It feels all but certain that I won’t be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire. All of the wealth is going straight to the top. All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled. All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet. We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.
Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won’t be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn’t exist already.
I myself have disabilities (which I don’t think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job. The problem is that I just can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.
Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it? If so, what snapped you out of it?
I hated the idea for the longest time. Then I realized a few things. I changed my outlook of working a hopeless job to a job being a tool for me to get the money I need to live a better life. I also accepted that life isn’t fair and that not all the work I put in will equal the output. It feels like you have to do the work of 10 men to get anywhere. I accepted that and I put myself to work.
Sometimes you just have to get lucky and sometimes you have to grow. I worked many temp jobs and fast food restaurants until figured stuff out and landed a couple decent jobs. I started being able to hold a job for 1 year and then 2 years. I got lucky and found a temp job that decided to hire everyone perm. The catch was they waited to see who would sink or float. I floated. I wouldn’t have floated if I hadn’t had previous life experience.
Look at a job as an avenue or tool to achieve your goals. If you don’t have any goals then just pick something. It could be as simple as you want to save up for something nice. Start small and pick bigger goals as you achieve them. And going back to the job as a tool thing, if you don’t like the tool then get a new one. You wouldn’t use a broken tool to fix something. Sometimes you have a bucket of random tools and you have to pull out a couple before you find the right or that isn’t broken. Whatever to you pick, just try and keep trying. As long as you keep trying, you’ll figure it out.
I would also add to try to improve yourself along the way. Whether it be working on self esteem, how to write a resume, interviewing skills, how to cook, how to improve your finances, how to fix a car, work on a computer… Just work on something. You’ll only help yourself and learn transferable skills along the way.
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As someone that spent half their life very poor, I always take offense with the “just move” answer. Many people, if not most, in the US cannot afford to emigrate. It is also very likely that OP or someone else in their situation, cannot afford to get a STEM degree.
Is there even a place one can migrate from US, and be better off?
Of course, but first you need to figure out what your true definition of “better off” is. What would bring you true quality of life. Also, what would you trade off in order to achieve that quality of life? The answers to those questions are very individual.
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Naive old advice. You are about one generation too late for this to be relevant.
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Or other degree that’s also useful, including social work or the arts.
Supply and demand. There’s less people in STEM so they get paid more.
After telling a generation of kids to get stem degrees or they’ll be doomed to flip burgers, I feel I have the responsibility to say this is no longer the case. The jobs still pay well but; between ghost job listings, recent layoffs, and every entry level job wanting like 4 years of hyper specific experience; I have observed it being nearly impossible to enter the job market or move around it right now, and the whole thing feels very oversaturated.
Unless you’re willing to build bombs. Don’t know much about that end of it cause I’m not interested in developing things intended to kill people. but that’s where the money is if that’s what you’re about.
No, bombs and the defence industry was not was I was on about. I see your point. Yes there’s been some downturn recently, but the tech industry has always been cyclical. It’s difficult to get hired today, and there’s certainly favoritism towards senior employees.
My point was simply about economics; supply and demand. In my university, about half of all degrees issued are in the arts. If employers want someone with that kind of training, then they have all of the selection in the world. Compare this to a tech company. If a tech company wants to expand their business and they need to implement a technology to do that, depending on what technology it is, there might be like, 1k… maybe 100k, maybe 1M people on the planet that have that specialty? Employers are going to pay a lot more for a person with that kind of training.
I wasn’t implying you were talking about defense, I was just saying that if you’re only about money then you can make a lot of it developing weapons for the government.
Different universities specialize in different things. I went to an engineering university that issued mostly engineering degrees, plus a few business degrees. Both of my state’s public universities also have fairly large colleges of engineering with quite a few engineering programs run by them. You’re also not only competing locally, but with remote, outsource and H1B visa workers. There is plenty of supply.
God forbid you have to train an employee in the specialization you’re looking for once in a while.
Fair points
Even the stock market is veering towards the military industry. Damn, things are looking very grim tbh.
Welcome to capitalism, are you new here?
I mean, it seems to imply a huge war is quite likely.
