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This is either going to resonate with you or seem totally out of left field, but I'm going to say it anyway: everything you're saying is unconscious defense aga
by Domenic_S 8y ago
This is either going to resonate with you or seem totally out of left field, but I'm going to say it anyway: everything you're saying is unconscious defense against changing _yourself_. You don't need to affect policy on a national level to change the world. Changing the world can be as simple as putting the phone away and being present for your family, or volunteering at a local soup kitchen. Cleaning up the side of the highway or mowing an elderly neighbor's lawn. You can make a positive change for people in your own neighborhood.
This is where the defense comes in; acknowledging that there are things you can do _today_ means acknowledging that you're not doing those things which means you have to set up a straw man for yourself of world-sized problems that you can't fix so that you don't feel bad about not doing anything. We all have this heuristic in our minds whether we know it or not: feeling good > feeling bad, but feeling bad > the effort of changing yourself. So we accept feeling bad, and do mental gymnastics (I can't change America to the metric system, so I guess there's no point in doing anything) to minimize.
My advice: don't overthink it. Don't worry about doing something with your life. Just do something with your day!
- brokenmachine 8y agoWell put. I'll try to keep that in mind too.