Please help me out with my doomsday anxiety

July 9, 2008 8:15 AM

Please help me out with my doomsday anxiety. I need some respected, rational, realistic stuff to read about economy, oil, food, etc. in the near future and beyond.

Maybe I spend too much time on the internet. But I have never been as anxious about the future as I am now. (For example, Y2K hysteria was so funny to me and I could NOT believe anyone would actually think bad stuff was going to happen. I had no anxiety about that. I was in my early 20's then.)

There have even been Metafilter threads lately where comments touch on the fact that stuff is going to be so much worse than anyone in the mainstream media or Washington will talk about. Human die-off! Food shortages, complete collapse of the US economy/our monetary system (not just a recession or depression, but much worse). And that this stuff might start happening very soon.

I find myself unable to act on anything, because I just think, what's the point? I've been racking up charges on my credit cards because I don't see the point in paying them off or saving. I've stopped making long term plans.

I've never been prone to depression before, but I did see a therapist because I've been SO anxious. It didn't go well; she dismissed any and all discussion of the economy and basically "gave me tools" to push those thoughts out of my head.

That seems an awful lot like denial, and I found myself unable to do it. I really, really tried.

I am making a real effort not to read the paranoid crazy stuff anymore, and I want a rational perspective. Not "there is no recession" BS, but not paranoid schizophrenic rantings, either. Where can I find this?

Bonus: for those who are older and clearly remember past recessions, is this the same stuff that happened before? My family had a very difficult time in the 80s but I was a kid and was insulated from much of it. Maybe my parents felt then like I do now? Personal insights are welcome, too.

posted by anonymous to society & culture (37 answers total)

Put it in perspective. 50 years ago--hell, 20 years ago--the entire world was one push of a button away from instant nuclear annihilation. Many people were convinced they would not live to middle age. Read about Col. Stanislav Petrov--a man who literally saved the world in a split-second decision. Whatever the current tensions between the US and Russia, there's no nuclear standoff in the works, and the threat posed by Iran and North Korea is minuscule in comparison.

Yet people in the second half of the 20th century managed to do things, build their lives, despite the Damocles' sword of instant violent death constantly hanging over them. Forget about what might happen next year; just worry about next week.
posted by nasreddin at 8:26 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Read up on history. Particularly the economics and living conditions of the Great Depression, WW2, 1970's oil crisis, etc. Times have been far, far worse than they are now and not only did humanity survive, but come through even stronger.
Also, don't put too much creedence in the rantings of Metafilter commenters. There have always been Chicken Littles and they have always been wrong.
posted by rocket88 at 8:36 AM on July 9, 2008

What exactly is it that you are afraid of? Try extending your fear into the worst possible scenario you can imagine and figure out what your fear is stemming from. Fear of death? If everything turns out as bad as you imagine, then the dead may be the lucky ones. Fear of emotional pain at witnessing the horrors around you? Starvation, hardship, embarassment? All these are concrete, but what can you really do about them now anyway? My advice would be to relax, don't read as much bad news, and educate yourself on the myriad of really miserable human historic periods that we all somehow got through.
posted by drinkcoffee at 8:39 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Stop looking at so many web/news sites and you'll find more free space in your head. Prepare for unexpected times the same way you might prepare for a hurricane (stock up on provisions and emergency equipment). Put away a year's worth of expenses in a low-risk account. And stop looking at so many web/news sites.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:42 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ran Prieur's got a good blog (and great essays, too). He used to be a big crashologist type but he has always had a very rational perspective on things. Here's a bit from his blog from April:

Meanwhile, I've been backpedaling on my own collapse forecasts from four or five years ago, because I've seen so many predictions of catastrophe that turned out false. I mean, on one level, we were right: oil production did peak this decade, and climate change accelerated, and the housing bubble popped hard, and the dollar is collapsing, and oil producing countries are switching to the euro, and the stock market has already crashed if it's measured in real stuff, and the Iraq occupation has been a total failure, and we even got the near-destruction of America's biggest seaport city as a bonus.

Where we were wrong is that after all of that, you still have to squint to see any difference at all in American daily life. The supermarkets are still full of food, the electric grids are still up, and I haven't even noticed any reduction in traffic. Ooo, cars are a little smaller, and look, there's an abandoned house! Come on, where are the roving gangs and the urban hordes eating their dead? It's like a seismologist said that a magnitude 9 quake will level the city, and then we got a magnitude 9 quake and a few jars fell off shelves. Even if we can't explain yet why we were wrong, it's clear that we need to recalibrate our instruments.

