Asklemmy

2023 has been a calamity for my health, both physical and mental. The state of things doesn't help. I'm better now. Touching wood.

A way of life is ending, but life will go on. Frankly I'm rooting for gas to be more expensive.

Like so:

We can’t capitalism our way out of what we capitalismed ourselves into. It’s socialism or barbarism.

I strive to improve it, at least that way I did all I could

Lot of good things in here. A couple thoughts. One: Because Lemmy is nice to be on/use. The community generally 'slaps' as the generations below me call it. Two: Also white male USA and have also been deeply concerned for the past several years. I chose to focus on community directly around me while acknowledging the crappy situation everywhere due to asshats abusing power/status/wealth. I take solace that the people I choose to spend time around are generally reasonable people and try to help eachother out when we can and always when needed.

Well, I smoke weed on a daily basis. It's my main way of coping with the world.

I do a number of other things but nothing that is going to really change anything.

I've been reading about increasing unionization and strike activity, leading to better deals for large groups of workers. The industry-level negotiations we're already seeing are helpful in isolation; but that's also the kind of energy that can lead to economic reforms that have a real impact on quality of life. Workers seem like the little guys, until a lot of them are pulling in the same direction, and then suddenly their demands become existentially important.

About a century-ish ago Americans were worse off than they are now. That led to desire for change, which led to decades of trust-busting, unionization, and regulation. We got things like weekends off, and a livable minimum wage. And not entirely unrelated, we also got national parks, the EPA, and endangered species preservation. We've back-slid a lot since those advances. But we can get them back, and push the needle even further next time. We did it before, we can do it again.

Anger, I simply want to out live my enemies and shit talk them when they die. I'm waiting on Bill oriley, Glen beck, bezos, Bill gates, Rupert murdoch and the other koch brother to croak simply to shit talk them to oblivion and pass this information too my children.

Son, I got comfortable with the fact it was only gonna get worse after '74 and Ford pardoned Nixon.

Sucks being right. points Pass those beer nuts?

We're in one of the best times to be alive in history and the world is still getting better in many ways, I just try to feel grateful for that when I see something that's bad or getting worse.

I'm an unremitting optimist who was born in the abyss, and climbed out of it.

Will I one day go back there? Yes.

Will you? Also yes.

However, you'll go there depressed, screaming, full of sorrows, regrets, doubts, and pain, wishing you had just a little more time.

I go there, with a smile on my face, because I'll be going home. I've already lived that, I've had that experience. It doesn't get any worse than the rock bottom, of death's door itself - the murky black sea from which none emerge, king nor beggar.

Absolutely everything between now and then is just extra gravy. Being alive is a miracle.

First, it’s getting better, not worse. We just see and hear about things immediately before any context is added, which makes it seem 10x worse.

Second, I try to make an impact on my local world. I try to be a good leader and impact those lives around me. If everyone made a difference we’d truly be much better off altogether.

I‘d highly recommend the follwoing book:

The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker https://books.apple.com/ch/book/the-better-angels-of-our-nature/id457552067?l=en-GB

While it might seem that the world is getting worse and worse, it’s actually quite the opposite. We have less war deaths than any centuries before, social justice is on the rise almost everywhere, poverty is at an all time low. For the last 50 or so years, almost every metric of human wellbeing increased, some significantly.

Doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems and we still have a lot of work to layed out for us. But to say that the world is getting worse and worse is just factually incorrect.