Submitted by nousomuchoesto t3_11cnho9 in Futurology
kaidomac t1_ja5b67b wrote
>i want to see a more open perspective and different opinions
My first suggestion would be that if you want a good book on perspective, read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. My second suggestion would be to buy into & internalize this idea, as well as spend some time thinking about whether it's really true or not:
- We get to choose our level of happiness in life
This concept will be instantly rejected by some people, but that's simply a cop-out. The reality is that we each get to choose the stories we tell ourselves, which guide how we feel & what behavior we engage in. We live in a world that has 24/7/365 to media FUD, which makes it easy to doom scroll & get disheartened all day, every day, which is a choice that we choose to make as to what to expose ourselves to. This is a good quote to ponder:
- "Your perception becomes your reality"
What you choose to do with your life & what you choose to expose yourself to are going to strongly contribute to how you feel & how you perceive the world, especially if you're like me and are already prone to anxiety & depression. The world isn't really any different than it has been for the past 5,000 years of recorded human history:
- Natural disasters are happening
- Wars & atrocities are happening
- There are diseases, famines, and other major problems in all parts of the world
The difference is that rather than just being an hour of nightly news, it's on everyone's feed ALL the time! So from a high level, it begins with making a conscious choice about what you choose to expose yourself to & what you choose to focus on. The world has always been a difficult place; we can choose to focus on the negative, or, and here's the key change:
- We can choose to focus on making a contribution
More reading: (2-part post)
We are all free to focus on all of the bad stuff in life & when we get to our deathbeds, look bad and say gee, I spent a lot of time focusing on the negative, living in fear, and not using my talents & effort to contribute positivity to the world. Or we can realize that we're not in charge of the world & that our stewardship is for our little niche in the world, at this time, at this place, and that we get to decide how we both react & act to our specific situations & circumstances in life. If you're open to that idea, read through this thread here:
If you want to get right down to brass tacks, here's your options for how to play the game of life in a nutshell:
- You can be a sponge for the negative
- You can be a force for good
Many people don't want to take responsibility for their personal success & happiness in life and prefer to believe that the world is such a dark & overwhelming place that all they can do is absorb it. If that's the best story they want to tell themselves, well, it's a free country! We can let anxiety & garbage beliefs rule our life if we want to, but it doesn't have to be that way!
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kaidomac t1_ja5b7ax wrote
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I previously worked in the career field. Despite all of the negative (and also fun reading!) at places like r/antiwork, there's never been a better time to get into the workforce:
- More than 12,000 different types of jobs are available. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary job for 90% of the population.
- There are over 11 million job openings available right now.
- We have access to virtually all of the information available on earth through the Internet. Google, TikTok, Youtube, Pinterest, etc. contain more information than any one person could ever learn in their lifetime!
As George Carlin said, "Ya gotta wanna!" If a person is absolutely determined to be unhappy & to buy into the fact that because the world can be a dark place and therefore they MUST be unhappy too, then that's their choice! You have a narrow track ahead of you in life:
- You're only alive for a few decades
- You're only going to interact with a finite number of people during that time
- What ship do you want to sail throughout your course in life? Misery & defeat? Or happiness & contribution? The seas are going to be rough either way, but that doesn't mean we have to allow ourselves to sink! As the saying goes, "Ships don't sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them."
What we choose to focus on & what attitude we choose to adopt determines a large part of our happiness & progress in life. No one gets to dictate our level of happiness other than ourselves. No one can force us to adopt a positive or negative attitude or outlook on life. WE get to choose, even if it's a reactive attitude that happens by default!
>AI : im not against it but is changing fields and things that shouldn't be changed like art , now the ai is making art and literature my biggest fear is regarding to music is the most beautiful art that could exist , i can't imagine a future where the music is made by an ai , for the jobs i still very neutral, the population seems to be decreasing so it could help us to control the problems that this could make but it needs legislation faster as possible to avoid the abuse of this systems against people by the wealthiest one's
I work in computers; let me put your fears to rest: AI is a tool. Yes, it will replace jobs, but there's a magic thing that happens every single time a new tool is introduced: hyper-fractionalization!
Cars replaced horses & now we have an endless sea of car dealerships, gas stations, and repair shops. Computers replaced typewriters. Photoshop & digital photography changed the photography game. Human creativity & contribution isn't going to be replaced by AI but rather supplemented by AI. More people are going to have more power to do quality work thanks to the audio, video, writing, editing, and other tools that are quickly becoming available!
>So my fear's are more a possible collapse or a dystopia, i want to have hope for a better future, but everything seems to be worsening
Yes and no. It's both getting better AND getting more difficult at the same time! More challenges present more opportunities for figuring out creative solutions, whether it's for COVID vaccines or reconfiguring the food chain to handle supply & distribution issues to keep food on the shelves or for reducing human casualties in the war efforts through the use of drones or any number of situations in play & solutions being created!