I mean yeah between Ukraine/Russia and Lebanon/Palestine/Israel It’s not hard to see why a bunch of capitalists would be bullish on defense right now. Don’t really need to look at the stock market to know that.
The learning lesson there is just how much money is invested in seeing war break out and creating need for more weapons. Anyone pushing for war very likely has a vested interest in seeing it happen, especially those with the means to shelter themselves from the consequences of war. Add in the fact that capitalists are very good at getting what they want from the US government, and even better at sheltering themselves from consequences.
So, is the war just “likely”, breaking out on its own out of nowhere, and capitalists just have a 6th sense for it, or is it being pushed and funded by capitalists who want the public to feel like war is inevitable so they will consent to escalating military intervention without much resistance?
Nah. Money is not in military contracting at all.
That’s news to me
The arts lol? Nothing but debt.
How many movies and TV shows do you watch? You think those things appear out of nowhere?
You think those people get paid a living wage?
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What a non answer in an answer.
No personal emotion or feelings of empathy or understanding.
Cold and sterile, with sweeping statements for all self blame and action.
Like a voice that never has been tested or had to put the effort in.
94% AI generated per zerogpt.com
God I hate the time we live in.
To generalize the answer a bit, if for no other goal, than make the goal to move to a country that better aligns with your beliefs and that you feel rewards you properly for your work. Make incremental steps to achieving that (what exactly the list looks like depends upon the person’s current state and where they want to go) and make marking each one off a goal and motivation.
I don’t know what the true answer is but if you are indeed an American, and vote, never vote for a republican candidate, EVER. I am not saying democratic candidates are always better but Republicans are 100% of the time out to fuck over the young, the old, the different and poor. Unless you’re a deranged scumbag hell bent on making the world a worse place for the dispossessed, you have nothing to gain by electing a republican candidate. Also, unless it’s a local election, do not vote for 3rd party candidates in federal elections until their political machines show they are capable of fielding a coherent campaign and message.
As for working—find something with your local state government. It pays less but it is steady most of the time and the basic jobs do not require much of an education or knowledge-base.
But to the main point—keep going. Keep living your life as best you can. These ghouls who have all the wealth will die at some point, and fun fact… money really isn’t anything but an agreed upon hallucination so we could just kill and eat all those fuckers.
do not vote for 3rd party candidates in federal elections until their political machines show they are capable of fielding a coherent campaign and message.
Damn… Why are you giving DNC such a break?
These ghouls who have all the wealth will die at some point
And nepo babies will continue to rule the peasants!
I will never consider voting for a 3rd party candidate until their parties get someone elected to a local school board, a city council, a state legislative body, or the US congress. This is the foundational necessity of how our body politic functions. Running random asshole foreign assets for the Presidency on occasion is not how you operate a political party in this country and not how you affect any change (except making things worse, so… uh, good job Russia).
3rd party candidates literally only ever run for the Presidency in the US. (source: I live here)
They also generally purport to be far left leaning candidates (although this year’s crop leaves much to question). But really, they just take people’s money, complain about the status quo, and do literally nothing to help move things toward their (supposedly desired end) the political left.
Instead they (at best) steal some votes from young morons that would’ve likely gone to more liberal tickets (Democrats) and (at worst) enable the centrist and right wing machine to further dismantle any validity of the notion of “people should be allowed to not be taken advantage of by billionaires.”
Please tell me where any effort by the green or socialist parties successfully got a down ballot candidate elected in the past 10, 15, 20 years. Please tell me.
They are charlatans.
Yes, rich people will continue to win down ballot elections, because everyone ignores off year and local elections, because running a campaign is an expensive affair beyond the basic need of being a fucking extroverted lunatic in the first place.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll definitely consider it.
Yeah, I’m never going to vote for any Republicans or spoiler candidates. I will say though, the complex labyrinthine mess of lies and ideologies that only exist to entrench the power of those at the top at everyone else’s peril is impressive.
I was raised by emotionally abusive right-wingers and had to spend my entire childhood fighting antisocial bullshit theories about how I shouldn’t be allowed to show emotions or kindness and I should treat the opposite gender like trash.