You could say we just need to adjust the time scale, and expect the whole thing to happen slower. But we were wrong about the time scale because we were wrong about deeper things -- the system has less fragility than we thought, and more inertia. And a change in pace will translate into a change in magnitude, because it means we will have more time to adjust -- to reduce energy use, to move in with friends and family, to buy bicycles, to make vegetable gardens, even to plant fruit trees and wait a few years for a good harvest.

posted by symbollocks at 8:42 AM on July 9, 2008 [4 favorites]

Human die-off! Food shortages, complete collapse of the US economy/our monetary system (not just a recession or depression, but much worse). And that this stuff might start happening very soon.

While skeptical of the more extreme claims, some of these scenarios seem plausible to me. I am not depressed.

Even if the economy takes an epic plunge... I'll still be better off than my grandparents in the depression. In the worst case scenario (which is pretty far fetched), energy issues lead to the end of industrialized civilization for many. Well, it would be an adjustment, but life is still worth living (talk to some amish). You'll still be better off in what is now the first world than the vast majority of people. If you look at some charts of oil production, there is still plenty of the stuff left, we're just increasing demand at fantastic rates as it falls off. If we completely fail to develop and implement a new energy infrastructure (which I doubt), the decline will still be pretty gradual. Most people will gradually become materially less wealthy. You won't wake up one morning and find your neighbors have gotten a head start looting a pillaging.

So appreciate the material splendor you enjoy today - it's better than any that's ever existed, but it may be fleeting.
posted by phrontist at 8:43 AM on July 9, 2008

I second your request for actual facts about what resources we actually have (other than the "people are so creative" approach I found in a well-known book recently), and, secondarily, what systems we have in place and their efficacy.

I'm not sure such facts exist, in any kind of useful comprehensive form, but I haven't looked very hard.

In the absence of this, I can tell you my way of motivating myself (with admittedly mixed results): you might die, but then again, you might live. The latter case takes a lot more preparation than the former, and the preparation for living is more fun, too. Even saving money; even paying off your credit card. Why not?
posted by amtho at 8:46 AM on July 9, 2008

amtho: for numbers and facts check out The Oil Drum.
posted by symbollocks at 8:50 AM on July 9, 2008

It could be that the doomsday obsession is a symptom of your anxiety/depression, rather than the other way around. Your therapist is right. She can only help you deal with the anxiety; only a time-traveller from the future can tell you whether your fears are well-founded or irrational.

As for a rational perspective, everyone believes they have one of those; your guess is as good as anyone's. Look at it this way: the future's going to happen, and your fear or lack of fear about it won't change a thing. Deal with the underlying cause of your anxiety and try to live in the here-and-now, which honestly isn't all that bad for most of us.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:51 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

In terms of nasreddin's advice to compare our current economic/environmental problems to the UNHOLY TERROR that is nuclear war, you might check out The War Game. After viewing it, you'll likely think that all our current problems are way more manageable than unaccountable governments wielding nuclear weapons. The downside is that you may subsequently be terrified by our current unaccountable government wielding nuclear weapons.

As far as economic worries, though: how old are the oldest members of your family? You might talk to them about the hard times they've seen, to get a sense of perspective. I remember talking to my great-grandmother about the Depression when I was young, and that helped instill a lifelong sense of "Well, no matter how bad it gets, we can always get by on the remnants." People survive. It's not easy, but it's doable if we help each other out in hard times and remember that kindness and self-sacrifice are the cornerstones of a lasting community.

It could be worse; we could be heading for an economic boom that regularly sows seeds of vicious competitiveness and distrust in our fellow citizens as a strategy for selling us ever-more planned-obsolescent unnecessary crap.
posted by Greg Nog at 8:52 AM on July 9, 2008

I have a different suggestion and that is to channel your anxiety into your hands. If you are worried about a doomsday scenario, start learning the skills that might help you get by. Learn to can vegetables. Start a garden, if only on your window sill. Learn to cook and to make your own bread. Read up on saving seeds, raising chickens, solar cooking. Borrow the Foxfire series from the library. Call your local agricultural extension and see whether they offer classes.

