CW: Depressive thoughts of an asshole
Do you think that you are a good person? I don’t. I’ve tried to be one for a long time, act like one to those close to me. But I just don’t think it will ever happen.
Some context: I’m a young person living in the Western world. My family are upper-middle class, and loving and supportive of me. I was raised with a strong moral compass, particularly about social issues. As I’ve grown, I’ve become more and more aware of the way that I live. My socio-economic circumstances mean that I’m probably in the top 10% of the world’s population, where the biggest polluters are.
To explain my problem with this, I’ll put it in simple words: the climate crisis kills people. And so, by contributing to it, I am a murderer. You can argue this point all you like. That its a bigger issue than me, that my own emissions are only a fraction of those of the top 1%. But just because someone else has hurt people more doesn’t mean that I haven’t hurt people. One of the scariest parts of this is that it means, wherever I go, the people around me are most likely murders by my own definition. My peers, mentors, neighbors. But they don’t know. They don’t think about the fact that they have contributed to people’s deaths. Ignorance is bliss.
All I want to do is help people. That’s what I want to do with my life: reduce pain and suffering. I’m thinking of going into medicine. But I wake up every morning and go to bed every night with the knowledge that I am doing the opposite. I try to do a little bit: eat less meat, don’t fly, buy less clothes. While I drive places and eat food shipped from far away, watch other’s do things without objection. And the little I also isn’t quite genuine, sometimes more motivated by the fear of the guilt I’ll feel if I do not do it.
I’m going to be real: I’m so scared. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. There’s a line from some song “You’ve got to live with the pain or start feeling nothing at all”. What happens on the day that I start feeling nothing? I’ve had them before. I think the scariest thought of them all is that I become a mindless consumer, working 9-to-5 in an office job. And when the headlines show the deaths from the latest storm or heatwave, I can point and say: “I helped with that”. Yours faithfully, A fellow stranger
P. S. Thanks so much for reading my deranged rant of self pity, and I hope you have a wonderful day P. P. S. If you have any interesting thoughts, it would be much appreciated it you would share them
This sounds like you are somehow trying to take the full responsibility for the circumstances you were forced into. It is impossible to blame one person for all the things that are not working, looking and being “as they should”. The same goes for “we all failed”. It is much more nuanced than that.
The reverse perspective is more productive, every action and even smallest nudge into the right direction counts towards much bigger pile… of dust… on the endless desert… Yet still, this is how mesmerizing dunes are formed. It’s not about the amount of grains, how long it took, it’s about all the persisting processes.
Thanks, I just guess it just find it hard to keep on going some days. I think one of the reasons I place a decent amount of personal responsibility upon myself is a form of hero fantasy, that I’ll do something to change the world someday, that there is some meaning to me being here that will be massively tangible some day. The semi-urgency of the climate crisis and an indifference among my peers also means that I feel like I need to compensate for some of their actions as I cannot convince them to change. In terms of being “forced into” circumstances, a large part of my concern is taking responsibility for not trying to change those circumstances and not fighting against decisions made by others in my family, friends and wider social circle in regards to the environment, and instead standing by and letting things go.
There are so many anchor points to respond to, from your original post and this reply…
Every well working moral compass starts any process from some form of self doubt — am I wrong here? What was I thinking? What if this is one giant mistake? Am I the bad guy? The garden can’t be all rotten, it’s probably me… and so on, right? You know those? If you do, great, compass is just reminding you to be cautious and more aware of the decision making process. Then the spectrum begins, from “nothing matters and anything I will do does not matter”, let’s call it avoidant end of the spectrum, then on the other side “I should not make any decision and this is the best decision, everything will sort itself”, the everlasting frozen stone… There are more ends but you probably already know where all this is going, the game is in progress and it is always your move. This is exhausting, hence the feeling of “hard to keep going”.
The hero visions? Ohh yeah, those are tasty, aren’t they? Equally destructive as productive. You can stimulate your ego with them into oblivion or… grow actual motivation from them. The real question is, are you ready to do the thing that might become the milestone in your story? If not, you probably just need more time, rest, preparation, et cetera; if yes, how great is that? Whenever you feel like you are failing on your part of “we all are in this together” deal, somewhere on the other side of the scale, someone is doing their best. So if you need to take it slow(er), do it. Because there will be a moment when you will not want to stop doing something and that will be great too.
Maybe let’s finish with this idea of fighting. Not all fights are yours to fight. You won’t stop everyone from littering, eating meat, or any other type of influencing behaviors of others in an instant — magically — is just in the fantasy realm. The real fight starts when you pick your way and by not forcing others to join you, finally someone who will be motivated by your choices, might use it as a starting point for their own decisions or changes… or you will get demotivated and change the trajectory.
If there is this underlying feeling that you should be doing something differently, what if that feeling is right?
Sorry, had a busy day yesterday and didn’t get a chance to reply. On the idea that “influencing the behaviors of others in an instant is just in the fantasy realm” the problem is that, either by fluke or by chance, I recently encountered a situation where such a thing happened, and that after challenging someone’s beliefs they considered them and changed their view on the world (to a large enough degree).
I also understand that I need to change what I am doing, but I can find it really hard to do so. There’s so much that I could do but I never manage to get myself to bother. I sometimes sit in this weird realm where I go about my day with a smile on my face, then retreat to a shell of worry at night, when I do not have the opportunity to change the things around me.
On the spectrum you speak of, I seem to exist at both ends at different times, depend on whether I am feeling like blaming or excusing myself. It reminds me of the chess term Zugzwang (where the only moves available are bad ones), except the only easy moves available are the bad ones, and the good ones exist behind a wall of effort.
Thank you again for your extended a thoughtful replies.