Sometimes I feel like whatever I’d do it won’t be enough. What/where I buy or where I donate seem trivial in the larger scheme of things. From extreme power concentration to world hunger. From climate change to AI safety. Too many things that I’d like to change, but I feel powerless sometimes. The feeling comes coupled with a sense of guilt of not doing enough and not being enough. Do you guys get this feeling too? How do you deal with it?
I do believe in the necessity of optimism in order to affect change, but sometimes hope is hard to cultivate. How do you guys keep your optimism up?
Thanks for reading my mini-rant.
Also, the meme is not OC
Optimism and pessimism are qualities that are independent of the underlying reality. There is no situation too good or too bad that cannot be viewed optimistically or pessimistically. Humans at baseline have an in-built bias for optimism that is invisible to oneself unless you know how to look for it, and even then, only when you look, and only sometimes. It’s quite certain that you are being ridiculously optimistic about several things in your life. It’s one of the tricks our meat plays on our mind so that our mind doesn’t just lie down and wait for death.
I concede your point on everything but
The number of medicines I’m on to keep me from driving into a telephone pole with my seatbelt unfastened would point toward the theory that some of our meats aren’t like the others and some might not be ridiculously optimistic about anything.
Well, I did say at baseline. You are probably familiar with the concept of “depressive realism?” The idea is that since depressed people can have a pessimistic bias, there is a point between being able to do laundry and being a puddle on the floor where the effects are perfectly cancelling out, and we see things as they are. I think it’s mainly bunk, we never see things as they are and complicated things don’t cancel out cleanly, but there’s something to it.