This strategy may alleviate some of your anxiety (because you're preparing and learning the just-in-case skills) and the more time you spend doing, the less time is available for thinking anxious thoughts.

Good luck, anon.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

Please ignore the advice of all those who are irresponsibly urging you (in one way or another) to get a gun and head for the mountains. Your problem is anxiety, not that the world is coming to an end.

Acting on a set of irrational fears is not a substitute for therapy. You wouldn't buy a hypochondriac a set of medical encyclopedias.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 9:08 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Read about the Simon-Ehrlich wager and work out from there to the anxieties of the late 60s and early 70s around population growth, etc that inspire a lot of back to the land, off the grid thinking. (note, the basis of Simon's prediction isn't likely to hold for the next 20 years, but that is largely beside the point)

I'm not saying there isn't reason to be concerned, but these concerns aren't new, and there is evidence that humans will work through. We already have already commercialized a lot of the technology we'd need to adapt to a post oil future, and the investment required isn't huge when compared to the costs of a few small wars.
posted by Good Brain at 9:14 AM on July 9, 2008

Here: smart people say we'll survive.

Zig Ziglar once said something along the lines of "the media has successfully predicted 36 out of the last two recessions." I tend to keep that in my mind when all you hear on the news is how the world is going to collapse any day now.
posted by joshrholloway at 9:16 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Check your sources. My mother's brother is one of the biggest crackpots in the universe; he's got a tinfoil hat with his name on it, and the vast majority of his opinions are diametrically opposite to my views (I'm an atheist who is an upperclassman in college and is well on the way to getting a PhD in neuroscience; my mother's brother is a fundie who has a ninth-grade education). He is nuts enough to apply for passports and get a gun permit and stock up on food and he's one of the biggest dipshits I am aware of and gets his information of bad sources.
posted by kldickson at 9:20 AM on July 9, 2008

Seek refuge in spirituality, or if that's not your thing, in philosophy. Contemplate death. What does it mean for you? Why exactly are you afraid? Why do you think you can't handle the future? Delve deep into your fear. Surely you have suffered some loss and difficulty in your life to this point, even if only the death of your childhood pet. How did you survive? Humans are very, very resilient. Certainly some people will die in an economic collapse. People are dying all over the world right now because of famine or war or economic collapse or disease. If the world economy collapses, it's just a difference of scale, and it will more personally affect you and people you know. But like phrontist noted, given that you have Internet access and credit cards and a therapist, you are a member of the First World, and no matter what happens, you will still be better off than 95% of the people on the planet.
posted by desjardins at 9:21 AM on July 9, 2008

a change in pace will translate into a change in magnitude, because it means we will have more time to adjust -- to reduce energy use, to move in with friends and family, to buy bicycles, to make vegetable gardens, even to plant fruit trees and wait a few years for a good harvest.

You know, this is exactly what's happening. This is behind the resurgence in home gardening and Slow Food and farmer's markets. It's behind the increased use of public transport, carpooling, and cycling since gas prices spiked. The change is taking place. Why not become part of the change? It strikes me that you might take some comfort in efforts to rebuild the world - or at least your community - on a healthier model. The solution to anxiety about collapsing systems nationally and internationally is, somewhat ironically, local action to increase quality of life and local security in your own community. Thereby establishing healthy models for others to follow in a viral manner. It's already going on.

We aren't all gonna die (at least not suddenly), but we are all experiencing changes. Why not get involved in groups that seek to impact quality of life in a positive direction? Look around your town for sustainability initiatives - or start one. Read up on sustainable communities. Look for a community garden and participate in it. See who's reducing carbon in your town or county. Check meetup.com for groups doing something about the issues that worry you. Support independent businesses- start a Buy Local campaign; get involved with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Read The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and a Durable Future and Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad (all these books are non-fruity). Start getting involved with the people who are creating the solutions that will ease the transition to a different economy - and, I hope, a much better and more enjoyable one to live in. The movement toward change is not what you'd expect - you'll find young people, social entrepreneurs, and regular folks like you involved.