I literally hated myself for years until someone sincerely complimented me for said kindness, as much as I tried to hide it. It was so surprising to me that I opened up to her about my insecurities. She shattered my entire worldview and gently told me to stop listening to the dummies who convinced me to hate myself, because they themselves were miserable people who would only drag me down with them.
The level of stupidity from the GOP kept rising (the COVID conspiracies were among the dumbest things I had ever seen) and I realized that she was right. These people were promoting utter nonsense, and I had been conned. There was no reason for any of these norms; they were just carried by generational inertia and promoted by grifters.
In the years following, I developed strong left-wing values and learned that all of the dumb social hierarchy stuff just serves those in power. They promote hatred and bigotry for their own gain. They are the reason for my childhood being shitty. Their entire movement is one big scam.
I aspire to be a total sweetheart and a supportive, loving friend, because that’s what I truly want. Billionaires HATE it when you help people for free. Giving people things to fulfill their needs, doing favors out of love and compassion, being there in times of emotional need…
I mean, could you imagine how terrible it would be for billionaires if those ideas became widespread? They wouldn’t like that. Nooo! Don’t work together! Keep fighting each other! Uh, here, read this news article based on a single ragebait Twitter post that PROVES your neighbors hate you! And look, here’s a tweet from billionaire genius Elon Musk saying your attitude is destroying the country! We NEED artificial scarcity! Don’t you want to go to Mars? STOP HELPING EACH OTHER!!
Whatever I end up doing, I hope I can touch a lot of hearts and minds while doing so. After all, it only took one person’s kindness to literally change my life.
You are not wrong. It’s a very unfair world we have build. And a lot of people are struggling even though there are plenty of resources to make sure every single person on earth could have their needs met and the opportunity to live a meaningful life.
BUT we have to dare to hope. Because otherwise we just give up and the people on top is counting on that. ”We have the power and there is nothing you can do about that”. I think David Graeber is one of the most hopeful people to read:
“Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.
His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit
I like this sentiment. Hope is also very important in my life. In my darkest times, there was always hope to cling to. It wasn’t always realistic and most of it has failed. Some have succeeded though and I am in a much better place now.
However, it is important to learn that failure is a good thing. Society has imprinted in most of us that failure is bad. It is not. Failure is a way to learn. Without failure you cannot learn and you cannot grow.
For this same reason it is perfectly fine for hope to fail. You can learn from that and adjust your hopes and expectations accordingly within the scope of you values.
Get offline, and simplify. Start doing things that are good for you. There is yet joy to come.
I feel ya brother. I’m 41 and wondering why the hell im even saving for retirement. I’ll be dead before I’ll ever be able to
I don’t have any good advice for you. My company held an all-hands call today during which the CEO said “Now that the election is behind us we can look forward to political stability”, among other equally insane things. You could say I’m feeling pretty down about the whole situation as well.
I’d say qualitatively and quantitatively, this system is a scam. I get up and deliver by getting myself into interesting shit that matters no matter who’s writing the check (excluding Raytheon or any of those other psycho motherfuckers).
Energy security is important, particularity environmentally compatible forms.
Medical services that don’t bankrupt people are important.
Making processes easier is important even it comes to reducing/eliminating waste.
Even the seemingly mundane ‘basic research’ has a lot of interesting caveats buried below the surface.
Find what interests you in this one life you have, do the work to get there, make friends with people who want you to get there (and help them too).
Good luck, fuck capitalism.
Yep, we need to move on towards Socialism to really begin to start fixing these problems.
The amounts of copium in this thread are extinction-level.
Everything you just said is 100% valid and you are simply correct.
The thing is, it’s not a measure of a healthy mind to thrive in a profoundly sick society where the worst of the worst have won long ago.
There’s this thing called depressive realism which posits that depressed people, by and large, perceive reality much closer to how it really is than neurotypical people.
Essentially, “normal” people have an (innate or learned) positivity bias. Which is usuallly a good thing. People like us are the outliers.
But positivity bias in a world where it’s actually harmful is another thing. The majority of people are walking headlong into their own extinction while going “Ehh, it’s not so bad”, while we should ALL be positively irate and picketing the homes (not companies) of our owner class 24/7.
