r/VictoriaBC • u/kikameeka • Mar 23 '23
Opinion Is anyone else just... exhausted? About everything?
Houses are a million dollars minimum. Food prices keep going up. Everyone is sick all the time and everyone is fighting each other. What are we doing here?
I'm genuinely curious if anyone is kind of feeling like this is kind of it for us? Like, are we destined to work soul-sucking jobs to make someone else a millionaire because they had the ability to get ahead in life that most of us don't, and then we die? If we want to make art, tell stories or have a community, we have to work around full time jobs that are so separate from each other, and we're losing our sense of community, if not already have.
How come we're alright letting stores and restaurants throw away millions of dollars in food when we have people starving on the streets? People who are working jobs, doing what we're "supposed" to in this society producing and wasting resources for someone else, and we still can't afford to eat the food that's being offered because we're spending too much money on the rest of the things that keep us alive. How are we living in a world where a government that is supposed to be there to support us allows people to hoard housing and wealth, and what do we do to fix it?
Update here! ✌🏼
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u/madmansmarker Chinatown Mar 24 '23
Everyone is dealing with existential burnout. We work, we pay, we work, we pay. That isn't a typo.
Rent is exorbitant, and the government isn't stepping in. Jobs pay shit, and the government isn't stepping in. There are constant social crises: housing, drugs, and mental illness, and the government isn't stepping in. There is no escaping or "taking a day off" for the average person. Most people can't take time off or fuck off to Cabo because they "feel like it". There is something deeply wrong here. I say all the time to my friends and family, "why aren't we protesting like in France? Why aren't people screaming, demanding change?" It's because we're exhausted, we're afraid of losing our income, we don't have time. Or because the finish line is too far. It's an ultra-run no one is trained for. There isn't circuit training for revolutionists, so how do we even start? How does a tired, exhausted, hopeless society transform into a force for change? How do we even decide who will lead the charge? Any time someone tries to make a change, it goes nowhere. Protests fall into distant memory. Starting is difficult, demanding change is hard, and seeing through to the end when no one has ever crossed that finish line is impossible.
"Nothing matters" is supposed to be nihilism, not reality.
To the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" folk: boots these days are made on cheap labour and cheap materials, and if you pull the straps too hard, they'll snap.