You're very much not alone in your concerns, and while some prognosticators paint a very dark picture, the creative response in humans is something we can always count on. I think you'll feel a greater sense of control over the future if you help to build it.
posted by Miko at 9:28 AM on July 9, 2008 [6 favorites]

take up blacksmithing! if civilization crumbles, it'll be an incredibly in-demand skill, and in the mean time, it'll be a good way to vent stress by swinging hammers around.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:35 AM on July 9, 2008

I agree with MonkeyToes, but I would also add that it's probably best to focus on learning skills and activities that you enjoy anyway. You know the kind of things that could help if things got really bad but would also improve your life right now. Do you like spending time outside? Then learning how to garden and grow your own food is good for itself, not just because it might alleviate your fears. Likewise with taking classes, or going to local talks about sustainable living--you can learn more about this stuff, but it would probably be equally as helpful to spend time with other people thinking about these things and potentially make friends with them. You might feel less alone and more capable of dealing with whatever happens that way.

In any case, I think it's important for you to talk to people about how you feel. That might be friends and family, or it might be a therapist. If your therapist isn't working for you, I'd look for another one. It's a tricky balance--your therapist can't predict the future and I think there are tools (although maybe not the ones that specific therapist suggested) for dealing with anxiety and depression, regardless of the cause but I also think sometimes psychotherapy takes a too limited approach. For example, I was pretty depressed when the war with Iraq started and nothing I and my friends were doing to stop it seemed to be working and it was really good to have my therapist say, "Yes, I think this war is fucked up too and the world needs people working to stop it." (not an exact quote!) I don't think it would have been helpful for me if my therapist refused to talk about it at all but it also wouldn't have been therapy if it became an anti-war strategy session. Some approaches to therapy are more world-oriented. The book Ecopsychology is great, and could be a place to start.

Basically, anon, it seems like you no longer feel like the world is a safe and reliable place. Are there things you can do to make yourself feel a little bit safer, even just for a little while? Even if your fears turn out in the end to be realistic, focusing on them so much that you're paralyzed won't help anything, so it's okay (even from that perspective) to relax and do things you find enjoyable and meaningful so you can deal with all this from a more balanced and grounded place.
posted by overglow at 9:38 AM on July 9, 2008

I agree about stopping the input of negativity.

I'm rather negative but I also think that we humans have the capability to muddle, and sometimes even, power through difficult situations.

eg. the oil thing . . . I've been a quasi-believer of peak oil for around a decade, and a true believer for about a year, but with the new $100 oil price regime there are TRILLIONS of barrels of oil available for extraction. eg. IMO Canada's tar sands will save us later this century, though it will probably take the construction of some nuke plants up north to get the most out of Alberta's immense bitumen reserves.

I was negative about the US in the 1991-1992 recession. I was coming out of college then and had had some Japanese so I just went off to Japan, and ended up missing the 90s boom here, jumping into *their* economic malaise just as it was getting going.

It doesn't require being a pollyanna to think things will improve in the future. We've worked through some major challenges in the past, we can do it again.
posted by yort at 9:40 AM on July 9, 2008

Acting on a set of irrational fears is not a substitute for therapy.

But we only have your word that they're irrational! CBT is all very well sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't work, especially if you haven't got it to work before. If it all seems perfectly sensible to believe that the end of the world is nigh, going tra la la oh look what a nice new iphone doesn't do much good (and I know that's not CBT either).

Can you tell that my coping strategies usually involve cynicism? There are a lot of situations where they don't work too well either, but they can be applied to most OMG, GLOBAL DOOM!!1! scenarios. In this kind of case, faced with a headline about everyone drowning/dessicating/suffocating etc, they involve saying O RLY? SRSLY DED? WTF, WHERE IS YOUR PEER REVIEW? and then instead of reading the Daily Lowest Common Denominator, wandering off to find the actual article, which is usually referenced somewhere in the scaremongering. Of course, if the scaremongering is generic and has no peer-reviewed source to cite, it can be summarily dismissed as timewasting. I suspect that if I spent more time worrying about economic collapse I would have found a pretty good cure for my insomnia by now.

Diclaimer: I spent my final year at university sat in my room humming 'It's the end of the world as we know it' instead of writing my dissertation. The above-referenced strategy is not effective with all forms of armageddon. And I already have a house on a hill with its own water supply and a shotgun. And I never got on with the therapist I saw, either. Could you try finding a new one who's not scared of science and economics, or is generally unfluffy?
posted by Lebannen at 9:43 AM on July 9, 2008

Not intended to be snarky but limit your time on Metafilter. Some of the posts on here are terrific but the political posts, in particular, are filled with doom and gloom types. I think you'll find if you go back a few years in the Mefi archives, nothing has changed. The folks saying we were doomed then are still saying it now....and we're still here.

