I don’t know about anybody else but I’ve stopped reading the news and while I wouldn’t describe myself as brimming with joy overall I’m feeling less anxious.

Birth control exists for a reason.

I have not read these books however thankyou for the recommendation might try and check them out.

So I think we can all agree that constant population growth is bad for the environment.

And yet our economy hinges on it.

So…why are we still doing it? Same for constant economic growth in general.

At some point human society needs to reorganise around something other than the “economy”.

My issue is trying to get other people that have posted photos of me to take it down. Currently working through this.

Fortunately there’s not too many but still enough to be annoying.

But yes government and corporate overreach scares me.

A quote that made me laugh yesterday “Delulu is the solulu” 🤣

I know for me lack of sleep really ramps up the anxiety and turns it on to the maximum setting.

The only thing that’s helped me is to talk about my anxiety with someone (anyone). Usually that dials down the anxiety well enough to sleep which then allows me to cope better.

This is a cycle that gets repeated every so often.

Hmm might check this out.

People sicken me. It’s hard to find compassion in this scenario.

If you look hard enough at the hero’s of history, you are likely to find some unpleasant things. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Winston Churchill. I could go on.

Don’t be delulu about human nature. There’s good and bad in everyone, it’s just a matter of degree and hopefully most of the time there’s more good than bad.

To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting everyone does feel this way.

However it must be said that my view on Australian life is hardly an outlier. Official statistics on mental health are alarming and rising, and these are official numbers, to say nothing of all the people that aren’t being accounted for.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/mental-health#%3A~%3Atext=20%25+or+4.8+million+Australians%2C9%25+in+2014-15.

To put it succinctly:

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Jiddu Krishnamurti”

Yes I was going to say the safety net is basically non existent these days. If you don’t have friends or family unless you can get out of hot water relatively quickly you are in real trouble.

For myself I am trying to be more forgiving and compassionate. Really looking at my own flaws and mistakes and then within that framework, keep that in mind when someone else is not being particularly nice. I like to imagine people as babies and ask myself, what happened to you in life for you to turn out this way?

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I think we still have an awful lot of Britishness in our institutions and so on. And probably a lot of globalist corporate and consumer culture now as well - hence the emptiness.

I think one of the greatest myths we are told in modern societies is that you have to do it all on your own and you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

The truth is life can be terrible. No man is an island and humanity needs each other. I think the lack of care leads to an awful lot of problems and it starts in childhood.

Similar things happened in Mexico but they still have a distinct culture. It’s not quite the same I guess because the Mexicans recognise the Aztecs weren’t the nicest people either so I guess it’s more complicated.

But I think the fact that we were but a mere settler colony has a lot to do with it. Even then, the previous Christian traditions, whether you subscribe to them or not are also evaporating.

Overall Australia lacks culture and meaning, and has unfortunately become a mere economic zone. Probably why in part so many people are depressed and anxious.

I hope so. I just have to make sure I don’t self destruct through one way or another in the meantime.

One of the things I pray for is my nephew to have a secure life full of love, so that they aren’t pushed into some of the scenarios and resulting relatively harmless but nonetheless questionable choices that I’ve made.

I want them to be able to choose the right thing secure in the knowledge that even if it blows back on them they are safe enough in life to withstand it.

I want them to be able to grow rather than just merely survive.

It’s interesting because a lot probably is suppression but I don’t know how much is just due to old age.