighter future

Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty

Sink as far down as you can be pulled up
Happiness really ain't all about luck
Let your demeanor be your deep down self
And don't sacrifice your life for your health
When you speak, speak sincere
And believe me friend, everyone will hear

Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty

Bring your own two cents
Never borrow them from someone else
Buy yourself a flower every hundredth hour
Throw your hair down from your lonely tower
And if, and if
You find yourself in the family way
Give the kid more than what you got in your day

Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty

Never let a clock tell you what you got time for
It only goes around, goes around, goes around
Take your family name for your own great sins
'Cause each day is where it all begins and don't give up too quick
You only get one line, you better make it stick
If we give ourselves to every breath
Then we're all in the running for a hero's death

Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty
Life ain't always empty

That was the year of the sneer now the real thing's here.

Source: LyricFindSongwriters: Carlos Ramos O'Connell / Conor Patrick Curley / Conor Patrick Deegan / Grian Alexander Chatten / Thomas Patrick CollA Hero’s Death lyrics © Domino Publishing Company

lately i’ve been extremely scared of potential ww3 it’s something that’s been playing on my mind for a while, people say to focus on myself but how is that possible when i’m not happy at all right now? i’m in the uk and there has been drone sightings near military bases and i’m seeing other conflicts going on.. as a minor this is so scary i’m scared for my future honestly

any education or advice is very helpful thank you

Ever since the election, I’ve felt an intense, visceral sense of disgust and hatred towards the United States, and I feel like it’s poison in me. I feel so guilty and embarrassed for being a citizen of this country. I can’t imagine how people from more compassionate and sensible countries feel knowing that we elected a rapist felon to the White House for the second time. I feel an overwhelming desire to get out of this place to wash this stink off of me, but I know that that’s not realistic. I’m still feeling a large amount of distress, though, and I can’t tell if that’s an overreaction or not. My preexisting depression and anxiety have worsened dramatically, though, and I don’t know how to make it better when everything in the U.S. seems to be going to shit and I have no choice but to go along for the ride. At this point, I’m actively rooting for secession because I don’t want to be attached to this country anymore. I live in California, which seems like a good place to be right now, and I would definitely support any movement advocating for independence. Is that even realistic, though? I hope so, because the only other way out of this seems to be removing myself from the world entirely.

I’m sorry for ranting and for potentially offending anyone. I just hate this country and the people that made it the way that it is. We could’ve made a better society, but we didn’t because we value money and selfishness above compassion for others. I don’t want to live in a world like that, but I’m in the minority, so who cares?

For about a decade now, I've known about the potential for collapse and existential risks to humanity. In all that time I've felt inspired to speak out about it but never did in any sort of substantial way until one day I realized I and everybody I know will be dead and gone at some point, forever and ever and ever. I let it sink in that today will eventually have been hundreds/thousands/millions/billions of years ago. So it helped to ease any apprehension I had about how messy and inarticulate I might be and just go for it, in spite of the petty judgements people might make about it. In fact I've kind of let myself go in how I emote, and I fear I'm beginning to verge on tacky rather than tactful. I also think my writing is rigid and awkward. But at least I feel like I'm living my life with integrity getting real about really important issues. Though while it's helped me to process things, I do aim to be effective in my approach. So I was wondering what, if any, talking points you all use when addressing these issues, or if you had any examples of things you've said or posted, so that I might gleam your style or tweak my own. Below I've provided a couple examples of things I've posted. While it is mentioned that I "don't care" about how I come off, I am curious of what anyone's impression might be. I hate that some people apparently think I'm just trying to sound deep and cultured, making "profound" statements like we should do better and fight for a better world. But I've gotten used to how snarky people on Reddit can be and I think it's time to see in what ways I might alter my cadence, regardless of how it makes me feel. And I'd like to see what you all say, or would say, if you could say what you really want to say.

Below are a couple of posts I've made, one from the thanksgiving, and the other more recently, which I attached screenshots to, detailing wealth disparity in America, world poverty rates, population growth, the increase in global temperature, the sixth mass extinction, insect population decline, water scarcity, plastic pollution, soil degradation, and a reference to the doomsday clock as well as the recent study showing that we're "just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals.

Things I'm thankful for:

Not having to hunt and skin a turkey. Not having to grow and harvest the rest of the food. Having all the spices to make the food yummy. Medical advancements keeping friends and family in check. Technological advancements providing heated/air conditioned shelter and music and TV, and communication devices. Transportation to get all that food (no horse and carriage for me thanks) Clothes to wear. Hot showers. Cozy beds. Good job, friends and family. Nice weather. Coffee. Not dealing with the threat of war against MY home country or a pandemic that still very much exists or incoming storms or civil unrest or crop failures or an overheating, acidic ocean swimming around in murky darkness starved and hoping not to get eaten, or in the wilderness in pitch black night getting bitten by bugs sleeping on the ground having a snake slither all up on me -- eek! Or in a dusty dank cave, yuk. Or in the anthropocene or sixth mass extinction ... Oh wait. And I'm thankful to be so secure in myself despite how insufferable I appear, and on the right side of history. Happy Thanksgiving!

