If you want things to change, you have to do something

I'm begging (and venting)

Regardless of what's going on in my life, there's always one thought that eats me up inside. Everyone would agree that we have a whole lot of problems as a species, and some people even claim to know how to fix them. Despite that, no one seems to care enough to do anything about them.

Billions of people and millions of species will die to climate change. You might post about it on your Instagram story, but do you go an volunteer at a community farm? Trump and his gang are systematically destroying just about everything around us that hasn't already been destroyed by imperialism and capitalism. Are you politically organizing in your local community, or are you just complaining to your friends? Life grows more and more expensive, leaving millions struggling. Do you pass your homeless peers on the street while they plead for support, or are you participating in mutual aid? Everyone wants public transit and walkable communities, but do you show up to city councils to make those demands known? Nobody wants a data center in their community, but are you still sending AI-generated TikToks to your friends? You want to save the animals and their habitats, but didn't you just eat a dead cow for dinner? You think trans people are valid, but do you give them weird looks in public? You say disabled people are important, but do you make sure everything you do is accessible to them? You're mad at Google and Amazon for their arming of a genocide, but do you still use Gmail and order from Amazon? I don't believe that you truly care about these issues if you aren't doing anything about them. Or just continue what you're doing and don't look up. Everything will be fine.

Does it not eat you up inside? To know that people are suffering and people will suffer while you sit back and do nothing? To know that the people you interact with in the world probably couldn't care less about things like the millions of species going extinct due to climate change? How can we stand this? Sure, it may seem like there's nothing you can do, but that's no excuse to not try. Relaxation and leisure are important, sure, but does our entire life need to be centered on bringing us as much enjoyment as possible while we suck the enjoyment away from our fellow and future man?

And no, reposting things and just talking to your friends isn't enough. Griping and whining, especially on social media, doesn't amount to anything. I'm sure most of the people you're mutuals with either already care about the same issues you do, or they care so little that any amount of "advocacy" you do won't change that. With the rise of social media, I think anyone who could know about all the current issues knows about them already. If they don't already know and care about the problems at this point, they're probably willingly ignorant. If you do actually care, prove it past social media and try to change something.

I understand it's sad. It's hard to care in a world that doesn't. People who are on the left are on average more unhappy than those on the right. What's interesting is that, when a left-leaning person is active in advocacy and action, it becomes the opposite. They become more happy than their right-leaning counterparts (Lubrano, Okulicz-Kozaryn et al., Klar and Kasser). People with "eco-anger" are happier, with their increased likelihood of climate action (Stanley et al.). Climate change psychological distress leads to an increase in collective action (Ballew et al., Gradidge et al.) To me, that makes perfect sense. If you care about the world, minorities, the environment, etc., then how we treat those things will naturally make you sad. But then, if you actually do something about it, you'd feel better as you're improving those problems and living your morals. If there's a problem in your personal life, you'd fix it - not complain about it, like we do with society. If the whole not dying and creating a better world thing isn't enough, maybe the mental health benefits are.

I understand it feels impossible. It is impossible, quite frankly, if we don't all work to help. There's so much that's wrong, and lots of the time it isn't obvious what we need to do. We only have limited time on this planet, we don't want to spend it doing something that might not even make results when we could be watching TV or something. I know I struggle with it. But we have to try. What's the alternative? Let society crumble in a climate disaster? Let Peter Thiel set up corporate city-states? Let the United States bomb the 20th West Asian country this decade?

I don't really think it's everyone's fault. I can't, or else I'd go more insane than I already am. I think the world we're in encourages us to be as passive as possible. If we cared about something enough to do something about it, the problems would actually be fixed. Then how would the oligarchs profit? Whether it's the constant bombardment of hateful rhetoric on the news, the direct avoidance from the news of covering a live genocide, or us eating the corpses of animals without thinking about the ethics of it, we're very effectively trained from a young age to not give a shit.

What this means to me

Nothing will humble you like starting a public advocacy project. There's the possibility of suppression, sure, but what I think is worse is what people do once they've actually seen your message. Everyone wants the world to be better, but, even when you give clear and actionable steps on how to do that past scrolling on your phone, suddenly people are too busy or they don't care that much.

I'm not sure if modern society will ever make me not want to gouge my eyes out. I am, have always been, and will hopefully always be a person who cares and thinks deeply about the world around them. I really struggle to emotionally grapple with the fact that there's a very high chance the people I pass on the street hate one or more marginalized groups, considering the political landscape of where I am. I struggle even more with the fact that even my closest friends, who agree with me ethically and ideologically on 95% of things, don't put their thoughts into action. It all drives me mad. I can't understand knowing and caring about the world, then choosing not to act.

