This is how society is going right now, the environment is degrading rapidly (especially emissions for stupid stuff like cryptocurrency mining and training AI models -not to replace tedious work- but to replace creative work), the billionaires are literally running the government now, the Mainstream Media has acquiesced to power, social media is now just outrage porn, religious/racist/nationalist nonsense is -once again- inflaming wars around the world... and all the while people are saying either "you are too concerned" or you are not concerned enough about this other culture-war fringe problem. It's easy enough to say "oh, it's just me, I'm not being 'joyful' enough" or something... but should I be? Should we all just throw our hands up and say "it's too big and too hard to stare REAL problems in the eye, I should just distract and/or insulate myself from reality"...?
We live in the Internet Age, access to information is abundant, you cannot UNSEE the problems that the world faces. How long do we plan to try to cope our way past the problems rather than fix them? How long are we going to allow the selfish to distract and divide us? When are we allowed to say Capitalism is a disaster, Religion is wrong, our social norms are trash, and our Institutions are not accomplishing the goals that they were designed for?
At some point we just need to admit, we DESERVE to feel anxious, we should be anxious... but only for the REAL problems... and NO, just because every idiot on the Internet says some culture-war nonsense is a "real" problem, doesn't mean that objective reality doesn't exist. We have to tackle ROOT causes of things, STRUCTURAL things. That is Sustainability, weeding out corruption in governance, creating informed and media-literate citizens, and creating mechanisms that empower/reward society-improving behavior instead of self-interested behavior.
Do "Karens" exist... absolutely; does it mean that you are one if you are concerned... no, it is sane to be concerned with the state of things right now. Don't let the powerful win with their tools of fear, uncertainty, and doubt... they want the Status Quo; they want society to be paralyzed to inaction and ineffective in governance. They want you to tear each other to pieces with purity tests, fringe disagreements, trying to recruit the unrecruitable, and tribalism. Don't fall for it. Pick sensible collaborators, have simple, clear goals, and don't let people water them down. I know it's hard when people are easy to manipulate and hard to reason with... but it's always a minority that leads the way for everyone else, the question is: will we let the selfish lead, or will we ensure the wise lead?
