Are you supposed to be OK right now?- Part 2

Understanding Why Feeling 'Okay' is a Radical Act

Are you alright?

I’ve heard this question a lot in the last 12 hours, unfortunately I’m really bad at hiding my dissociative episodes when I make the mistake of catching up on the news.

I’m writing this within 24 hours of an assassination attempt on the leading US Presidential candidates life - who is an unabashed autocrat. The shooter was another lone-wolf disenfranchised right-wing young male. The only thing shocking about this event for Americans is that the bullets didn’t land in school children this time.

• A reminder to schedule that trip during the election to avoid the expected civil unrest surrounding this election in November.

• A memory of the multiple times I’ve been on the wrong side of gun because I live in this specific country.

• A promise I’m likely to be there again the longer I stay…maybe regardless of whether I stay?

Meanwhile I am trapped inside my home daily because the place where I live is constantly flirting with wet-bulb temperatures (the threshold for when it’s impossible for humans to conduct daily activities while regulating their internal temperature and not over heating). I remember before I moved to Denver explaining to my father I was concerned about modeling that showed Colorado would have the same climate as Texas within 5 years.

That was 5 years ago now wasn’t it?

I open my newsfeed and see these two headlines right next to each other.

1. 77 pilot whales die on Scotland beach in "one of the larger mass strandings" seen in U.K.

2. Cape Cod mass stranding of more than 140 dolphins confirmed to be largest in US history

That’s not good. The original estimates I had seen for ocean life collapsing was around 2050, but I don’t think any of those models or estimates included the recent step change we’ve seen in ocean temperatures.

Unfortunately there’s no AC in the oceans.

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No, Your Are Not Supposed To Be Ok Right Now

Last week I wrote the first part of this series where I outlined the simple case for why our orderly global civilization is likely to collapse in the near term. In it I put forward my belief that 2024 was going to be another step-change in our journey from our current overconsumption to whatever balance we find with our environment.

Today the chaos at our doorstep (who am I kidding, in our living room) is so manifest I find any explanation of the polycrisis to be rote. It’s basic math plus common sense at this point and I have little interest in bashing my head against the brick wall called “the median American” with my remaining time on this planet. Explaining collapse to the unaware feels as futile as telling yeast to grow sustainably in a petri dish or teaching compound interest to a chimpanzee. It’s not even unpersuasive to the average American, it’s just uninteresting.

This isn’t surprising at all when you think about it. All animals have their limitations. All animals, when given the proper conditions, will ram themselves into overshoot.

To me it’s more interesting to discuss the actual mental experience of living through this twilight age if you’re a person with a modicum of contextual awareness. Where is the line between genuine, sane, alarm and anxiety ridden paralysis? What is the difference between an anxiety disorder and a rational, empathetic, reaction to the degradation of our environment and quality of life?

Seriously, in the last days of the Weimar Republic, secular Iran or Democratic Hungary would someone like me be given anti-anxiety medication?

Would it be diagnostically sound to diagnose a young man with an anxiety disorder or depression when he is living on the cusp of World War II?

What’s the point of anxiety if this moment isn’t when it’s supposed to be ringing alarm bells in your head?

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In this week’s journal entry we’re going to start a serious discussion of how to be ok in a world that’s not ok. I will tell you right off the bat, contentment is not a thing that is ordinary anymore. In previous generations ordinary people were given extra-ordinary opportunities and comforts, and it’s easy to foster an inner feeling of contentment when your entire life is an upward trajectory.

However, that train reversed in 2008. Now the ordinary experiences and opportunities for even first world humans won’t provide a rational person with contentment - and as democracies continue to fall there won’t be much reason for oligarchs to care. We are simply transitioning back to the historic norm of most humans having simple, stagnant, unfulfilled lives and all the unfortunate consequences that brings.

So in order to foster contentment you must be extra-ordinary, and the first step of that is to identify that the facets of your modern metropolitan lifestyle are designed to make you feel not ok, collapse notwithstanding.

Yes, This is The Part Where We Talk About Capitalism

In a previous life I was a swanky marketing consultant - and I was great at it.

To be clear, “It” was not making great products that improved peoples lives. It was convincing a target that the product someone else made would make them feel better and then convincing the target to pay my employer for the promise of feeling better - whether we delivered or not.

This is how you advance in a capitalistic society. You identify groups of people that have a need - whether thats as simple as being hungry or as serious as severe depression due to not having any real-life companionship - and you get them to give you money in exchange for the promise of fulfilling that need.

But someone that is ok? They don’t consume very much. So that’s where the art of “marketing” comes in.

Every day you are bombarded by systems that seek to put your mental health off balance so that you consume something shown to you. I say systems because you must remember that it’s not just the advertisements themselves that want you to consume, it’s the medium within which you’re watching these ads as well.

Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, Google, Youtube and Reddit all get a cut of every conversion they make. These platforms are also all publicly traded companies, so each one has a legal fiduciary duty to try and drive your consumption as high as possible.