I'm not big on religion - at least organized religion - but I have friends that are and they say fellowship and their church has really helped them through some tough times. Just sayin.
posted by j.p. Hung at 9:47 AM on July 9, 2008

And I never got on with the therapist I saw, either. Could you try finding a new one who's not scared of science and economics, or is generally unfluffy?

If your therapist was willing to debate economics or science with you, then she'd be letting all professionalism go to hell; her job is to help you find a strategy to deal with your anxiety. She isn't there to reassure you about peak oil or middle-eastern politics.

Concentrate on getting your head straight. Then if gardening, religion, or living in a cave piled high with canned goods seems like a fun idea, go for it.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 10:03 AM on July 9, 2008

Seconding the great comments above, especially the ones urging you to read history. Reading history has made me much more optimistic about the future.

While you're reducing your internet reading and checking out some of the fine links above, I wonder whether you might enjoy reading Kim Stanely Robinson's Three Californias. Clearly fiction, so unlikely (I hope) to further trigger your fears; it offers solid enough characters and settings to make it clear that there are a number of ways things can go, we have choices, we sometimes as a society make really good choices, and even when we don't, we still form friendships and communities that make it worthwhile to go on.
posted by kristi at 10:07 AM on July 9, 2008

"This is behind the resurgence in home gardening and Slow Food and farmer's markets. It's behind the increased use of public transport, carpooling, and cycling since gas prices spiked. "

Just a tangential note -- I actually got into farmer's markets because the food's tastier, and I bike and use public transport because the thought of finding a parking place in Brooklyn makes me want to rend my garments. YMMV, though.

But to the original question. I'm another chiming in with the "hey, read history" advice, because that has helped me put numerous other challenges -- from 9/11 to Monicagate to the Great Depression to even the Decline Of The American Empire - into perspective. There are actually a lot of instances throughout history where "the world" -- be it a city or a nation -- went through all sorts of catastrophe, but people still got through it. This book even seems to argue that the entire planet was affected by a catastrophic global event, when a volcanic eruption in Southeast Asia sent dust clouds into the atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter" kind of effect and causing worldwide famine, drought, and plague; whether or not there was one source to it all, as he claims, or whether these were all isolated incidents, these events happened almost 1500 years ago, and clearly people survived.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:27 AM on July 9, 2008

-- I actually got into farmer's markets because the food's tastier, and I bike and use public transport because the thought of finding a parking place in Brooklyn makes me want to rend my garments.

For a long time, there has been a minority of people making this conscious choice for quality of life over zaniness. But when I said "resurgence" I meant it - organizations like the ones I'm involved in are growing faster than we can keep up with. The suddenness of the expansion is unmistakeable. One example: for the past 30 years, there were two operative community gardens in my area. Over the last two years alone, six have been added.

The ideas have reached a critical mass and spilled over to the mainstream, when formerly they were considered somewhat fringe-y by the dominant culture.
posted by Miko at 10:41 AM on July 9, 2008

The ideas have reached a critical mass and spilled over to the mainstream, when formerly they were considered somewhat fringe-y by the dominant culture.

I'm all for it, but we have to wait and see if all these people stick around or if it's just a trendy fad like Atkins or whatever.
posted by Justinian at 10:48 AM on July 9, 2008

we have to wait and see if all these people stick around or if it's just a trendy fad like Atkins or whatever

Even if they don't stick around, they're changing infrastructure, which does last.
posted by Miko at 10:50 AM on July 9, 2008

"The foretelling of the end of the world is as old as the wind in the trees," writes Lewis Lapham, yet "against the siege of dire prophecy the reading of history provides a reliable defense."
posted by rabbitsnake at 10:55 AM on July 9, 2008

Read the Geography of Hope by Chris Turner (mefi's very own Gompa).
posted by theinsectsarewaiting at 11:23 AM on July 9, 2008

I need some respected, rational, realistic stuff to read about economy, oil, food, etc. in the near future and beyond.

Try Paul Krugman's 1996 essay White Collars Turn Blue. This was written for a special centennial issue of the NYT magazine. The instructions were to write it as if it were in an issue 100 years in the future, looking back at the past century.

