Particularly - America.
I personally have found that, I live in the past to cope. Nostalgia is my drug. It sometimes doesn’t help because all it does is that it makes me yearn and beg for things to be back to where things were. Because it warps my mind into opening time capsules whenever I watch an old show or listen to an episode of some niche radio show that long stopped producing new material.
However, it helps because, it at least reminds me that there are some things that I can revisit. If I couldn’t revisit anything, play the games I played, read the books I read, watched the movies/shows I used to, then I’d be up shit’s creek because I’d have to face the fucked up things people consider what are the ‘best that’s offered’.
Therapy.
I saw my need for therapy coming over a year ago, and wait was so long I didn’t get therapy started until October.
That and I am hoping to start writing. A blog of some sort. Help me think through everything in a way that might help the two or however many readers I manage to gather.
I read theory so I can better understand why the world functions in the way that it does and better predict where its heading. That’s the first step in knowing how to make things better. Eventually, when I get the chance, organizing will be the way to put theory to practice and directly work towards making the world a better place.
Trying to ignore or hide from the world around me doesn’t make it any less scary, only understanding it better does, and understanding is useless without action.
Lol. Welcome to chasing a pipe dream or crippling depression.
The answer is largely as simple as socialism plus Kant with some secular Jesus because any system that condones human exploitation will eventually implode due to psychopaths’ willingness to sacrifice others for power.
But literally basically everything is done wrong to maximize exploitation. Housing, schooling, medicine, food… All fucked to make the richest richer.
Liberalism is the slow road to fascism.
This is idealist, not materialist. Maximizing human exploitation isn’t a law of physics, but a byproduct of modes of production like Capitalism. Socialism is not a simple answer, but it is correct regardless. Moreover, Marxism already has a philosophical component in Dialectical Materialism, why replace it with Kant?
I suggest you read theory yourself.
What in the world is socialism plus Kant? I will always defend the study of Kant and view him to the one of the most important figures in the history of the world to read but the foundation concepts of the majority of Kant’s ideas are contradictory with socialism. Deontological ethics are diametrically opposed to dialectal materialism. The presumption of the goal preceding the effect in our analysis fails to look at the underlying reality pinning the action to the world. Even if we accept the categorical imperative’s universality formation, the Kingdom of End’s prior assumption relies on the idea that the autonomous will can even exist, something that is obviously not reasonable within a dialectical materialist framework.
The idea of the transcendental idealism is a phenomenal, not materialist view of the world. Knowledge beginning with sense and not experience would completely be opposed to essentially the entire conclusions and analysis of Marx.
Sorry if I misrepresenting what you mean but my understanding of Kant would make this whole concept be nonsensical.
In short, Kant said people should be the goal, not the means.
It’s ok to make yourself dinner.
It’s ok to make your friend dinner because you want to make them happy.
It’s not ok to make your friend dinner because you want to have sex with them.
It’s not ok to make your friend make you dinner because you don’t want to cook.
Every facet of capitalism is exploitation by design as profit is unpaid labor. However classless socialism isn’t automatically devoid of exploitation.
None of us asked to be here. I certainly don’t want to be here anymore. Placing the value of a life upon the imaginary lines it landed between, how much money it’s parents had, or the color of it’s skin are all pretty fucked up.
First of all, Kant’s principle of humanity is just one component of his philosophy. Boiling down all of Kant’s corpus to saying that that that is it “in short” is ridiculous. You can’t just separate the principle of humanity from Kant as a whole. The categorical imperative is not just the principle of humanity. You also said that it is socialism plus Kant but didn’t even seem to read my explanation of immaterialism in Kantian metaphysics.
Because you asked what I meant. Of course what I meant didn’t include your response to it. You almost seem offended my thoughts weren’t yours.
It’s because your thoughts aren’t inline with Kant’s actual philosophy and is an oversimplification of it to just one principal which bastardizes both what socialism is and what Kant wrote.
I avoid the news entirely.
Before the election I was extremely smart and added a couple of fascists’ names to my Lemmy post-filter. Halcyon.
But now? I can’t imagine how I could possibly curate a visit to c/all without details that are more demoralizing than any human should ever hear about.
Stoicism.
It does not make sense to worry about things outside my ability to change. Humanity has survived significantly worse. All I can do is prepare, run, lift weights, and whatever else can be useful.
Poorly, to be perfectly honest.
Read books.
I’m not American, so not only am I distanced from what is going on there, but also from Mr Rogers. Regardless, I take his advice for children- When something bad is happening, look for the helpers. They aren’t in the headlines of the day, but they are there.
Following on from this, one of the things that I believe made me an adult was when I started helping the helpers.
Go volunteer for a cause you believe in. You’ll not only feel better about the cause, but you’ll feel better about yourself, and you’ll help other people feel better.
I take a different approach.
I more lean into now than on a faded memory skewed by time and misremembering. Don’t get me wrong, I like nostalgia too, but I’m careful to not get too wrapped up in it because those good times were also found while wading neck deep in bullshit then too. Not to mention, my world view was much more naive, less discerning, and simplistic.
This isn’t the world I grew up in, but just like then, there are good times to be found now. I just have to open myself up to them in spite of myself because of my natural tendencies toward a realist/pessimist view.
I remember when the worst president in the history of the United States lied enough to invade Iraq again. And then he was reelected!
That practice round of excruciating righteous indignation took some of the sting out of being reminded that Americans are not my favorite voters.
You think it’s rough now? Give it about 15 minutes, he’s about to address congress…
Yikes, how’d that go?
Rep Al Green (TX) shouted at him about not having a mandate to cut Medicaid until he got removed by the Sergeant at Arms, so….swimmingly?
There is always something going on. The world is always falling apart. The locations just vary.
In other words, this too shall pass. Do what you can to make the world a better place, survive, and let go of what you cannot control. Can’t carry the world on you shoulders all the time. Sometimes it has to save isself or deal with the consequences.
i dont :'(
but seriously: community, therapy and eating better has been nice. And allowing myself to feel messy.
I read the news just to entertain myself. And then I ignore the content because most news are just depressing: Armed conflict here, murder there, capital offense, you get the gist.
For several months I didn’t read any news, that works too. You’ll realize that most of the stuff in the tv and tabloids doesn’t affect you.
And for the third point I do whatever it takes to distract, lose in or occupy myself completely. That could be a book with a nice story or some outdoor activity. Yesterday I did some kind of mini-camping. I took my bicycle and brought a camping chair, gas stove, water and cocoa powder and rode a bit into the woods. And then I had some quiet relaxing time reading a book on my phone. The hot chocolate and a thick jacket kept me from freezing. It was only 10 °C/50 °F and a bit windy.
I’ll repeat that tomorrow but this time I’ll switch the cocoa to tomato-soup-in-a-cup. The cocoa was too sweet for my taste.I recently started learning to play guitar and am addicted to it. Really keeps you in the moment and makes your forget the current state of the world while playing, at least for a bit.
Therapy, family, plotting to overturn the system in my head, imagining carrying out those plans with them going swimmingly, imagining myself as the warlord-poet of the enlightened utopic society I would erect afterwards, imagining other things.
There’s a lot of imagining.
Weed