No suffering, no dis-pleasurable state, no undesirable reality exists. Everything that is, is deemed good by all beings that can judge it (if any). This has, as a consequence, no moral dilemmas, no conflict of wills and interests, no tragedies, etc.
I personally do not care that much about the survival of entire species (including ours); I care more about the lives of the individuals. To illustrate this, it saddens me when we cause extinctions, but a little more because of the animals that suffered in the process and a little less about the whole “loss” of a form of life. Yet, it all is sad.
How do I deal with this climate change sadness? I guess I don’t see it separately from other sad things from humanity (and existence, but let’s focus on humanity). I have accepted the fact that most human beings are morally questionable in my book, this causes the world to be worse for everyone in it, and no amount of reasoning with most of them (about the benefit for them and others of being more conscious about their lives) will change it for now.
At some point, some have felt that a better society is just a step ahead of us because it’s relatively easy in material terms, but now I feel it much farther as the social factors are not as easy. I guess I have surrendered to a certain idea of psychological determinism. If we imagine a person has an object we want at their reach, while it’s out of our reach, and we could get it if they only cooperate, we can feel frustrated when they don’t. “Why do they make it so difficult? It’s as simple as reaching for the object and grabbing it for us. Just do it! Why are they waiting for? Ugh!”. But if we start from the idea that there’s a chance they won’t help us because they simply can’t be bothered (different reasons as to why), and that’s probably not fixable, we won’t feel that level of frustration for their inaction and we will strategize differently how to get that object.
By the way, I don’t think selfishness or self-centeredness or whatever is individualism, nor that altruism is communitarianism. I’m inclined to individualism, but that’s what makes me think that just as my life and freedom are valuable, so are others’. I do not like societies that are communitarian because they drown the individual (in false responsibilities, in fear of ostracism, etc.), and I hate that. We have one life and only one and we should be as free as possible, even if that means being unattached, different, whatever. The only rule for that freedom and for everything is ethics. And that’s the difference for me, that’s how I see it. Not individualistic people versus communitarian people, but people that live without an interest in being ethical (whatever that ends up meaning) and people who do.
So… I think I see a lot of these people and I don’t get as frustrated as before. I sigh and continue my day. Reading this last part, it reads a little stoic (learning that I cannot change these parts of society and focusing on the ones we can change). Stoicism is like the ibuprofen of life; paracetamol is pyrrhic skepticism. I’m bad at analogies, lol, but you get the point (I hope).
Prioritizing my health (including my mental health) has helped a lot. Good levels of everything in my body do wonders for my energy, but also my resilience, my mood, etc. Emotional regulation skills, combating stress… I know these are just common recommendations, but I don’t have more.
I’m sorry that you’re feeling down. It’s been a hard time…
Isn’t FlyingSquid a she?
I can think of two scenarios. The first one is you do that and everyone, including you, feels it and perceives it in a good way. Which I guess could end up in weird situations. Geeky example, but do you know Magic the Gathering? There’s a faction there called “The Rakdos Cult” with a demon and a lot of deranged characters that simply enjoy the bad things. The Rakdos cards often portray a little gorey scenes with people enjoying it, so I guess we could become kind of that but without victims, only enjoyers.
But the other scenario is that we wouldn’t have a need to prove or try such things because we often do it out of negative feelings such as emptiness, pride, competitiveness, etc. We wouldn’t feel those things so we wouldn’t behave as erratically as we do now.
That if we exist at all, though… Maybe existence as we know it is incompatible with my first comment.