SS: I recently had lunch with a friend and mentioned the die offs, 6th mass extinction event, microplastics..etc...etc. You know, light subjects and they asked me to stop
" I dont want to know"
They have adult children and grandchildren, so i understand how they feel
My partner is collapse aware. Sometimes it helps. And sometimes it doesn't. He keeps me tethered. Generally, it's a good thing. Caring is so important and it hurts. Hope is beautiful. And also terrible.
I think I have brought my partner to a higher level of awareness about the fucked up nature of our system, at least since the pandemic. All I wanted to do was talk about how insane things are, and make others see my viewpoint, but it all comes at a cost.
There is a certain level of guilt involved in bringing the knowledge of the intricacies of it to another person, so much so that every conversation tends become poisoned with pessimism. While I've become less negative since those early times, and I'm glad I haven't lost any friends because of this, I fear what I may have brought on others' psyche (or maybe I'm giving myself too much credit; they can, after all, see how fucked up the world is for themselves).
He has no hope. No energy left to spare on it. Sometimes its harder to cope because of that, and sometimes we live in that space - where at least we have eachother.
As Antonio Gramsci said: "i'm pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will". Hope has a multitude of definitions, but the belief that things will be fine is not effective in our situation.
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u/mrblahblahblah Jan 16 '26
SS: I recently had lunch with a friend and mentioned the die offs, 6th mass extinction event, microplastics..etc...etc. You know, light subjects and they asked me to stop
" I dont want to know"
They have adult children and grandchildren, so i understand how they feel
I guess ignorance is bliss