It is a scam, but we need to eat and have a roof over our heads. So you have to find something that you can tolerate and try to get paid as much as you can for a little time as you can give. This is the game we are in. Unfortunately in the current system money talks, it is not fair but that is how it is.

you unironically just have to cope with it in whatever way makes sense to you

I personally think of my career as: “some things I do are interesting and keep me from blowing my brains out, the rest I don’t care about”

when it comes to the company I work for: I treat everyone I meet well, no corporate bs, no yes sir yes ma’am. I do whatever I’m assigned and meet deadlines

but I never go above and beyond (because of burnout)

everything you’ve thought about hard work = reward or better pay is a scam

put everything into work-life balance and when you go home focus on things you really want to do, such as hobbies or hang outs

don’t do unpaid overtime, don’t bend over for anyone, don’t offer yourself up when shit goes down

you want to be as invisible as possible while not burning out AND not working your ass off (everyone has different standards for what this means)

tldr: just find some way to cope because there isn’t really anything else you can do

Get offline, and simplify. Start doing things that are good for you. There is yet joy to come.

I’d say qualitatively and quantitatively, this system is a scam. I get up and deliver by getting myself into interesting shit that matters no matter who’s writing the check (excluding Raytheon or any of those other psycho motherfuckers).

Energy security is important, particularity environmentally compatible forms.

Medical services that don’t bankrupt people are important.

Making processes easier is important even it comes to reducing/eliminating waste.

Even the seemingly mundane ‘basic research’ has a lot of interesting caveats buried below the surface.

Find what interests you in this one life you have, do the work to get there, make friends with people who want you to get there (and help them too).

Good luck, fuck capitalism.

You are not wrong. It’s a very unfair world we have build. And a lot of people are struggling even though there are plenty of resources to make sure every single person on earth could have their needs met and the opportunity to live a meaningful life.

BUT we have to dare to hope. Because otherwise we just give up and the people on top is counting on that. ”We have the power and there is nothing you can do about that”. I think David Graeber is one of the most hopeful people to read:

“Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.

His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit

Brother you need some help. The rate of decay is slow and steady and almost imperceptible to a normal lifetime. Finding a job may actually help. Now’s your chance to get in where you fit in. Love games? Get a job at local games store. Like animals? Go apply at a zoo. Find people that you can relate to. Good luck man. You can do it.

The amounts of copium in this thread are extinction-level.

Everything you just said is 100% valid and you are simply correct.

The thing is, it’s not a measure of a healthy mind to thrive in a profoundly sick society where the worst of the worst have won long ago.

There’s this thing called depressive realism which posits that depressed people, by and large, perceive reality much closer to how it really is than neurotypical people.

Essentially, “normal” people have an (innate or learned) positivity bias. Which is usuallly a good thing. People like us are the outliers.

But positivity bias in a world where it’s actually harmful is another thing. The majority of people are walking headlong into their own extinction while going “Ehh, it’s not so bad”, while we should ALL be positively irate and picketing the homes (not companies) of our owner class 24/7.

But it hasn’t happened yet and at this point I don’t know how bad things need to get before people realize what’s going on.

Don’t think too much, you get depressed. Do like everyone else, buy shit you don’t need and get likes on social media by bored strangers.

And watch Fight Club.

A mentor once gave me an exercise to identify my “core values” or goals or motivators. Out of a list of 60, the task was to narrow down over time and conversation to my top 5.

E.g., I value financial stability. Not to be confused with other values of earning high compensation or achieving lofty corporate positions and recognition.

It helped me frame for myself that I’m going to work to be comfortable and stable and beyond that, my motivations lie elsewhere, like spending time with friends and working on personal projects. There are people who put greater value on achieving a high salary or earning the c-suite title or having their names on patents; that’s perfectly valid and great for them, it’s not me and that is also ok.

There are tons of similar exercises online. If it sounds like something that might help you define your perspective on work differently, to narrow it down to you instead of getting overwhelmed with the whole world’s problems, please look into it and good luck.

TL;DR: The following is going to be dark and harsh but it all comes down to one thing. Life doesn’t get better, you get better at dealing with shit. Hang in there.

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You need to disconnect and find a way to focus on you.

It feels like the entire system is a scam and it’s pointless to even try.

It has always been a game where the only way to win is to cheat. Always.

It feels all but certain that I won’t be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire.

The system is not setup with rest (retirement) as its main goal. The system is setup for you to play until you die. Even if you hoard more money than you and your descendants could possibly spend in a hundred years, you would likely still want to play, because you are winning. If your end goal is mere prosperity and retirement, then you should prepare to be under the boot and a slave until you die.

