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[bootnrally]

There are days when anxiety is not only rampant, but well-founded; when I catch more than a passing glance at where my world is and where it's heading and it scares the bejesus out of me. Predatory pricing! Urban decay! Overpriced health care only for those who don't need it! Enormous landfills out there somewhere and never going away! Peak oil! A

Comments

[anonymous]

start with washing the smelly people with bad hygine on the bus. boo the walmart

[lostlo]

there are times when I simply cannot understand how people can go on living in the world. myself especially. when you see things clearly, on a larger scale, it's so discouraging... it's almost too much to handle.

it always used to make me resolved to "make things better" somehow. a few months ago I realized that I probably cannot significantly change the world. it was one of the hardest experiences I ever had. fortunately for me I have the world's most supportive best friend/boyfriend.

[kappadarappa]

I had the beautiful experience of talking at length to a guy who used to work in the oil industry. He convinced me, at great and painstaking length, that
a) the oil industry is aware of exactly what it's doing (re: environment and constrained resources) and intends to continue because money means more, and
b) they have made it near-impossible for an individual to resist within their own home, let alone to convince any number of people to collectively rise to the occasion

I now believe that there is nothing that I can do to stop them. I don't
think anyone else can stop them either. We have a good point, and they have money with which to trump us, using all the typical tools of the trade. They can kill the electric car, lobby local and federal lawmakers, and advertise ("3 vdubs under $17,000!"). I will die in a world that smells worse and has less hope than the world in which I was born. That's upsetting, but I am beginning to accept it.

[bootnrally]

You people are way too depressing. Get out of my LiveJournal

[kappadarappa]

I'm on the bandwagon, and I do what I feel I can (given that my life is a nutsy grad-student rollercoaster of code and papers), but after hearing some guy tell me he's been successfully destroying attempts to adopt public transportation and alternative fuels since the late 1960s, I fear that our lawmakers are a bought-and-sold bunch, who will try and pretend they have conceded to the rest of us (unprecedented emissions standards legislation! whoa!) until it's too late.

I love and admire each of those people and groups you mentioned. I commend you and them on doing excellent work...the very work I wish I could be doing.