muting my last two plurks because i'm spiraling badly

took an hour to go from "I'm confused about pokemon cards" to "Human society is fucked and there's no way to unfuck it and nothing I can possibly do will ever matter or improve anything"

I was going to recommend that but didn't want to overstep. Sorry for contributing.

at least it's nice to know that I personally am not breaking society because I'm so insignificant compared to the people with all the real power that nothing i could ever do would even amount to a rounding error in their already-complete fucking of society

I would strongly recommend trying to learn about this stuff in a methodical/controlled way on your own, though, because I think a lot of people handle it by being kind of deliberately flippant and dismissive, which seems to exacerbate your own anxiety around it

I was raised learning that all of humanity bears responsibility for doing their part to solve problems like environmental collapse and it's hard to get a good feel for which parts of that are true and important and which part of it was the twelve people who own the planet offloading responsibility onto us

in terms of climate emissions, individual homes and vehicles probably are responsible for something like 20% of CO2 emissions. So individuals can't solve the whole problem by themselves, but they're not irrelevant either.

this is from me playing around with EPA numbers and interpolating a little where they didn't provide enough breakdown

of course if people really cut consumption drastically the other 80% would be affected to some degree too.

I appreciate the answer and will note it but at the moment I am not looking for more specific knowledge about specific issues, I anxiety spiked about details a while ago

ah. Yeah, sorry, burying myself in facts is how I deal with this kind of thing. I'll leave off if it's bad for you.

burying myself in facts is how I got into this spiral

oh, yeah, I'll shut up, soz

it's not hopeless. you might not be able to change the world or stop what megacorps are doing, but in your own community, on a local level, one person can make a big impact that makes things better for a lot of individual people

thanks for support

I'm going to just lie down and vent steam for a minute

yeah, that's probably a good idea

it's tough when the people around you deal with these sorts of anxieties by detail-diving and trying to break the problem down, but you're the type where that only makes things worse

everyone who replied had good intentions and I appreciate that

my brain's juts finnicky