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Comment by laegooose | Hacker News Reader

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders. It's not up to you or me what happens with human civilization.

Do what feels right and take care of yourself.

This is antithetical to the core concept of American government: it literally is up to everyone what happens. Vote, campaign for others, lobby, run for local office, or bigger offices if you find yourself successful.

Look at AOC. People will be vile, they will mock you and attack you, but you can inch the world in the direction you think it should go.

In any given situation, it may not be clear how an individual can start to effect change. But we certainly, absolutely can.

If most people carried the world on their shoulders we might stand a chance but since most don't do that yeah. Just don't bother. (not sure if sarcastic)

Sarcasm aside, don't bother is great advice. There are many ways to approach improving the world, many of them cancel out and most of them do more significant damage in retrospect.

My own belief is to do as little as possible unless a lot of factors are known. Taking travel as an example, doing the least and cheapest is a good bet, it took me considerable research decide to pay more for trains than planes. Where is the additional money going? Even if trains vs planes are environmentally better there's a high risk of financing a military with the energy taxes only the train systems pay. A military can do more environmental damage with 10¢ than you can do with a dollar and then there is what they do with intention.

Governments are trying to game the world to maximum GDP all the time, but what on offer is mostly garbage and enough people turning down all offers forces them to rethink the total economy or (since they are simple folk,) go into recession. Recession is supposed to be terrible, but isn't it actually better than the fast road to a life in an inescapable mall?

That the bad actors of the 1980s are still attacking us and often seem to be back on track for their dream of shitting on the world is bad, but has not been as bad as getting there in 1990 and that is thanks to the path we took with lots of economic upsets.

We are like children who dream of a life of eating only cake and it is our good fortune that keeps us from the world we want long enough to understand a little about what is wrong with it and build some marginally better dreams.

/Ramble

> Governments are trying to game the world to maximum GDP all the time, but what on offer is mostly garbage and enough people turning down all offers forces them to rethink the total economy or (since they are simple folk,) go into recession. Recession is supposed to be terrible, but isn't it actually better than the fast road to a life in an inescapable mall?

Agreed. I like your viewpoint. Time to opt out?

I don't quite understand what your point is but I realise that I'm fully sarcastic. It feels very ovbious that the world would be better if everyone actually shared the responsibility instead of escaping it.

I think this is good advice. Who does it benefit to be constantly anxious about the fate of the world and second-guessing one's actions? I'd suggest it doesn't benefit the individual - in fact I'd suggest it's designed to harm and demoralise.

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