Even when you provide someone with, I don't know, a guide on why and how they can take back control from the big tech companies that they complain about with no more than an hour of effort on their part, they don't. They'd rather continue to have AI read their emails then stop supporting a company that is actively arming one or more genocides. I don't want to sound like the work I'm doing is uber-important or that I think that the only thing matters is de-Googling. In fact, I really don't think it's too important - there are bigger issues, and the government will subsidize big tech regardless. Blocking ads and de-Googling and stuff is just what I've always been into, and most people don't know how to do it themselves. It's something that I've recognized is a need for the movement and it's something I could do, so - rather than just complaining about it - I did something about it.

While making this site I've found a lot of similar projects, tech-related or otherwise. Not to point blame, suggest that all the things I've found are useless, or suggest they aren't doing something noble, but lots of them are just seemingly pointless. Maybe they'll write some articles or do some kind of public demonstration, but that's it. They don't provide any resources for things you can do past signing up for a newsletter, they don't suggest you to participate in politics or organizing, they don't suggest you to volunteer, and they don't even organize protests. Some I've come across seem to be abandoned without any notice as to why! It makes me question why they were even started in the first place, if they weren't going to do anything past complain. I've always been worried that I'll stumble across a guide that does everything my site is trying to do and more, making my work in vain, but every passing day that fear becomes less and less realistic.

I'm sure it's safe to say that the powers that be benefit from all this. The less people that care enough to do something, the longer they can keep up their charade of profit while they kill the planet. Are you going to let it continue?

What is to be done?

If this resonated with you, that means it's time to do something about it. Not time to doomscroll, not time to complain to your friends. Those times may be in the past and in the future, but they aren't in the present. I'm normally pessimistic as to if people will actually organize and try to change the world, if you couldn't tell, so prove me wrong.

One thing I can't recommend enough is establish a baseline, consistent set of ethics/morals for you - then act on it. Identify what things are important to you, and evaluate and guide your life around them. For me, I determined that what's important to me is as-unbiased-as-I-can-get-it critical thinking, science, and logical empathy. You especially need to think past the confines of society. It's easy to turn a blind eye to something when all of society says it's normal or noble. You really need to determine if the things you do in your life are worth it and morally consistent. The example I've given and will continue to give is eating animals, and exploiting them in general. If you define yourself by your empathy, or for your love of animals, then why are you OK with killing them, eating them, and profiting off of their rape and enslavement? For me, the second I actually considered that, it was immediately clear to me that I couldn't both claim to care about animals (human and non-human) and use them. In summary, I looked past what society deemed as normal and I made a change after determining what was important to me. Once you do this, I think everything else can follow suit.

You need to be active politically. And by politics, I don't mean voting once every four years or posting to your stories. Politics doesn't start and end. It doesn't accomplish anything for the movement when the person you voted for doesn't do anything for exploited workers in the global south and when any policies they create get overwritten with the next administration. Find an organization near you that aligns with your beliefs and join them. If you're in school, you probably have a lot of options. Maybe you'll canvas, maybe you'll set up lectures, maybe you'll help with a project, maybe you'll make friends, it depends on the organization and what you're good at. Encourage your friends to as well.
See also: Anthropocene for more info

Educate yourself. Never stop learning and growing. Read, especially political theory. Explore the world beyond your own. If you're going to be on social media, make it actually matter with who you follow. If someone isn't educating or supplying a call to action, I don't follow them.
See also: Anthropocene for links

Do general community action, like volunteering and donating. Do mutual aid. Find a group near you and help them.

Use what you're good at. There's a concept created by Ayana Jackson called the climate action venn diagram. It has three sections: what brings you joy, what you are good at, and what work needs doing. While it's generally associated with the climate, I think it would be of use to anyone regardless. When combined with the other things you should be doing, it can help you put your skill set to use in ways that others couldn't. While I didn't know about it before starting this project, that's basically the math I did to start. I've always been into tech stuff and blocking ads, I think I'm good at it, and no one knows why or how to quit big tech, so that's what I started to work on.

And, most of all, simply care. At this point, I barely even care what it is that you care about - just care about something! No more whataboutism. No more shrugging it off. No more "oh well". No more apathy. No more "someone else will deal with it". This is our one and only planet, it's time we start acting like it.

See also: Anthropocene for additional actions and info

Conclusion

In political and Marxist theory, there's a word for what I'm advocating for you to do: praxis. There's a reason I try to end a piece of writing with something you can actually do rather than just letting the despair die at the end of the page.

If I could leave you with one message from this entire site/project, it wouldn't be that you should use Firefox instead of Google. It would be this. I can't even think about the fact that I doubt that anyone is reading this, I just need to keep working and trying. So, please care. Nothing will get better if you don't. Care so much that you can't stand to do nothing about it. What else do we have to do that's so important that we need to put improving the world on the back burner? Making an AI startup company? Staying in or joining the rat race? Some other pointless thing that will be gone in 25 years when billions of us are dead due to climate change? If we don't do anything, why would you expect anything to get better?

Specifically follow Aaron Flarin for more info about how to encourage yourself to be more active.
See also: Anthropocene