And then more recently:

"Why do you rant so relentlessly about how we should focus on taking care of each other and the planet instead of remaining disconnected from reality on the reg (my name)?" Ohh I don't know, maybe because it's our one and only home, or because I want my nieces to have a bright future ahead of them, or anyone else that could have been me or you being born down the line. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my guess is in order to hold those in power accountable, perhaps we need to hold each other accountable. Maybe it has to do with the fact that if you enjoy your standard of living and don't wanna worry about how crazy the world is, we'll have to partake in some sort of discourse about it eventually. Oh, I don't know, maybe I'm just getting ahead of all of you in updating your own Facebook status to look the same one day, not too far along into the future (my guess is something along the lines of "I'm not gonna lie you guys, I'm kind of scared" followed by worthless platitudes in your comments about how things will be alright, humanity will find a way, God will be there for us, or we'll be there for each other. Someway, somehow Hmmm I wonder what those ways and hows look like, is maybe what I'm thinking before the fact). Maybe I understand "too late" exists and I don't enjoy living on a planet where life is about getting a job participating in, once again, an unsustainable economic system, in a country using two Earth's worth of resources, supporting the habits of a gluttonous bunch that doesn't even understand how fortunate they are (through no real fault of their own). Maybe it's because I like the idea of everyone leading fulfilling lives doing things of meaning, that don't amount to enriching an already disgustingly rich few. Maybe it's because it's pretty damn silly that nations across the world decided they owned land and its resources based on their histories, as if we didn't all just pop into existence, as though ... It belongs to all of us. But not just us, because it shouldn't be alllllll about us, given the fact we could have just as well have been born one of these other life forms. Maybe it's ok to check in about it, regardless of how it makes you feel, or how ineffective we are in responding, because that's hopefully a part of helping people to understand these sides to reality we're disconnected from, instead of not thinking about it, let alone talking about it.

Because THAT'S what life is about: whatever is happening in it. And right now it would seem we're living a dream, with all sorts of opportunities and resources at our disposal, and all sorts of knowledge and tech to put forth towards accomplishing things of greater value than more of the same which, whattayaknow, KEEPS US DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY. And insulated from nature for only so long. Yeah I care enough to post about it LMAO get the heck outta here with y'alls dismissiveness, I will surely talk about it.

I am not a public speaker and I don't care to try to be, or to charm anyone. I'm obviously going through it, just as I have been silently the last decade, but ya learn not to care about what anyone has to think about how outspoken you are when you realize what's on the line when we keep remaining silent, and don't even think about trying, which is a choice, and an ugly one at that. I myself am surrounded by all this stimulus living my life trying to just do my thing, but I can only continue forward on that path (a hopefully good one) so long as the world around me doesn't start messing with my plans, and the same goes for you.

So take a gander, and do try to understand there is hope ... And a better amount of it to let these things in and challenge yourself to be of the mind that in the long run, closing yourself off and trying to tune it all out isn't going to work, help yourself, or anyone else. That said I want you to be mindful of the fact that there is a lot of good and beauty and promise in this world, and we are a lovely people at the end of the day, at heart. And yeah, I love you, because I know you. I don't need to know you to know I know you, and to love you, because I'm just like you, and I know what you're going through as a human being. I don't need to know you to learn to tolerate and appreciate you. I care enough to try and help my family, which you bloody well are no matter how distant, and I hope you understand that's another reason why I put myself out there regardless of how messy I am. Because I am you, and you are me, too. Believe it or not, we are not separate from the universe, we are a part of it, and one in the same, and there's more to this than just the transient experience of life as a human circa 2024. We have a legacy to uphold and suffering is not where it's at. So how bout that.

How bout that though?

China will use advanced AI for harsher censorship of speech and repression against dissenters, and will also use AI for more powerful cyber-blocking, which they are already doing, I'm Chinese I know it well, and the US? Trump is in power, Musk will become the AI czar, Musk is a far-right lunatic, in the future if the US invents AGI there is no doubt that he will become a tool for the rich and the politicians, the US as well as the whole world will become an dystopia, I don't see any hope, I am now spending every day in despair and depression, I really want to let my life fall apart in the spring, just like the first bloom of the cherry blossom