Americans say that they are spending on average ~2.5 hours per day inside these platforms to stay in touch with family or stay in touch with the news - but the goal of this medium is not connection, information or even genuine entertainment. The point is addiction for the sake of consumption.

So is it any wonder that the average amount of time an American spends on social media is directly correlated with a severe risk of mental health problems? Is it any wonder that at least a third of all users across all social media platforms are unhappy with the amount of time they spend on social media?

(when you partake in an activity you know is detrimental for you repeatedly and impulsively - thats the clinical definition of an addiction by the way).

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This framing of one sector of our capitalist system is applicable across industries.

I can make the same argument for the American healthcare system - where cures are less profitably than chronic treatments.

Or the industrial war complex - where perpetual warfare is much more tolerable than peace, because who buys guns during peace time?

Even the fucking end of the world is not worth fixing unless it can be done at a profit. Whats the point in saving the world if it cannot be done at a net-gain? None, in a world ruled by capital.

Unfortunately, this is the system you are soaked in. You and almost everyone you know has been brainwashed from a young age to learn that accomplishment is measured by your ability to take resources from others, that comfort is found in consuming more and more, that obsession over the future is prudence and that every virtue or talent isn’t real until it becomes a monetizable asset.

If you resist this the system works against you to punish you severely with lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of comfort and lack of status. All of us, including me, must pay homage to the tenants of this system in order to survive inside of it.

It is an incredibly weird balance. Recognition that under-regulated capitalism will likely eliminate all complex life on earth while also still being a cog inside of it. The logical conclusion here is dissociation, not contentment.

What Does It Mean To Be Extra-Ordinary In A Capitalist System Then?

We overuse that term, “extra-ordinary”, but it simply means:

Going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary - Merriam-Webster

Considering the system you are inside of is (intentionally or not) designed to make you feel want it seems clear to me that finding contentment will require consistently venturing outside the norms upheld by the majority of the (non-collapse aware) people you know.

You will have to look into non-material means for finding contentment in order to find a way to be ok in a world that cannot sustain our appetite for material comforts. You will have to disengage from the philosophic systems most of your parents and elders used to find meaning in their capitalistic pursuits in order to find a real solution to peace in this life you’re living now.

Buying a house, a tesla and a yacht one day while sustaining a family of four on just your salary may not be a reality you can look forward to anymore.

But consistent inner-peace, unaffected by the whims of your external environment is a real thing extra-ordinary people have fostered long before the invention of modern-day capitalism.

With That in Mind, Let’s End Today’s Entry On A Constructive Note.

I will give you six general cues I use to bring myself back from severe dissociative episodes on a regular basis.

1. The struggle with the polycrises is akin to the universal struggle every human has had with their own finitude. Whether its today, tomorrow, next year or in 40 years every human being, including you, is and was going to die. The struggle to grapple with the reality of death is universal, every human being has and will have to deal with it - and this struggle with conceptualizing the polycrisis is just a facet of that larger struggle you were always going to undertake. Hell, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and never actually have to deal with the polycrisis.

2. Living in the present should always be your default, and it can be your refuge right now. You have been trained to live in the future, working for retirement, saving for more things, satiating desires you don’t even have yet. Using meditation, distraction and physical exertion you can train yourself out of living in the future so you can enjoy the now.

3. Contentment is the result of a collection of fundamental good habits, not material wealth or accomplishment. If you are not sleeping right, eating right and exercising right it is highly unlikely you will experience contentment.

4. You cannot think your way into contentment, the most constructive thing you can do is build upon the foundational habits outlined above and provide real value/kindness to others to foster contentment. Rational thought will always lead you to this rational assessment of our current global condition. Your only comfort will be that specific aspects of the future really are completely unknowable, which is not much comfort for most. So if you’re going to be miserable might as well be miserable at the gym, or doing errands, or practicing art.

5. There is no longer anything particularly constructive about following “the news”. As David Lauterwasser put it so well in his essay We’re Living in the Good Old Days of Tomorrow
   
   “news on any given day are pretty much constantly the same, so it becomes somewhat pointless to follow them with any real enthusiasm or regularity”.
   
   While I used to fight vigorously against my father’s insistence that we not talk about politics or global events (which used to be our favorite pastime) I am now a 100% convert.
   
   When was the last time you scrolled r/collapse or “X” and felt better? When was the last time you listened to a news or politics podcast and ended it feeling anything other than anger and despondency?
   
   There is nothing wrong today with sticking your head in the sand when possible, just like there isn’t anything wrong with someone that has a cancer diagnosis telling their doctor they don’t want to continue to receive their test results or participate in treatment. If it’s important, you will see or hear about it, but as long as you are doing your best to decrease the amount of suffering you create in the world I do not see any moral imperative to be informed about the suffering being inflicted on the rest of the world. The only agency you or I really have here is the ability to generate kindness in our own lives and alleviate the suffering caused by our own actions - focusing on that does not require you to read “the news”.

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Thanks for reading. Now go outside, hug someone you love and be nice to an animal.

Until next time,
- Jordan Lovinger