Dealing with anger in the face of everyday evil

[the_platypus]

[gone]

[Alphaville]

ah, man, these are excellent questions. i struggle with similar problems. i can't give a full answer about my own rn, but thought i might refer you to an old problem yours might be a subset or variation of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

looking forward to seeing more from you on this. i gotta run out of the house for a while sooon but just wanted to say good work. these questions matter.

[jacob]

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

... is the one quote that has kept me sane over the years. I keep wondering whether there's a third way(*) but otherwise, I've found myself leaning towards the "scientist" and taking a fatalist approach. Fatalist doesn't mean defeatist. I'll still try to stop the bleed even if I know it won't work. It's not exactly rational, but it's the right thing to do.

(*) Political activism? Throwing individual starfish back into the sea? Avoiding adding to the problem on a personal level?

Carrying this stuff around in your head will be depressing. I suggest not making it an obsession. I see people who have been fighting it externally or internally for years and the older they get, the more bitter they get. Avoiding this outcome could also just be my personal cop-out. Maybe I don't want to carry it all the time. I don't want to be bitter and "see dead people" all the time. This is particularly hard when a young couple announce their new baby.

Try reading Rilke's "Letters to a young poet" for another way for deep feelers. Keep in mind that 98% of humans just want to live their lives from day to day focusing on "friends and family" and looking forward to rewarding themselves at the end of a work day.

Add: If you want to do the "doctor approach" instead, find a medical professional and ask how they deal with the fact that "you can't fix stupid". E.g. how they interact with patients who knowingly make "lifestyle" choices that lead to chronic diseases and an early death for themselves and even the rest of their family. The answer is a combination of sympathy and palliative care... but they would be better able to express it than I am.

My mental solution has been to accept it as an evolution of humanity much like I would accept the evolution of any other species. We're not all that different from other lifeforms. It's just that humanity (genotype) expresses a limited number of phenotypes who are cursed (Cassandra) with "the knowledge" whereas I don't really see wild birds lamenting their eventual extinction. However, species have gone extinct before. We're not all that evil either except in reference to "what could have been". I mean Native Americans killed all the mega-fauna on the continent---probably around the same time as other humans did the same thing on most of the rest of the plant. Humans elsewhere turned forests into deserts via agriculture. But oxygen-producing bacteria also drove the previous dominant anaerobic bacteria permanently underground.

So, as "they" say: "It is what it is".

What's mostly being given up is the idea of what could have been, but that's mostly an idea, which one will eventually realize was never real in the first place. That's where the Kuebler-Ross progression enters. You're in the Anger-stage. If you let it go, you'll get to the Acceptance stage eventually. Also see viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10096 ... and reading vol II of https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... es/568309/ might help on the forgiveness scale. Also, if you go to the Deep Adaption group on facebook, you'll see people going through this all the time. I went through it twenty years ago so I can only offer a hindsight perspective.

[Qazwer]

People on some level tend to believe that they can change systems problems and the belief set of billions of people. Yet, they do not believe they can flap their arms and fly. I would like both to be true. I would like to fly and I would like the ability to change things on a large scale. So what do you do? You fix what you can. You cannot change physics or sociology or anthropology just by wishing it to be so.
If you figure out how I can flap my arms and fly, please tell me by the way.

[Dream of Freedom]

I think that you need an information diet. It's not good for your sanity to dwell on what is outside of your locus of control. The world will end in eternal summer or nuclear winter or skynet will kill us with terminators. The apocalypse is always at the door. It's been predicted for thousands of years. They've been wrong for thousands of years. Who knows maybe this time they will be right, but it doesn't help to be miserable.

[jacob]

I think that you need an information diet. It's not good for your sanity to dwell on what is outside of your lotus of control. The world will end in eternal summer or nuclear winter or skynet will kill us with terminators. The apocalypse is always at the door. It's been predicted for thousands of years. They've been wrong for thousands of years. Who knows maybe this time they will be right, but it doesn't help to be miserable.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BT3H56S/ contains a good discussion (an entire chapter) on when an "information diet" is the morally optimal strategy. For example, during the cold war and nuclear annihilation was a plausible outcome, ignoring would have been the best strategy for an individual since it was entirely outside one's locus of control. With 21st problems, this is generally not the case.

It's conceivable that being miserable is part of the process. See Rilke.

I agree on taking it in in small doses though. Diet as in "eat occasionally and deliberate". Not diet as in "eliminate completely".

[BWND]

These are great questions and these can be quite stressful to think about and detrimental to one's mental health.

I try to remember my own hypocrisy when it comes to ecological issues. I do my best and am learning all the time, but I remember all the daily mistakes I myself make even on a day when I've maybe shared something with friends saying about how we should all do 'x' then do the opposite. More people are trying to get better on this issue than you might imagine. Encourage and reinforce the good things where you see them. People respond well to that.

You might also consider whether you could channel this anger into some form of activism and there is such a wide range of things there that it's impossible to list. I'm not particularly activist myself as I've found I am too quick to get angry and frustrated at injustice and idiocy to be successful at convincing others I'm right. I'm currently looking to get my own house in order as best I can and focussing on the 'show don't tell' of things I'm doing with friends, family and colleagues. I do feel I'm on a journey and might be able to contribute wider at some point in the future. I damn well hate meetings though and lots of community scale activism involves meetings

[RealPerson]

I recommend Peter Kalmus' book (Being The Change) on how to cope with these questions and an example of what to do within your sphere of influence. He also has done some YouTube interviews that touch on this topic.

[Alphaville]

so, to add to what i posted earlier:

it's not that your question is abour the existence of god, but it is analogous with those ages-long discussions i referred you to because it deals with the existence of evil, and in that sense it's analogous (not the same) to your question.

so for you as i see it the question starts with the affirmation of the existence of evil; you don't wonder if evil exists, you say: there is evil, and this is it.

the meat of your problem then is what to do about it. and in that sense it relates to the god problem also, although that's not exactly your concern (but if you're a theist, then it is very much the case).

regardless, even if you were an atheist, you still want to do something from the perspective of "the good", you want to maintain a... conscience that is aligned with goodness, or what theists would see as "god." so in that sense the literature also could help illuminate your struggles, even in the case of atheism, because it describes evil in opposition to something similar (or equal) to what you want/believe/etc.

i mean that as background. i'd much rather read a time-tested philosopher than a trendy blogger. the literature is there, all free, all out of copyright. oh, check also hannah arendt on the banality of evil.

as for what to do, in practice: that is a humongous question and i couldn't presume to tell you what to do. that's the question of the meaning of your life. what will you be? hero? hermit? activist? recluse? engaged? detached? committed? renunciate? warrior? coffee shop politician? leader of masses? cultivator of your own garden? champion? sellout? friend? traitor?

that my friend is up to you to sort out. nobody here (or anywhere) can give you an answer. you can't solve it "in theory". you have to discover it in practice.

but you're young--go live! do something! learn! gather experience! there will be time for you later to rest and contemplate the futility of everything.

as for the question of "anger". i hate pretend "positive" bullshit. there is a lot of passive aggression and hipocrisy and denial in people who are always smiling. i'll take an honest cranky person over a fake nice asshole every time.

besides, "anger" is too broad a word. instead i suggest you look up the term "righteous indignation". then maybe reconsider labels.

don't... let yourself be lured into passivity, cynicism, inaction, or surrender... or fake "niceness" for that matter. you're at an age to experience the world and do something. make your mark.

what to do, though? that is up to you. billions of people have dealt with the same questions before, but you're the only one who is living your life right now. and you learn the answer only by living.

[Redo]

It helps to be nihilistic. Lower your expectations of other people. Accept that death will happen one day. You might die of starvation, drinking toxic water, or war, or something else, probably not old age.
I mean what were you going to do with your life anyway? It's meaningless. Who cares?

[Bankai]

No point worrying about things you can't control. Doomsayers are as old as humanity and so far their track record is them being right 0% of the time.

Here's what you can control - a list of simple steps (which >99% of people in developed world are not willing to do) to move from being part of the problem to being part of a sollution (I'd also add spending <= 1 JAFI) - once you do them all, there's no point thinking about it further and time to focus on other things in life.

[Redo]

Nice wording, I like how it says "have 1 fewer child". No balls.
Reminds me of the hollow idols we worship, the "environmentalists" who have multiple kids. You know the James Cameron's, the David Suzuki's, the Gojira's, etc.

[Dream of Freedom]

@Bankai
100% agree. Inaction won't help you feel better either. It's like the serenity prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

If you don't change what you can you will feel bad about yourself. If you don't accept that you can't change everything you will feel powerless and frustrated.

[Mister Imperceptible]

Evil does not exist. Mankind will likely be destroyed by the planet, so fear not for the planet. Mother Earth laughs at her would-be destroyers who drive gas guzzling SUVs. I may have twelve children and in the long run the impact will be the same as one who has zero children. Choosing to have zero children just makes room for twelve other people to have one child each.

I plan to buy a gas guzzling SUV.

[Sclass]

I don’t lose a lot of sleep over this stuff. I manufactured precision metrology equipment for years. It set fire to an obscene amount of carbon. To get some perspective consider starting with a big pile of dirt and ending up with something like a Tesla car. Just add energy.

Getting upset reminds me of people in Los Angeles finding out that their feeble attempts at water conservation were just overwhelmed by Agricultural use.

Go after the cement factories in China and leave the SUV driving soccer moms alone.

[Jean]

The have fewer children is dishonest at least.
It integrates the whole emission of your lineage if emissions per capita and fertiliry stay the same in the future, and divide it by your lifetime. Here are the two articles the graphic is based on.
[url]https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... 326/aa7541[\url]
[url]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... _DI59o5Rfz[\url]

An honnest comparison would at least be to integrate the effect of the other individual action over your whole lineage as well.

Basicaly, have one less child means let less humans exist in the future. If this is the most effective action, why kill your lineage and not some other humans that aren't you or your lineage? I can't help thinking that it is a soft way of asking people to kill themself (which would have a higher impact), which is very amoral.

We could calculate that murdering one more women during your lifetime would have even more effect (basicaly, the impact for having one less chess child times twice the fertility rate). I think we agree that it isn't the right action to fight climate change.

What I want to get too, is that it makes no impact by itself to prevent or stop the existence of an human, because another human will replace him. You need to keep control of ressources, while not consuming them. If you are willing to do that, and teach your child to do that, it makes more sense to have a child, than die out and leave the ressource to someone who isn't willing to teach his child to refrain from using them.

Edit:
In the end, all you are left with is your will to exist. There are solution to this problem, they are quite simple. They will open up in the future. Don't engage in behaviors that disgust you, try to be happy, try to exist and have child. They are in the end the only thing that will give you a reason to find a solution. We are like every other creature on this planet. We fill a niche, we destroy unbalances. Maybe we are destroying some unbalance we rely on, maybe we'll find another unbalance to exploit.
It's not up to you to decide if your duty is fullfilled and if you have a place here. You provide options.

[the_platypus]

@jacob, thank you for reminding me of that Leopold quote. I definitely do not want to end up bitter. I hope to end up barefoot and happy in the sun. I do vacillate about this One Problem to Rule Them All; some days are better than others; talking about it on worse days definitely helps. I don't have such issues with, say, nuclear war, AI run amok, alien invasions, asteroids, or what have you, because to me those things are out of control for myself and society broadly. But climate change...shit. We're all fossil fuel slave owners, and instead of whipping people we cut free the Four Horsemen. It's still hard for me to accept on an emotional level, but you are right that the idea things could have been different is essentially a delusion. About the forum post you linked to, I believe I'm near level five on the awareness ladder; on some days I long for the inner path and a nice cave like Suelo, and on others I get-my-ass-off-the-floor-and-grab-my-poster-and-protest-car-culture. If anything, the gift I can occasionally receive from this knowledge is a kind of relief from fear best described as, "fuck it; go for it," in a motivating, positive way. I sincerely intend to read "No Good Alternative," and I am now working on, "Letters to a Young Poet." I am very, very grateful for the insight and perspective you provide from your experiences and for the resources you have shared.

@Qazwer, @BWND, @RealPerson, @Bankai, I sincerely appreciate your encouragement and words. @RealPerson, I do intend to read Kalmus', "Being the Change." @Bankai, I do essentially everything on that list you gave (I am nearing car-free, still working on solving those occasional inter-city and cross-city trips); I still have a long way to go, but it's tough knowing odds are my efforts are futile; it's also tough occasionally feeling alone in these efforts, when family or coworkers think you are crazy. @Qazwer, the trick to flying is to be born an air bender! @BWND, I share your deep anger at injustice. I am looking to get involved with the serious activist organizations in my area. I wish I could buy a bunch of land and rewild it but I do not have that kind of money.

@Alphaville, I'm glad you replied. You're right; this is basically the problem of evil (or suffering), and it brings me back to my philosophy courses and religious readings. I'm spiritually practical in that I will take whatever wisdom I feel is both true and useful. I do intend to read the Hannah Arendt work you mentioned; I am, obviously, quite furiously fascinated with the disconnect between doing evil and feeling evil/having self-esteem; I think ignorance creating a sense of separation from other sentient beings is responsible for a lot of remorseless evil; but once someone does finally see a glimmer of themselves in the eyes of another, then I have to think that any wrong done must come with a corresponding pain in the conscience. How can it not? The moment I see myself in you is the moment to hurt you is to hurt myself. The only way one can be truly cold blooded is by never making the connection between "self" and "other", and of sentience and suffering as the only thing thing that matters in questions of moral inclusion; once this is known, any denial bears the fruit of cognitive dissonance and thus suffering. I really appreciate your encouragement. I think to find my way for the summer of my life, I will need to initially take it back a step and give time to listen to my feelings and intuition. Truly figuring out what to do and then actually doing it is infinitely more difficult and scary than being depressed or angry and resigning when there are still longshot chances in the position. I'm just honestly at a loss when my work-in-progress pathogenesis of societal woes goes as deeply as money? agriculture? the state? What thing leads to unrestrained sociopathy which seems to define hegemonic, imperial, industrial, hierarchical society and which is seemingly non-existent in egalitarian societies? Truly the poor will always be with us until we answer this question; but I think Helena Norberg-Hodge answered it well enough, as do the Hadza, etc. So, I only need to figure out what to do with that hypothesis/question.

@Dream of Freedom, I appreciate your response. I am replacing some of my collapse reading with learning more about ecology. Get to know and love before the chance is lost. Also, permaculture and foraging videos can be pretty fun. I've also been trying to get outside in nature each day, and I am lucky to have a good chunk of semi-wilderness not far from my place. I go there not to think, but to perceive, and hopefully lighten up a bit.

@Redo & @Mister Imperceptible, I'm really not sure what tone you're trying to convey; online, I have like zero sarcasm radar. If I assume good intentions, then respectfully nihilism is pretty useless for making any decisions at all; and it ignores the fact that my/our suffering still matters to me/us right now in this very life; but still, these are pretty like, low-empathy responses? I have been a little unsure about this forum in the past, as a lurker, because it swings so heavily towards a certain kind of thinker (and I think I am somewhat of an outlier here as a more, well, emotional type).

[UK-with-kids]

I've been through this process and seen others go through it. You start your life with a simplistic view of the world and think you can change it for the better, but as you get older you realise everything is more complicated and you can't change very much. Reading @DOF's comment above about an "information diet" I initially wondered if it was a typo and he meant a "low information diet", as that's what I'd recommend. We're just not wired to cope with the constant deluge of apocalyptic problems in the world, it's utterly depressing. Better to stop reading about it and get on with your life.

There's that other quote that you should never attribute to malice what can be better explained by incompetence. I don't think most people are "evil" (maybe a few are) but most people definitely haven't got their shit together when it comes to doing the right thing. You can set an example there, but there's not much to be gained by getting mad at other people for driving their cars too much or not recycling.

Sometimes when I'm on my bike with my kids and a car driver races past really fast and dangerously close, I get quite angry. But then I tell myself we'll have self driving cars one day, so that particular problem will be solved. There are ways you can change your thinking like this to cope with all kinds of negative mental cycles that you can get stuck in. This is really a kind of DIY CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy).

With the anger, I think it also helps that my hormones rage a bit less than they did when I was 20 years younger! As people age they tend to mellow and not be so hot headed about things.

Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom book also springs to mind. on this topic. Right from the introduction he talks about people spending their lives raging against injustices in the world, campaigning and trying to change things. But the world carries on in its own way, and not much changes. You can only really change yourself.

One of my favourite T-shirts has the slogan "I used to care". Optional second line "but now I take a pill for that".

[UK-with-kids]

On the having kids topic, I often read this claim that not having kids is the single biggest decision you can make (or have made for you) that will cut your carbon emissions.

I would put that squarely in the category of "reassuring thoughts" - great for people if it provides some peace on a personal level, but clearly you only need to spend 5 minutes thinking through the consequences to figure out that it won't make a whole lot of difference to the world.

It's a bit like deciding you're going to stop taking flights, and of course if everybody did that then it would make a huge difference. But everybody won't do that. Your seat on the plane will be taken by somebody else instead. And if too many people stopped flying then the government would step in and offer some incentives - just like some countries have done by offering payments to new mothers when the birth rate got too low.

And it doesn't actually matter to society who was the father and mother of the kids, just that the human race gets perpetuated.

[boomly]

I don't think most people actually know what the solution is - mainly, shrinking the global economy.