A web page I wrote up on this subject: Doom: for and against.
posted by russilwvong at 11:55 AM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, I have been in the exact same place that you have and my very best advice is STOP READING THE NEWS. Seriously - a total moratorium. For me, even trying to moderate what I read by attempting to search out things with a rational perspective did not work. I needed to STOP. I was subscribing to 12 news/current events magazines at one point. So no more magazines, no more newspapers, no more tv news or internet news. It is unbelievable the effect these things have on your mentality. I was not able to see this until I stopped altogether.

Find a hobby - learn photography, a new language, whatever. Find a place to volunteer. Commit to an exercise program. Do what I'm doing and fill your Netflix queue with all the movies that you've been meaning to see and make your way through them. Read all the books that you've been wanting to read - whatever! Just stop looking at news and current events stuff. Take my word for it, it won't kill you and I think it may have a big effect on your anxiety, as it did on mine.

If you must look at the internet ( I don't think you should, but if you do), look at these sites:

Ode Magazine
Good News Network
The Positivity Blog
Zen Habits

Read up on the Culture of Fear. You're worrying about huge global things that you can't individually do much about (oil, economy etc) and this is not only depressing you, but creating a feeling of helplessness as well. There are plenty of issues that are ongoing and pressing but aren't as exciting as the economy or biofuels or whatever and are therefore not getting the same kind of coverage. These are things that you may be able to help with in your own community. Poverty. Addiction. Crime. I am not asking you to be Pollyanna-ish, a lot of the stuff you're reading about is valid (some of it maybe not so much). But what you can do personally about any of it is limited and at the moment you cannot do much of anything as you're paralyzed with fear and depression. The best thing you can do is turn off the news, go out into your community and do whatever small things you can do to make the world a better place. Be kind to others, volunteer, enjoy the sunshine! Just refuse to let yourself be manipulated by the fearmongers any more. Someday, you will be in a better place and able to read the news with a sense of perspective. But I think it's just madness continuing to do something that is so obviously negatively affecting you. Stop.
posted by triggerfinger at 2:12 PM on July 9, 2008

Please allow me to be blunt: You've got some emotional issues and what seems to be a serious case of depressions. That's your real problem. Your fatalistic acceptance of "doomsday" is simply an excuse to wallow in acts of self-deception and irresponsibility.

Doomsday can't be a whole lot worse than what I've been through. Although I'm still young, I lived through on the front line of a terrible war that killed my parents in front of me, as well as most of my friends. I have friends who were gang-raped repeatedly and killed, or kept as prisoners until their rape-induced pregnancies were so advanced that their only options were to commit suicide or to give birth to the child of one of their dozens of rapists. I saw my beautiful culture destroyed. I myself survived months in a coma, several direct hits from snipers, all sorts of health issues from lack of basic sanitation, food and water. I was forced to serve in a defense force, where nearly every day I stumbled across the corpse of a friend, neighbor or acquaintance. The happy days were when I found someone I knew who'd only lost an arm or a leg. I was days away from death more times than I can count. I have mentioned all this several times here (my apologies to those having to slog through it again.) No one would have bet that I would have lived through it all; many people did not.

But here I am. I'm happy and I have fun and I watch movies and go to shows and meet friends and cook and surf the internet and post messages and work and do all the normal stuff. It took me a long time to get used to American culture and to learn English and to feel, at least a little bit, like I was part of a living community of people.

A big part of the reason I'm here is luck. But a bigger part is that I fought to survive, and in doing so I've found some happiness and a sense of purpose. I used to hang my laundry out to dry while bullets whizzed above my head. People, to a large extent, choose to live or die. You sound like you're choosing to die by not fighting or by succumbing to (largely irrational) paranoia about the future. And that's just dumb.

Let's be fair - you've got it good. Far, far better than I did, in fact. Bad news is always right around the corner. So is good news. But right now, things aren't too afwul. You need to see someone who can help you with your psychological issues, for the simple reason that the only cause to act as you're acting is just hugely self-indulgent and pathetic. And that's no way to live.

You don't need "rational" points of view. People living their lives without your level of insanity should be viewpoint enough. You need psychiatric care. Get it.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 2:45 PM on July 9, 2008

Dee Xtrovert: Doomsday can't be a whole lot worse than what I've been through.

