CW: Depressive thoughts of an asshole
Do you think that you are a good person? I don’t. I’ve tried to be one for a long time, act like one to those close to me. But I just don’t think it will ever happen.
Some context: I’m a young person living in the Western world. My family are upper-middle class, and loving and supportive of me. I was raised with a strong moral compass, particularly about social issues. As I’ve grown, I’ve become more and more aware of the way that I live. My socio-economic circumstances mean that I’m probably in the top 10% of the world’s population, where the biggest polluters are.
To explain my problem with this, I’ll put it in simple words: the climate crisis kills people. And so, by contributing to it, I am a murderer. You can argue this point all you like. That its a bigger issue than me, that my own emissions are only a fraction of those of the top 1%. But just because someone else has hurt people more doesn’t mean that I haven’t hurt people. One of the scariest parts of this is that it means, wherever I go, the people around me are most likely murders by my own definition. My peers, mentors, neighbors. But they don’t know. They don’t think about the fact that they have contributed to people’s deaths. Ignorance is bliss.
All I want to do is help people. That’s what I want to do with my life: reduce pain and suffering. I’m thinking of going into medicine. But I wake up every morning and go to bed every night with the knowledge that I am doing the opposite. I try to do a little bit: eat less meat, don’t fly, buy less clothes. While I drive places and eat food shipped from far away, watch other’s do things without objection. And the little I also isn’t quite genuine, sometimes more motivated by the fear of the guilt I’ll feel if I do not do it.
I’m going to be real: I’m so scared. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. There’s a line from some song “You’ve got to live with the pain or start feeling nothing at all”. What happens on the day that I start feeling nothing? I’ve had them before. I think the scariest thought of them all is that I become a mindless consumer, working 9-to-5 in an office job. And when the headlines show the deaths from the latest storm or heatwave, I can point and say: “I helped with that”. Yours faithfully, A fellow stranger
P. S. Thanks so much for reading my deranged rant of self pity, and I hope you have a wonderful day P. P. S. If you have any interesting thoughts, it would be much appreciated it you would share them
There are so many anchor points to respond to, from your original post and this reply…
Every well working moral compass starts any process from some form of self doubt — am I wrong here? What was I thinking? What if this is one giant mistake? Am I the bad guy? The garden can’t be all rotten, it’s probably me… and so on, right? You know those? If you do, great, compass is just reminding you to be cautious and more aware of the decision making process. Then the spectrum begins, from “nothing matters and anything I will do does not matter”, let’s call it avoidant end of the spectrum, then on the other side “I should not make any decision and this is the best decision, everything will sort itself”, the everlasting frozen stone… There are more ends but you probably already know where all this is going, the game is in progress and it is always your move. This is exhausting, hence the feeling of “hard to keep going”.
The hero visions? Ohh yeah, those are tasty, aren’t they? Equally destructive as productive. You can stimulate your ego with them into oblivion or… grow actual motivation from them. The real question is, are you ready to do the thing that might become the milestone in your story? If not, you probably just need more time, rest, preparation, et cetera; if yes, how great is that? Whenever you feel like you are failing on your part of “we all are in this together” deal, somewhere on the other side of the scale, someone is doing their best. So if you need to take it slow(er), do it. Because there will be a moment when you will not want to stop doing something and that will be great too.
Maybe let’s finish with this idea of fighting. Not all fights are yours to fight. You won’t stop everyone from littering, eating meat, or any other type of influencing behaviors of others in an instant — magically — is just in the fantasy realm. The real fight starts when you pick your way and by not forcing others to join you, finally someone who will be motivated by your choices, might use it as a starting point for their own decisions or changes… or you will get demotivated and change the trajectory.
If there is this underlying feeling that you should be doing something differently, what if that feeling is right?
Sorry, had a busy day yesterday and didn’t get a chance to reply. On the idea that “influencing the behaviors of others in an instant is just in the fantasy realm” the problem is that, either by fluke or by chance, I recently encountered a situation where such a thing happened, and that after challenging someone’s beliefs they considered them and changed their view on the world (to a large enough degree).
I also understand that I need to change what I am doing, but I can find it really hard to do so. There’s so much that I could do but I never manage to get myself to bother. I sometimes sit in this weird realm where I go about my day with a smile on my face, then retreat to a shell of worry at night, when I do not have the opportunity to change the things around me.
On the spectrum you speak of, I seem to exist at both ends at different times, depend on whether I am feeling like blaming or excusing myself. It reminds me of the chess term Zugzwang (where the only moves available are bad ones), except the only easy moves available are the bad ones, and the good ones exist behind a wall of effort.
Thank you again for your extended a thoughtful replies.