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Comment by yboris | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit hard to disentangle the "USA is on fire" events over the last year from the "working from home is the cause".

For me, it's been really challenging during weeks of BLM protests: the seeming insignificance of tasks at work as compared to the plight of people across our troubled nation. Similarly, during the elections, when it seemed like we could have end up with 4 more years of inaction during a time when every year matters in averting a global warming catastrophe.

It's a bit easier now that the government is better aligned with what I think is a good direction.

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Some perspective—for a decent chunk of the population, the USA has always been on fire for them.

There is something to be said for better understanding and empathizing what daily life has been like for a lot of our neighbors and colleagues who never really felt that things were right in our society.

As one of those neighbors and colleagues, I genuinely thank you for sharing this perspective.

This is one of the major things I miss about drinking in bars. I've had many super enlightening conversations with people I would otherwise never talk with at bars after a couple beers. YMMV of course, but as a "happy drunk" who usually only frequented quiet/low key places, it really was nice.

Not to minimize, but society being "right" is an almost unachievable bar to hit. I tend to think in more relative terms. Most metrics of quality of life have been steadily improving for a long time. I think a lot of the things people see as being "on fire" in 2020 are things that have been going on forever, but we never bothered to worry about them because something more pressing was ahead of it in line.

The thing that has set my anxiety on fire isn't that society has problems, it's just how far apart people's base perceptions are. Obviously we've always had crazies, but the capitol insurrection shows just how far removed from reality a huge swath of the population is. We can have debates on how to solve issues of policing, or taxation or health care, but in my mind there is just no justification for the 74M people who think a lying racist moron is the answer to anything. And I genuinely believe that "lying racist moron" is objectively true at this point. He led an insurrection based on absolute lies and people ate it up. They just don't exist on the same plane of reality as I do.

Trump is a symptom/result of things that have been "going on forever". In the same sense, couldn't your shock come from being out of touch with what your fellow countrymen desired for the last few decades? Not to minimize, of course.

These things are unsurprising given the state of the middle class in the US.

It’s no different than why hitler rose to power and scape goated the Jews.

When people are stretched thin the ugliest in them comes out and opportunistic “leaders” have exploited that for centuries.

You want to fix racism but you’re putting the cart before the horse. Fix the staggering wealth inequality first before you even think about having hope of addressing stereotyping and racism.

Downvote me all you want, but this is history. I’m not saying racism isn’t real, it’s very real and very ugly. It’s part of human nature to stereotype others, just as it’s human nature to fight and hoard resources. We have to combat these innate tendencies as a community by FIRST ensuring that all our people have the ability to live comfortably.

The unfortunate reality for most marginalized communities in the US is that they simply don’t have the time to sit and wait for the economic policies to shift back to favoring the middle class. They have to act now.

Many of us have been warning of this for some time. There are similar problems in Europe, but not so culturally extreme. Due to local history, the blindspots are not so prevalent and populists tend to go away.

What is most disconcerning though, is US people seeming to vote against their own interests. Maybe a third party instead of co-opting those who clearly don't have your own interest at heart. But then we see the predicament since the system/culture/billionaires don't support more parties and hard compromises.

> What is most disconcerning though, is US people seeming to vote against their own interests.

They are voting against their own economic interests, but clearly there are other non-economic interests that are more important to them in play here.

We see how loyalty is rewarded in the end game though. People might think they're being smart while being duped into wishful thinking. Just for someone else to get into the next leveraged position to sink everyone around them, in order to "win".

A political platform would be able to reason and explain projects using facts and figures.

There is a difference between "racism exists" and "white supremacists are rife within law enforcement and political leaders". We are seeing the culmination of that going unaddressed for decades.

It sounds like what you’re describing is an addiction to news. This leads to a terrible burn-out cycle: news addiction leads to reading more news (which routinely manipulates your emotions) -> less time spent actually working/reading books/going outside -> more time reading the news.

Completely agree, reading the news has been the single biggest detriment to my productivity. It's tough because it's so easy to do, and pretty much baked in at this point. Sometimes I feel like the only way to break it would be to switch to something entirely unrelated to sitting behind a keyboard all day.

Rioting in my city during the protests and the way it was underreported (initially) was how I experienced it, not as a plight of suffering students and bicyclists who were the marchers. Now crime here has gone up a lot, including a doubling of homicides, a tripling of shootings, and all sorts of random violence in neighborhoods not known for it.

Trapped in a one bedroom, working all day, and walking outside sucks. There's nowhere to go except online, and that's full of stressful garbage.

My dream is nature and simplicity.

I understand the dream of nature and simplicity, however living an austere lifestyle is very far from simple.

E.g. If you live in a cold, remote climate this time of year:

Do you have enough food for winter? water?

Will your plumbing freeze? Do you have enough firewood?

Will your access to the outside world disappear based on weather conditions?

... Definitely an extreme case that I describe above, but I certainly would take this set of challenges over what the cities are having to deal with.

In a one bedroom working alone all day is unnaturally austere.

That's if you take an extreme interpretation of OP's dream of living in nature and simplicity. An alternative would be to move to a normal rural area of their current state where they still have power and are only 10-30 minutes from town. At least here in upstate NY, you can drive thirtyish minutes from many suburbs and end up in a nice spread out area with plenty of land for a decent price.

My city has had the same. My solution was leaving for a rental villa on the sea in a warmer climate. I highly recommend it.

The US events over the last year could indeed be stressful.

I am in Europe though, which makes me feel the main reason for this is lockdown/WFH.

I'm in America though I work for a firm based in northern Italy (Lombardia), with colleagues in France, Portugal and Switzerland as well. The lockdowns faced by those in western Europe seemed extraordinarily difficult, in particular the much greater restrictions on being outdoors, and the fact that many Europeans live in much smaller homes than in the US and do not have private yards/gardens as commonly. It has been very tough for my colleagues. You're definitely not alone.

I'm having a lot of stress due to wfh, but I realize that with scandinavian working conditions and an office job I have nothing to complain about (also pretty relaxed rules). I've saved money on not commuting. I need to help everyone get through this, I don't need help myself.

I wouldn't minimize your struggles simply because others potentially have it worse. It's okay to say "this really sucks for me" and also be thankful for the things you do have that others might not.

Have you been fully wfh in the EU as well?

Personally, I feel a bit like I'm going crazy. I really miss getting dressed up for the office and the social outlet of chatting with coworkers. We were flexible re: wfh before COVID but most of us still went in a few days a week.

I love my spouse but miss having more people than just him to interact with!

Not only have we been fully WFH in the EU, in many areas we were not allowed to leave our homes except for groceries, for extremely long periods of time. I live in Madrid, this went on from March 30 to May 2 (I'm having trouble finding the exact dates, as they are not the same for every region in Spain, so we might have been locked down a bit longer than this).

After that, there were very rigid limitation about at what times we were allowed outside and at what times. At the beginning we were not allowed to be further than 1KM from our house, and only from 06:00 to 10:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00.

There's still 24 hours left.

I've been enjoying watching the USA burn, mostly as a nice distraction from covid.

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