That you feel this at all makes you a compassionate and conscientious human being: thank you for being the person and the human being that you are.

To a certain extent, I agree that there are today floods of news and information that have never existed in preceding decades. But overall, over the centuries, trends have been tracing increasingly worse trajectories, contemporary news and information overload notwithstanding.

Coincidentally, I was re-reading the Powell memorandum today[1], and trying to unpack the layers upon layers of deception and evil and all the other failings of humanity in its every line. It is a reminder of the propensity of the human psyche to prey upon itself and other life, just because. (Also, this pre-dates the internet as we know it today, and was (and still is) being "implemented" by the powers that were and are.)

My unshakeable (though highly personal and highly subjective) worldview is that the systems that humans have been collectively building (or are being forced to build against their will) across many generations are force-multipliers to the detriment of this planet and all its lifeforms.

This leads to shrapnel like:

* System efficiencies are designed for, and forced towards accelerating exploitation at all costs rather than optimizing for general well-being.

* Human effort has largely been, and is still being massively misdirected for generations into building things that shouldn't have even been ideas to begin with. All modern "innovations" (ads? zero-privacy faang walled-gardens?) operate under the implicit assumptions that your consciousness is game; that your consciousness exists as the ultimate cannon-fodder to satisfy these "innovations", and then some? F*ck that noise.)

* We have more hydrocarbons and their residues inside and around living things today, than in earlier decades.

* There is more water draining away from the poles and into the oceans than ever before.

* There is more orchestrated exploitation of the planet and its organisms than before.

As for me, I address it by a bit of selflessness and selfishness combined, being both single and childfree by choice. I've seriously considered offing myself. I refuse to bring a child into a world accelerating downhill, and forced human reproduction (just like your tasty chicken came to be) is actually beginning to take root in some places around this world (see what's up with Roe v Wade these days, as an example.) That sentiment will probably keep spreading rapidly across the world in the years to come.

I know I am to blame to some extent for the world I end up creating through my actions and my profession (as maybe you do as well.) But I have really, sincerely and honestly tried to do my bit as well: never owned or cared for a car, barely ride a motorbike a couple score kilometers a month, veggie, adore my cats. I know it doesn't amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, but hey, my cats purr at me, my poops are just better with all that fiber and I like learning to cook new things that aren't heart-attack food if I'd have to buy them instead.

It is sad that the only way to "win" (atleast in my mind?) is not to play the game: every day I have lived is the most powerful reinforcement of having made the choices I made. I have some regrets, but those pale in comparison to knowing that my children and descendants will never have to suffer through the minefields and exclusion-zones that many generations before me have laid out for them in full coherence and with full force of will. That pain and regret is a small price to pay for such an assurance.

[1] https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemo...

/soapbox

edit: formatting