But it hasn’t happened yet and at this point I don’t know how bad things need to get before people realize what’s going on.
Only those that understand a problem even have a chance to solve it. Those who refuse to understand a problem (often for comfort) are not helpful at best, but usually actively harmful.
The problem of suffering runs far deeper than “Rich vs Poor”. We are all trapped inside constantly decaying bodies that are barely capable of survival. This constant decay leads to almost constant pain even billionaires can not avoid. And then there is our anxious brain worrying about all sorts of things that might or might not happen. Yes, all of this is more bearable inside a villa than inside a tent, but it is still abhorrent. This does not mean the “Rich vs Poor” struggle is not worth while. It is, because there is tremendous preventable suffering within this struggle. This struggle, however, is just a tiny fraction of the problem that is called the human condition.
To those who seek to understand the problem of suffering, i can recommend this video. It eases you into the horror of being alive.
As long as people have something to entertain themselves and something to eat, nothing will change. Even the Ancient Romans knew that: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.”.
Ah so that’s why bread and games increases loyalism in Civ6 ;)
Mass starvation is historically the usual trigger for revolution. Not always though.
Brother you need some help. The rate of decay is slow and steady and almost imperceptible to a normal lifetime. Finding a job may actually help. Now’s your chance to get in where you fit in. Love games? Get a job at local games store. Like animals? Go apply at a zoo. Find people that you can relate to. Good luck man. You can do it.
You got me, kid. I had a stroke at 42 after busting my ass forever, and it’s been the best thing to happen to me yet.
Basically just enjoy everything outside of work, politics, and religion. Family, friends, and yourself are the most important things in life.
Lots of pessimism in USA right now, huh?
I think this is quite common for half of USA to feel this way when the other party wins the election. This is due to electoral system you have, which has very a side effect of very strong negative campaign. So if you believe one party whole wold will go to hell if the other party wins.
But the world will not go to hell. In my probably less affected opinion nothing this bad will happen:
- Although Trump had some tendencies to overthrow the voting system, such tendencies are usually gone when people win the election.
- No one will start concentration camps
- Trump is very bad at keeping his promises (where it the famous wall?)
- No one will prosecute others just for what they were voting. It is impossible to know who voted what. Also why would Trump want to start internal war? There is no support for such war. Etc. Etc. So no. The worst case scenario is not possible. Your system has way to many safety mechanism for whole country or world would go to hell. And a lot of people who voted for Trump are not that extreme. So there is no support for the most extreme policies.
About the work though. Under any government positive or negative changes are quite slow to implement. In many countries there is a housing crisis. And even if in my country government is bound to fix this issue it will take 10 or more years to fix it. So my generation will have to find a place to live somewhere in current market conditions.
So in any case it is very bad strategy to hope for the government to fix your personal issues like your housing, your salary, your job, your dating, your happiness. On those you have to work by yourself. And I can assure you the difference you can make on your life is enormous.
To fill you with some optimism you can try to write a list on what you life would look like if you really try to improve it. And yes of course live the politics out of it and focus only on your life and changes you can affect.
For my personal escape it made the most difference to become more optimistic:
- By practicing gratitude
- By always trying to look on the bright side of thing. I believe those things make the most difference. Because imo happiness comes from thinking you have awesome life.
A mentor once gave me an exercise to identify my “core values” or goals or motivators. Out of a list of 60, the task was to narrow down over time and conversation to my top 5.
E.g., I value financial stability. Not to be confused with other values of earning high compensation or achieving lofty corporate positions and recognition.
It helped me frame for myself that I’m going to work to be comfortable and stable and beyond that, my motivations lie elsewhere, like spending time with friends and working on personal projects. There are people who put greater value on achieving a high salary or earning the c-suite title or having their names on patents; that’s perfectly valid and great for them, it’s not me and that is also ok.
There are tons of similar exercises online. If it sounds like something that might help you define your perspective on work differently, to narrow it down to you instead of getting overwhelmed with the whole world’s problems, please look into it and good luck.
