Everyone is numbing out
Life has gotten very chaotic incredibly quickly. It has become increasingly difficult to parse anything from the static. People started coping with this lack of meaning through a kind of ironic detachment (which is very much still around), but it has matured into a pervasive cultural apathy, a permeating numbness. This isn’t nihilism per se. (Even ... See more
Catherine Shannon • Everyone Is Numbing Out
It’s not hard to see where the pervasive numbness comes in from here, as a sort of sinister phase two. The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. I hope it’s obvious why this is a problem, but maybe you’re still thinking so what. To put it succinctly: when you take an ironic, negative, or numb attitude to everything, you are by definition not on... See more
Catherine Shannon • Everyone Is Numbing Out
We cultivate indifference as a cocoon. We make irony a habit because the safety of maintaining a knowing distance works as a defense. If you can’t find what matters, conclude that nothing matters. If the hunger for home is always and only frustrated, decide “the road is life.”
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
Patricia A Sanders and added
Local communities in different parts of the world are making a constructive difference in responding to a plethora of crises: global climate change, political authoritarianism, economic disparities, poverty, war and the threat of nuclear war, consumerism, and a general sense of meaninglness.
They are interested in inner transformation as well as out
... See moreEcological Civilization
Jennifer Baez added
Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lays dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite
Maria Popova • 13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings
sari added
“People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.”
Simon Sarris • Careful Technology
David Pennington added
Find the others. Restore the social connections that make us fully functioning humans, and oppose all conventions, institutions, technologies, and mindsets that keep us apart. Challenging the overt methods of separation is straightforward: reject the hate speech of racists, the zero-sum economics of oppression, and the warmongering of both tyrants
... See more