All of the wealth is going straight to the top.

Always has been the case. It hasn’t stopped people from finding a way.

All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled.

This has always been the case. You have to make your own opportunities and expect others to drag you down. We are all crabs in a bucket.

All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet.

Fantasy. These things has never existed in this country. At best, FDR gave us a yoga mat to land on when we fall off a cliff, where before it was a bed of nails. Fall hard enough in this country and you will get wrecked no matter what. It has always been that way.

We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.

Same as it ever was.

Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won’t be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn’t exist already.

Take a breath. Here is a truth that will sound harsh but it is meant as a kindness. You do not matter. Just about nobody knows you exist. Nobody is coming to get you. This fact applies to almost everyone.

Since all we can do is live the life we perceive with the meat in our skull, we tend to see ourselves as the main character in the story of life. We’re not. We barely qualify for NPC status.

I myself have disabilities (which I don’t think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job.

That’s a problem, I am sorry. All problems have a solution, but one unlikely to be found here, with Internet strangers.

The problem is that I just can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.

Again. Breathe homie. That’s not going to happen.

Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it?

100%…often. I have lived with chronic, sometimes crippling, depression and fairly severe PTSD since 1989. Long story short, a lot of trauma broke my brain. Combo that with ADHD, borderline personality disorder, heart disease and cancer, and we are living the life baby! Still, I have been able survive and rise from poverty to wealth without hurting too many people…I hope.

If so, what snapped you out of it?

Nothing did. I just kept getting up out of spite and contempt for this life. As time went on, i got used to it. The bullshit bothered me less until it just became background noise. A nuisance from time to time.

Try to find a job you enjoy from 9-5. That means focusing on activities you enjoy that are the main activity of said job. I worked in a pet store because it afforded me 30% of my time playing with puppies, even though the remaining 70% was cleaning puppy shit and stocking goods. I now work as a therapist because I spend 70% of my time talking to people about their problems (which I enjoy), and 30% doing paperwork and correspondence. Make your job something you enjoy most of them time and it gets much easier. Then, you retire and collect Social Security. As long as you’ve worked for most of your life, that’ll be a decent retirement. You’ll have to live frugally, but it’ll be livable.

Also, if you can manage it, invest $10,000 as early as you can in a stock market index fund and pay for a fund manager. By the time you retire, that will provide you with a substantial cushion to rest on.

I don’t have any good advice for you. My company held an all-hands call today during which the CEO said “Now that the election is behind us we can look forward to political stability”, among other equally insane things. You could say I’m feeling pretty down about the whole situation as well.

If you’re still young and not too much in debt, try to work some fun jobs, like outdoor educator, youth hostels, ski mountain, or whatever floats your boat. Travel around. You don’t have to try to make it in the world right away

I hated the idea for the longest time. Then I realized a few things. I changed my outlook of working a hopeless job to a job being a tool for me to get the money I need to live a better life. I also accepted that life isn’t fair and that not all the work I put in will equal the output. It feels like you have to do the work of 10 men to get anywhere. I accepted that and I put myself to work.

Sometimes you just have to get lucky and sometimes you have to grow. I worked many temp jobs and fast food restaurants until figured stuff out and landed a couple decent jobs. I started being able to hold a job for 1 year and then 2 years. I got lucky and found a temp job that decided to hire everyone perm. The catch was they waited to see who would sink or float. I floated. I wouldn’t have floated if I hadn’t had previous life experience.

Look at a job as an avenue or tool to achieve your goals. If you don’t have any goals then just pick something. It could be as simple as you want to save up for something nice. Start small and pick bigger goals as you achieve them. And going back to the job as a tool thing, if you don’t like the tool then get a new one. You wouldn’t use a broken tool to fix something. Sometimes you have a bucket of random tools and you have to pull out a couple before you find the right or that isn’t broken. Whatever to you pick, just try and keep trying. As long as you keep trying, you’ll figure it out.

I would also add to try to improve yourself along the way. Whether it be working on self esteem, how to write a resume, interviewing skills, how to cook, how to improve your finances, how to fix a car, work on a computer… Just work on something. You’ll only help yourself and learn transferable skills along the way.

You got me, kid. I had a stroke at 42 after busting my ass forever, and it’s been the best thing to happen to me yet.

Basically just enjoy everything outside of work, politics, and religion. Family, friends, and yourself are the most important things in life.