I have a question for you all: how do you deal with hopelessness? How do you manage to stay positive and keep a positive outlook?
I am talking about being surrounded by a world where common sense seems to have taken an extra long vacation and people seem not to care even about their own interests anymore. When you see people cheering for decisions that will harm them because they think it’s a small price to pay for seeing others hit even harder than themselves how can you stay positive and not think you’ve ended up in a lunatic asylum? How can you keep hoping for a brighter future when people seem to think that they can “change” things simply by casting a vote in a ballot and doing nothing else?
Perhaps my problem is that I got into politics while very young and saw how easy it is to take people in when you can sport a title like “Senator” or “Mayor” or how people will continue supporting even the most rotten individual if once in a while he/she will patriotically wave a flag or cry “freedom!”.
To be frank with you there moments I quite literally do not know if it’s not better just to pack everything in, move to some God-forsaken place, build a hut in the middle of nowhere and wait for the end. Quite often I just feel I am wasting my time trying to make things even a tad better for people so stupid they would gladly sacrifice their firstborn without flinching if told so or just think that since we live in a “democracy” all we’ve got to do is just casting the “right” vote once in a while.
Thanks for hearing this rant, you are one of the few rays of hope in an otherwise dark world.
Well, quite frankly, stop caring about them. Adjust your aims to help yourself, and if they happened to get helped along the way, great. If not, screw 'em.
It’s difficult. I shake it off and then a whole other thing pops up and it makes me think of the stupidity of some people to follow lock step in a personality cult that a politician sells to people. And how people don’t see it for themselves on what’s happening. I mean I figured it out long ago before I read any books by Rothbard, Mises, etc… I watched the tv and saw the politicians lie or say things that were plain dumb and some people buy into it without seemingly a thought. The way I originally saw it and still do for the most part, is people are increasingly restrained by time and so they have to trust the politicians to do their own homework. I mean that’s why they are there in the first place, right? To supposedly watch over and protect people while people for the most part don’t have the time to do all the special things politicians do. And they must be doing something of value because they are here. I hear a lot of “It’s reality” and so I’m supposed to accept the status quo? I didn’t know why these things were happening, they simply were. And I knew something was wrong, but didn’t know exactly what. I knew I didn’t want to be around all this bullshit, but then again, I didn’t know what to rid and what to keep. I fell into the same traps that I argue against today and call dumb today. I therefore think I was dumb, and on some issues I probably could use a good learning still. Can I readily blame some people for doing what I fought for, lock-step with them, at one point in time?
Fear in this context is the enemy. If it takes over my ability to judge and enjoy life, then I’ve lost and given in, especially when it is possible, as I currently do for the most part, to live a healthy life and keep up the spirit in enjoying what I do find worthwhile. I can’t lose sight of that.
Don’t waste your time. I would feel hopeless if I was knowingly wasting my time as well. As far as adjusting your feelings and outlook it comes from self therapy. You can’t understand what your hopeless is about while you ARE hopeless. You have to observe your hopelessness from outside of it to understand it, from a centered place.
As bad as some things are now, I think the USA at least has seen worse. Plus we have the Internet. There are so many X factors and rapidly changing elements that it’s very hard to predict, and I think that in itself is the most vexing thing for the State and the establishment in general.
What keeps me going is educating myself more and more, so that what I know can spill over and teach others.
Also, it’s getting better, if you look at the big picture. Russia and China and all those satellites of theirs were socialist horrors till very recently, and they fell apart totally till every last person there, including the rulers benefiting from the corrupt system, wanted to get rid of it. And lo and behold it evaporated bloodlessly.
That part of the world started tasting the wonders of Socialism way before we did. They are our future. Couple of millions deaths by starvation, a reign of terror or two, and then we too will love free enterprise again.
So give us 70 years. By the end of your lifetime things will either be better, or so awful they have nowhere to go but up.
I know what you mean. I get the same way sometimes too. I do find solace though in the fact that the libertarian movement is the largest it has ever been with the Ron Paul presidential campaign. I also find solace in the fact that humanity cannot defy natural law. All around the United States, city governments are downsizing. Soon state governments will have to downsize, and then lastly, the Federal government will have to downsize. Lastly, people have so much easier access to information today as opposed to 15 years ago. In 30 years, the older population will have died off (those that rely more on main stream media) and a new generation of people will be on the planet that is willing to use the new technology for communication. This is the single largest factor in the spread of libertarian and Austrian economics ideas. Hundreds have moved to New Hampshire for more liberty. Hopefully this location will soon become a hub for freedom. I myself am going to be calling people affiliated with the Libertarian party in Utah to see if they want to get involved in spreading the message of liberty by doing a presentation at schools or whatever else we can think of.
I think of Rothbard talking about how no one thought the soviet union would fall and it did.
I get depressed when discussing politics and when people just accept politicians ideas with no thought.
What gets me the most is when people I like and love fall for these ideas.
It makes me feel so alone.Like the OP said I think I’d go crazy without this site and you guys.
I had a thought the other day which gave me some hope.Looking at maps of world history countries always seem to go through a flux of centralization of smaller regions into one big unit followed by splitting into smaller units for some reason many years later.
If you look at this century(?) then you see that though there has been/ is centralization but but this is offset by large amounts of decrentralization into smaller and smaller units.Hopefully this trend continues.If so secession and Hoppe’s plan for anarchy aren’t too far away.
In the end it’s about the fight not the end goal.
We fight for freedom and property regardless of whether it can be achieved because it’s what’s right.it’s what’s best for the world.
I’m always cheered up a little anytime libertarian or austrian insights are confirmed.
I think it also helps not to be thinking Libertarian wise 24/7. I’m prone to this. I think it’s good to just relax every so often and do whatever you enjoy.
What is making you so “hopeless” about America? Are people suffering and dying at the hands of an intolerant government? Starving because economic planning has gone awry? No. In terms of straight up standard of living, the vast majority of U.S. citizens are enjoying a life even our close ancestors would consider rich (even in spite of this recession).
It sounds like what’s making you “hopeless” is that a significant portion of the country holds different political values than you. The mental anguish you feel is pain that accompanies people disagreeing with you. The Horror!!!
Honestly, if these are your biggest problems, count your blessings. Enjoy your life.
Thanks for the recommendation, as I can’t help but lose faith in humanity listening to Bill Hicks’ stand up and considering how people are apparently enjoying it.
I’ve tried giving him another chance, but I couldn’t stand more than like 5 minutes.
You want hopeless? Watch Cidade de Deus, Trope de Elite or Cidade dos Homens. Besides being three excellent films, they’ll show what hopelessness is. As Student says, count your blessings, you live in a relatively free and exceedingly wealthy country. You don’t have to worry about corrupt police, gang wars or putting food on your table.
the only reason that people can get away with ‘not worrying about them’ is because some years ago other people did worry about them. I encourage everyone to worry about them, so that they wont happen. This makes more sense than not worrying about them and being passive whilst they happen more and more. Doesn’t it?
These are still very real fears for many americans. I’ve been arrested twice, once for a crime I didn’t commit, and once for having the incorrect level of alcohol in my bloodstream. The amount of money I’ve paid dealing with that bullshit is nothing compared to the folks who have been tased, beaten, or murdered by the divine police caste.
Spend some time in Baltimore and realize how bad gang crime is.
Of course we have it better here than someone in Darfur or Haiti.
This is one way to see it, but we can always think to ourselves “it could be worse.” I think what the OP is grappling with is that raw gut instinct and feeling of contempt knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way. He isn’t hopeless about the economic recession or obamacare, he feels hopeless because he has discovered the objective truths praxeology and people don’t seem to care.