Did you know that despite having more than 8 billion people in the world, we actually, today, right now, produce enough food for 10 BILLION people? Our biggest issue isn't supply, it's distribution! We have absolutely incredible amounts of resources available, but we're still lagging behind in so many ways:
imo, our job as individuals who want to make an ongoing, positive contribution to the world is to cultivate grit:
The world has never been a better place, thanks to advancements in education, knowledge, shipping, medicine, technology, etc., but it's also never been a more difficult place. We get to choose how we navigate the sea of life. We're free to focus on the negative, but given the tremendous opportunities at our feet, that seems like a colossal waste of opportunity for anyone who is willing to venture out of the FUD mindset that modern society tries to impose on us on a daily basis!
awesomesauce1030 t1_ja8uwhv wrote
Your comment made me want to kill myself even more than I already did. And no, I'm not joking or being edgy.
kaidomac t1_ja9dwmb wrote
Do you want to talk about it?
awesomesauce1030 t1_ja9e3jy wrote
Well, to me, your comments basically boil down to "Just stop feeling bad" which is terrible, unhelpful advice.
kaidomac t1_jaa1xea wrote
Ah! Well, allow me to clarify, in that case! "Just stop feeling bad" is, of course, terrible & unhelpful advice, for sure! As mentioned in my first post, I'm someone who struggles with both anxiety & depression as well, so I know where you're coming from!
Over the years, as I dove into why that was the case (if we're designed to feel good, why do some of us NOT feel so good so often?) & how to change my situation, I came to realize that my depression wasn't actually monolithic! Eventually, I ended up grouping depression into 3 separate levels:
I also discovered that we were designed to feel 3 very specific ways:
- Happy for no reason, just sitting there doing nothing
- Like there is a motor of energy inside of us, pushing us along all day
- Instantly awake when we wake up in the morning
This was NOT my experience growing up! I typically felt either apathetic or bad, low-energy, and tired all the time. It's hard to feel good when you don't feel good, simple as that!
And it's oddly really hard for certain people not to try to flippantly solve severe mood disorders such as depression an anxiety by simply telling people suffering from those conditions to "just stop feeling bad", for some reason!
Over time, I ran into two books that changed my perspective on my situation. The first book was called "Attitude is Everything" by Jeff Keller, which talked about how he learned about how much attitude controlled his life & his happiness.
The second was "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. In a nutshell, he got stuck in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust, where his family & friends all died, and he was next on the chopping block.
Essentially, he had an epiphany that, despite his horrible circumstances, he didn't have to mope about it! He didn't have to let it control his attitude! It didn't change his outward situation one bit, nor did it relieve the stress of the reality of the situation, but it helped him to be able to cope!
So in situations like what you & I deal with, two have two separate situations on our plate:
- External: The world is a difficult place. A wonderful place, but also a difficult place!
- Internal: We have an internal struggle, one that doesn't just magically go away simply by deciding to just stop feeling that way. There are complex trauma responses, physiological situations including various neurotransmitters & hormones like serotonin & dopamine being off-balance, and other deeply-rooted issues that don't disappear merely by wishful thinking!
This relationship gets pretty complicated because they are intertwined! When you don't feel good & you see all of the bad news out there, it's really hard to feel like the world isn't falling apart, which in turn feeds those feelings of doom we get from not having enough energy to feel good! Then our brain starts to buy into nonsense beliefs, such as:
- The world is a terrible place & everything is going downhill
- The world always has been a terrible place, so what's the point?
- There's no hope for things ever getting better
- There's no hope for feeling good consistently, so it cannot be achieved
In reality, our brain does a really great job of lying to us! And eventually, once we've felt bad enough for long enough, we start to believe those lies! So now we have 2 questions to deal with:
- How do we get ourselves into a better frame of mind?
- If "we get to choose our level of happiness in life", how do we do that when we don't feel good all the time?
For me, I struggled with negative feelings for the majority of my life. Last year, I was able to get my core health issues diagnosed & treated, and for the first time in my life, actually started feeling GOOD consistently! Again, it's pretty hard to feel good when you DON'T feel good, and if you don't have your body supporting your mood to the point where you just magically feel good for no reason, then that's REALLY difficult to deal with on a daily basis!
I spent a lot time wondering why people were motivated to do ANYTHING, because I was like a dead battery most of the time, or worse, it felt like there was an anchor constantly pulling me down! Then people will say exactly what you said..."just stop feeling bad!" or "man up!" or "what do you have to complain about? You live in America etc. etc. etc."
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kaidomac t1_jaa1xxi wrote
part 2/2
I later learned about "comparative suffering" & realized that just because our specific trials in life aren't "as bad" as other people have it, doesn't mean that they're not valid or still difficult for us! Your experience is valid, your journey is valid, and struggles are both VERY real AND valid!
