this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Mildly Interesting
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I’m just a normal civvie software engineer, but this is actually a thought process that I have struggled with mightily, and continue to do so: as a conscientious human who has a strong interest in history, is it reasonable and ethical for me to medicate myself into quiescence, when my anxiety and distress is directly caused by the fact that I care about the world and happen to know a good deal about current events?
Or, if you’re more neurotypical / are better at compartmentalization: is it ethically ok to just straight up ignore all the systematic, horrifyingly bad shit going on in the world?
I really don't think it will be easy. We need to come up with a new economic system not based democratic control rather than exploitation and extraction/theft of surplus value at every step. Then we need to dismantle the old system and implement the new one. All three of these are horribly complicated tasks by themselves.
And they will need to be done while under legal resistance, propaganda resistance, and when push comes to shove, lethal resistance from the powers that be. The exxons and nestles and boeings of the world have done nothing to imply they would go quietly into the night. They will use their agents in government to disrupt any attempts at organized resistance
It's not ethically okay to ignore it, but you're also not morally obligated to solve it, only to do your part!
I actually don't know if compartmentalization is a neurotypicals trait. If anything, given my experience being neurodivergent (ADHD), and growing up with other neurodivergent people (brother with autism, sister with ADHD), I would believe that in fact compartmentalization is a neurodivergent trait. But I will say that in this case I'm not sure anyone who's compartmentalizing the world being on fire is normal. It takes a lot of mental fortitude or apathy to see the entire landscape ablaze and just be like "meh, I gotta go to work, I don't have time for that..".
if you feel theres something you can/should be doong about it, or at least trying.. you can do that, and then tune out in peace woth yourself.