Touch grass is what we need to do. I do as much as I can in my surroundings - raised beds, gardening, and sharing stuff with people. I work as much as I can in my local community. That’s how we beat this shit and keep our souls alive.

I feel you, I know what you mean. End of the world - as we know it. I hope that while everything comes tumbling down we re-learn how to be in community with others, humans and non-humans. I hope we re-learn how to be and not spend so much energy. The tiredness people feel these days seems to indicate that the great mother is taking care of that for us - nothing we have to do, just give in to feeling tired. In the meantime, I am coming to accept that together with many others I might die in this process of unraveling, but that’s not important.

Slow down, do less, achieve less, buy less, worry less. More casual hanging out with trees, birds and lizards in my neighborhood. Eat the rich.

To create is even more important now. To fight this machine, this soul-less destruction. I’m more of a crafts person and only rarely a writer. Everything I do can be done by a machine faster and cheaper, so there is seems to be no reason to keep making it. A lot of the time I stare at my little felt figurines and my plant-dyed yarns and wonder why I even bother, and lately have stayed alive only because it would make my dad and my kid sad. But every now and then someone’s eyes get a certain sparkle when they see what I do. There’s life in it. My wonky basket contains life and love - the plastic basket with the fake wicker pattern does not. People at the moment can’t afford to buy my basket instead of the plastic one, but it has to exist to keep the real craft alive. We crafters, writers, artists, musicians need to keep alive the knowledge of how to make the real things. Some day it will matter again, I believe at some point the machine will eat itself.

Got some of this as well, started with pain in the throat last week, I slept a lot for two days, came down with migraine a day after that, and the last week I have been mentally really unwell feeling more anxious and depressed than usual. Something is going round.

I found it easier after understanding that everyone else is also struggling, everybody feels like they don’t have their shit together, and everybody needs help. There might be a few people who claim they have it all figured out, they are not the ones I want to take advice from because they are full of shit (often they are some guru type and/or just want your money).

Also helps to realize that a lot of people feel bad because things are bleak - we struggle with climate change, alienation at work, being disrooted, at the brink of yet another war … it’s objectively hard to live during these times. The only thing that makes it easier is talking to each other. A woman visited me yesterday, told me about her problems with her health and her main problem seemed to be that she feels unproductive and too tired to get the things done she believes she should be able to do. After telling her that on most days I was pleased with myself for simply getting up, feeding the cat and brushing my teeth, and that I know so many more people who tell me they feel like this, she was visibly relieved, and I was as well.

So when we talk to each other it helps to realize there’s nothing wrong with us personally - we are not failing at being a person, we are just reacting to the best of our abilities to an onslaught of trouble around us. Plus, when we talk to each other we often find out how we can help each other out in very practical ways - like sharing resources, supporting each other with our different strengths, ganging up together against the hardship. Community is how we can survive the hard times!

So is there someone in your life you can ask for help? Are you thinking about enlisting professional help like a doctor or therapist? What do you need right now?

Who the fuck cares how others are dressing?

What would count as a definition for you?

What is an address broker?

Cutting down the Amazon rain forest, mistreating your workers, mistreating animals, perpetrating genocide, driving a country into fascism, to just name a few. There’s probably more stuff I’d consider evil.

Here’s a rather specific example of greenwashing I had to do with, of the kind that’s a bit silly and very wide spread and almost impossible to avoid, but has a huge impact on where I live: I was doing a translation for a paper producing company. Their brochure was describing how they were caring for the forests that produce their paper and how they were championing the protection of the environment. They made it sound like they were planting and caring for some kind of fairy tale forest full of wildlife and biodiversity. The reality: all they ever plant is eucalyptus monoculture that by now covers half of the country and is one of the main causes of wildfires getting worse every summer.

Another example that I do not have personal experience with but that I imagine must be very difficult to navigate is being a programmer and working on some tiny snippet of code for something that has the power of causing unimaginable harm to society - like most of financial and stock market stuff, or election winning manipulating algorithms.

My kitten is called Maxim Schnorky. According to him a certain amount of ethically doubtful compromise is okay if that keeps the cat food coming in.

I can’t tell you why anyone in their right mind would do this but apparently they do. Although usually there will be more people going from the more expensive city A to the cheaper city B.

You misread. My argument is “most tourists bad, most tourism bad”. Considering the crisis situation we are living in, especially climate change, people should ask themselves whether seeing the world is really that important. Questioning the tourism industry as a whole sure makes people defensive. I’m not against people seeing other places at all, I’d rather not have it happen in the way it’s happening now as it’s stupidly destructive and selfish. Can we set up things in a way where you can rather spend several months immersed in a different culture than rushing to somewhere for the two measly weeks your employer lets you out of your cubicle? Or is that too radical and we’re doomed to forever keep building ugly resorts and turn everything into AirBnbs?

I’m pretty sure that those who have fucked up Barcelona, Lisbon, Mallorca, Ibiza, most of the Mediterranean and countless other places around the world were more than a select few idiots. Beautiful beaches (before all the resorts are built), cheap partying (before all the tourist traps open) and must-have-seen culture (before they have to protect the famous artworks from being destroyed by the masses) are the reasons why most people travel abroad. It’s a bad habit and people should really ask themselves if the nearest lake isn’t just as relaxing - or even more relaxing - than yet another place far away destroyed by its own desirability. And then they still have the gall to get whiny when their beautiful resort surrounded by ‘nature’ burns down in a wildfire and they have to shorten their vacation! Planet is on fire but it obviously has nothing to do with my cheap Ryanair flight!

I’ll judge you for any holiday destination that you travel to for anything but visiting family. Did you make your own country so ugly you have to go somewhere where it’s still nice, causing the place to become a resort desert? Can’t afford booze in your own country so you have to annoy the locals by ambling along their beaches in drunk shrimp mode? Want to explore the latest ‘cool’ city making rent unaffordable for locals in the process? Just stay at home and make sure it’s a place you don’t want to run away from.

I think it will keep following the cycles of “Make small gadget larger —> Make larger gadget smaller —> Make small gadget larger again …” and “Turn several gadgets into one —> Turn one gadget into several —> Turn several gadgets into one again …” to make sure you have to replace your gadgets for new gadgets at regular intervals. They probably will find some new annoying feature to add to all your appliances once everything from your phone to your kitchen sink has a touchscreen and a WIFI connection.

A friend told me about her experience in a fully automated hostel with sleeping pods where the automatic doors may or may not malfunction when you try to open them with a magnetic wrist band. That’s horror film material imo. I hope this shit gets wrecked and forgotten together with the self checkout. I’d like to meet some real people please, all you profit hungry corporation go shove these robots up yours yesterday.

Sorry for being rather acidic, I got hung up on the “this one post tells me enough”, it sounded arrogant to me and my answer to it was over the top and unnecessarily unfriendly. Thank you for trying to help and giving advice. I really hope my reaction doesn’t put you off trying to help others online in the future!

You’re latching on to one half ironic thing I wrote so you can prove that something is seriously wrong with me? Maybe you need to talk to a professional? Lack of object permanence is one of many symptoms of autism. It makes my life a little more difficult because I sometimes have to remind myself that I can and should continue to connect with people not in my immediate surroundings. I do not literally believe they disappear and I’m sure my other answers must reflect somehow that I’m not a delusional solipsist. But hey, whatever supports your self importance.

Wow aren’t you a genius armchair psychologist to learn enough about people’s mental state in only one post - are you aware how condescending that sounds?