As far as dealing with negative internal situations goes, we basically have 3 options:
- Eliminate the issue
- Manage the issue
- Endure the issue
Some things can be fixed through things like therapy or surgery. Other things can be managed through things like medication. And some things we simply haven't figured out yet, so we just have to deal with them! Eventually, I came across Carol Dweck's "mindset" theory, which says that in any given situation, people have one of two mindsets:
- A "fixed" mindset, which says "I can't, and here's why"
- A "growth" mindset, which says "I can, and I will be persistent until I find a way to deal with it!"
I came to realize that happiness is more than simply feeling good all the time & that a lot of it boiled down to my personal willingness to take responsibility for my own happiness. In practice:
- I can't control everything that happens to me
- I also don't get to choose all of the consequences that happen to me
- I do get control over SOME things
But what it really boils down to is this:
- Being willing to manage my consequences (even when I wasn't the one who created them, I'm still STUCK with them!)
This becomes especially difficult when dealing with negative internal feelings such as panic attacks, anxiety, depression, etc. because those things don't just magically get better by willing them to change, nor does everyone respond to "easy treatments" such as going to bed earlier, eating better, or exercising.
Which is something that people who say things like "Just stop feeling bad!" are absolutely CLUELESS about! Some people literally struggle with things like treatment-resistant depression, which makes living a happy life VERY difficult!
As I evolved my perception over time, I came to realize those two options I discussed earlier:
- I could be a sponge for the negative, which is literally a blackhole due to the amount of negativity that exists
- I could choose to bypass that (not easy!) & be a force for good, which sometimes meant just literally hanging in there on those days when I was so crashed that I couldn't even get out of bed!
Which ultimately led me to make this choice:
- I could focus on making a contribution
Again, sometimes that contribution was solely to me, myself, and I, on those days when I couldn't even muster the energy to get into the shower & get my day started! Which ultimately boils down to a choice in attitude:
- Given the fact that the world is both an incredibly & an awful place,
- Given the fact that I personal struggle with apathy & depression, to the tune of severe clinical depression,
- Do I want to allow those situations & those feelings to control my attitude & my behavior? Because it is the EASIEST thing in the world to cave to inaction & negativity!
The reality is:
- No one can come into my life to define happiness for me
- Even if they did, I'd simply reject it because it wasn't MY idea!
- Likewise, no one can come into my life to put in the daily effort into working to achieve & maintain happiness, despite whatever obstacles I'm currently facing!
The reality is, sometimes we just feel awful, and sometimes it's for a REALLY long time, and sometimes it's completely immersive, and sometimes it feels like it's going to be this bad forever! So the question is: what are we willing to do about it?
For me, for a long time, it was mostly inaction, moping, and just feeling like a pinata getting beat up all the time. Eventually, when I couldn't figure out how to make things better, I hit that fork in the road: was I going to continue to allow how I felt to dictate my behavior, or was I going to step up & push to do things when I could to try a little harder for a better life, even when it wasn't perfect, or consistent, or easy?
And that's not something you can simply "force" on anyone, just like how you can't say "just stop feeling bad!" & magically expect people to do a 180-degree turn in their life & magically feel better, haha! People have to reach that decision point internally & decide that they want more than their present circumstances have to offer.
But until that happens, there's no pressure in the whole universe that can force people to change their minds about whether or not they want to adopt full, personal responsibility for managing the consequences that they individually have to deal with in life. And again, it's the easiest thing to buy into, because our brains are so persuasive & those negative emotions can be so immersive!
So no, my comments are not intended to tell people to "Just stop feeling bad". They're meant to widen our tunnel vision to see that there's more out there for us as individuals, that we're not as stuck as our brain wants us to believe! A big part of the reason we feel so down & out is because of this:
- Our brain is not designed to make us happy, our brain is designed to keep us alive
Therefore, when our energy is low, it acts like a turtle withdrawing into its shell, cutting off our positive emotions & our energy to get stuff done & ENJOY getting stuff done! It doesn't care about what happens to us after that, it cares about protecting our minds & bodies from blowing a fuse by trying to use up more fuel than we have in our tanks!
Anyway, I'm sorry to hear that you're going through a struggle. Your struggle is valid & it's NOT easy to deal with! I hope you're able to find some relief!
awesomesauce1030 t1_jaa4pz2 wrote
I read everything you wrote and I appreciate the thought out response. I don't really know what to say in response unfortunately. I've just been having a really hard time seeing any positivity for a really long time. I'm sorry if I was rude or mean in my original comment.
kaidomac t1_jaaaf1q wrote
No worries man, I've been there too, it doesn't last forever but it sure feels like it does! Feel free to DM me anytime you want to talk!
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