Dee Xtrovert, I respect the suffering that you've been through, but I'd suggest that you're talking at cross purposes to anonymous. anonymous is worried about the future and the continuity of society, not his or her individual survival.

There's an essay by Hans Morgenthau, Death in the Nuclear Age (1961), which discusses this. I'll see if I can find some quotes.
posted by russilwvong at 3:25 PM on July 9, 2008

Morgenthau:

... In the works of his mind, man, the creator, survives.

Yet why are those works a "monument more lasting than bronze," and why can their creator be confident that "on and on shall I grow, ever fresh with the glory of after time"? Because the man endowed with a creative mind knows himself to be a member in an unbroken chain emerging from the past and reaching into the future, which is made of the same stuff his mind is made of and, hence, is capable of participating in, and perpetuating, his mind's creation. He may be mortal, but humanity is not, and so he will be immortal in his works. ...

Man gives his life and death meaning by his ability to make himself and his works remembered after his death. Patroclus dies to be avenged by Achilles. Hector dies to be mourned by Priam. Yet if Patroclus, Hector, and all those who could remember them were killed simultaneously, what would become of the meaning of Patroclus's and Hector's death? Their lives and deaths would lose their meaning. They would die, not like men but like beasts, killed in the mass, and what would be remembered would be the quantity of the killed--six million, twenty million, fifty million--not the quality of one man's death as over against another's. Of their deeds, nothing would remain but the faint hope of remembrance in distant places. The very concept of fame would disappear, and the historians, the professional immortalizers, would have nothing to report. What had been preserved and created through the mind, will, and hands of man would be dissolved like man himself. Civilization itself would perish.

Perhaps in some faraway place some evidence would be preserved of the perished civilization and of the men who created it. Nothing more than that would be left of the immortality man had once been able to achieve through the persistence of his fame and the permanence of his works.

The question, then, is: are today's challenges so great that Western civilization is likely to collapse? My own view is, probably not. People are more adaptable than they think. Gas and food may be getting more expensive, but in the West, we have lots of room to cut back. The collapse of the housing bubble in the US is painful, but not damaging enough to threaten the stability of the banking system. Greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to combat because of the global nature of the problem, but the solution (carbon taxes) is well known, and the US is the only major holdout among the industrialized countries; that'll change soon, as both Obama and McCain are advocating action on the issue.

I find myself unable to act on anything, because I just think, what's the point? I've been racking up charges on my credit cards because I don't see the point in paying them off or saving.

Nobody can predict the future, so it's good to hope for the best, plan for the worst. Here the "worst" case is that civilization doesn't collapse, and so you'll need to pay off those credit cards and build up your retirement savings, work out your personal future, etc., etc. So I'd suggest planning for that outcome.

(Corrected link: Doom: for and against.)
posted by russilwvong at 4:28 PM on July 9, 2008

I can't say that the economic conditions are doomed. The US still has a massive GDP, regardless of its debt load, and the economy still grows fairly regularly. Sure household debt is up, and a good portion of the GDP comes from some questionable areas (finance, defense, health care, real estate, tourism), but I'm still betting that it'll sustain itself for a long time to come.

On the other hand climate change is some serious business and currently unsustainable. Luckily (or unluckily) for us, the major effects of it won't likely hit for some time, and it will mostly be a problem for the next generation. Food and water availability will cause some conflicts, and who knows what else.

Here are some interesting books to read in the meantime:

Six Degrees

Without Hot Air

However, neither of these books take into account the exponential advances of technology. So, maybe we'll all be transendant by the time the SHTF.

Either way, it's an interesting time to be alive, so enjoy.
posted by brandnew at 6:02 PM on July 9, 2008

Back when I was attending an abusive church (I didn't know then that it was abusive) I was terrified every single day for a while about missing the rapture. First, I stopped reading the rapture ready website. Then I got out of that church luckily.

Anyways, sometimes I still get a little scared. But you need to live as if life will go on... if you rack up credit card debt because you are depressed now and think we're all going to die, imagine how much worse your depression will be if you're still alive in 5 years and up to your ears in debt.

It helped me to realize that the situation is out of my control... that even if all this bad stuff starts happening, I really can't stop it alone. I do what I can (lessen my impact on the environment by going "green") because it makes me feel better to know I'm doing my part, and as for the rest of it, I just take it one day at a time.
posted by IndigoRain at 8:43 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite]