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
I try to maintain a balance. I try to accept that a lot of the problems in the world are beyond my reach, to keep informed and to help in the small ways I can, and to draw motivation from it, but without throwing myself into despair. It’s hard and I’ll admit I err on the side of ignorance these days.
Mostly I focus on solarpunk fiction projects (I think we need to be able to imagine better futures and that fiction gives us roadmaps and chances to explore these possibilities safely), project research, and ways to help at the level where I can effect things.
I help fix things for people so they don’t have to buy new, I help organize and give stuff away at my local swap shop and on the free groups online, I try to help with local land conservation. And I take the small victories where I can get them. If I fix something or find some ewaste electronics for a neighbor and save them spending $60 on Amazon, the world isn’t changed but Amazon didn’t get that money and maybe my neighbor won’t reach for it as their first choice next time. If we conserve a hundred acres of forest it’s not stopping any of the big impending climate disasters, but some habitat is preserved, and perhaps some of the routes animals follow as they roam won’t get as fragmented as they would otherwise. And I imagine better worlds and try to show them to others.