#societal decline

[lucifidious]

We need to normalize being kind about the “gross” aspects of poor mental health like hair matting, dental hygiene, etc WITHOUT feeling entitled to the details of the struggle that dragged somebody into it.

People struggling with mental illness don’t owe you their stories, you don’t get a 500 word essay on why they can’t wash their hair or get out of bed or cook a three coarse meal for you to decide wether or not you’re gonna validate them.

Homeless people don’t owe you their stories, you don’t get to demand a touching testimony on their pasts to verify wether or not they’re “worth” food, clothing, and housing.

This entitlement I see people have towards those in suffering is absurd; exploitative even.

It’s little more than emotional masturbation, “sure I’ll help you, but you’ve gotta make me cry or feel horrified first. I gotta feel like a good person before I decide you’re worth the trouble,” is what these people are saying.

Mental Health discourse and the countless blogs and tiktok pages and YouTube channels I see touting the good deeds of people distributing marginalized or mentally ill people’s struggles to a hoard of followers who spend hours in the comments debating the validity of each one is a new era of poverty porn,

one that puts the reactions of those witnessing it on a pedestal above those who are experiencing it.

[americanfirstmagazine]

Societal Decline by Michael Theroux

It is possible for a people to become ashamed of their own success. It is apparent that an entire race can tire of that process by which the

Meritocracy can revive what's been lost. Read Michael Theroux's latest piece, "Societal Decline" with American First Magazine.

[well-hello-hi]

If aliens wont make contact with us bcus they dont want to ruin our religion for us for fear that our society would collapse, just do it i actually want to experience societal collapse i think it would be fun

🥺

[faeriesuns]

I really feel like shit will hit the fan soon so I want to prep for whats coming, but I have no idea about what to do. I'm trying to convince my parents to let me have a garden but it's not working out so well

[the-funtime-autocrat]

Simply put, in a society in which human relationships are satisfying, life will be bearable even if it has only primitive means of production. Whereas in a society where human relationships are impoverished and toxic, life will be difficult and unbearable, however 'advanced' such society may be in terms of mechanical-technological evolution.

Mattias Desmet, “The Psychology of Totalitarianism” (2022).

[fanfoolishness]

hope

I hope the people of the future look kindly upon our follies.

I hope that the anthropologists, with tender hands and questing minds, reach into our detritus to sift forgotten details of our decline. Perhaps they’ll learn to play our music and tell our stories once again, snappy pop and clever rap, good books and holy words, ringing out anew to ears that have never heard the like. Perhaps these things will move them; perhaps they’ll try, and fail, to understand. Maybe they will devise new meanings entirely for our most treasured tales.

I like to think that the people of the future might be impressed by our better impulses, our better selves: the gardeners, the veterinarians, the researchers, the teachers, the nurses, the activists, the nannies. They may look back upon our people in the twilight of our time, and find the helpers, and marvel at their efforts.

Yet imagine students snickering about the backwards people of long ago, with their social media and their inanities; imagine teens and children in disbelief at those vaccine-refusers, at the fools who filled their oceans vast with trash. They might rest secure in the knowledge that they could never be so ignorant.

And then I cringe to wonder how the people of the future would despise us, with all our hatred, our selfishness, our racism, cruelty, denial. Will they see us in the context of the human social organism, the civilization thrashing with its growing pains, the society caught in fits, in starts, in cycles? Will they forgive us our wars and our violence?

Will they create what we could not: a society safe and free? Or will homegrown wolves at the door tear down all they have worked to build?

It weighs heavy on me, the coming end.

Will they realize that some of us, at least, saw our fate looming long before it claimed us? Will they bow their heads, shed a tear, for those of us who saw the rising waters, the smoke-hazed sky, the falling birds -- for those of us who saw the coming flame and flood, and begged for help?

I dream the people of the future might see our struggle. May they feel it in their bones, so alike to ours, the strife captured in our photos, our missives, our books and long-lost websites. I wonder what they will do with the knowledge of our bloody wars, our great sickness, the silent spring-turned-eternal summer. I wonder what they will make of our legacy.

Will it teach them?

Will they learn?

I hope the people of the future are better, kinder, wiser than we were. I hope they look back upon us with compassion, even if perhaps it is undeserved.

I hope the people of the future see the truth of who we were, flawed, beautiful, hateful, gentle, brilliant, lost. We were so many things, and I hope they forgive us for all of them.

I hope --

I hope there will be people, in the future.

-

This came to me tonight. I have to hope I won't see America fall in my lifetime; I have to hope the Earth is not damaged beyond repair. I have to hope. Don't I?

[arenaissanceofnothing]

Today I was helping an elderly lady at work and I had to see her ID and she said something like, "oh, ignore the number" or some jab at her age and I high-key just blurted, "aging is a wonderful thing, no reason to hide it."

And she laughed at me and told me that I only think that because I'm young.

So, me, not having any filter, said, "No, really. Aging is a wonderful thing, and a privilege many of my friends and loved ones may never have. There are so many who will never have the opportunity to know how life would have shaped them and the people they love, so don't be embarrassed about your age."

And she was really quiet for a second and I was worried for a bit, but then she finally said, "oh, I never thought about it like that. Thank you."

That was pretty much the end of it, but I've been thinking about it all day bc we live in a society that kind of idolizes eternal youth and so we have an entire older generation of people who resent young people or, like this lady, are for some reason ashamed of their ageing. Meanwhile, I'm part of the generation born just as the world really and truly started to take a turn for the worst, and every day I lament the fact that I will never get to see my friends faces when they've grown crow's feet by their eyes or worry lines in their foreheads. I look in the mirror and I wonder what I would look like if I were ever able to be a grandmother like the generations before me could, but I doubt I'll make it that long, and even if I did, I couldn't justify bringing a child into the world as it is. It makes me profoundly sad that all these people are squandering their elder years wishing to be younger without realizing how lucky they are to have had so many years.

I know ageing isn't easy for most people because bodies wear out and sometimes they become painful or unreliable, but there is joy in knowing someone lived so thoroughly that their bodies gave out under the weight of their experience. Sometimes I catch myself becoming so bitter and angry about it because they had their turn, they lived their lives so much longer than many of my friends ever will, and still they resent us for our youth. They'll have the privilege of dying of old age, having lived full and wonderful lives, while my generation stares down the fifth mass extinction event. They will pass on never having appreciated old age for what it is, never knowing that so many of us would give anything to have the chance to have lived as they got to.

It makes me unspeakably sad to see it and know I can never make them realize their fortune.

[neveraskwhy-p8]

“I could say I’m not sad, but I’d be lying. The problem is the world won’t let me stay a kid forever, so I can’t lie around crying about it either.”

~ Nara Shikamaru