Am I mad?

[EmberR]

I am not sure if I am going mad or the world is going mad. But if you read the news properly you see the climate change crisis severely impacting many people with disaster in Nepal, effects of the summer heatwaves in Europe threatening food and water stability and no sense that carbon emissions are being reduced to manage this ongoing threat. You read that all major technology firms and leaders are stating openly that AI is becoming a significant threat to our security. With no sense that any governing body is managing this ongoing threat. You read that Russia, Iran, UK, USA etc are all playing very dangerous war games and we are likely ro
be targeted in a form of retaliation and we need to prepare. With no sense that and governing body is managing this ongoing threat.

so what are we meant to feel? Fine? Just carry on with our lives? Honestly I can’t understand how this level of threat is being reported alongside headings about Harry and Meghan and Reading festival updates.

Anyone else feel like this is a very very odd time and unsure what to do?

There are always threats to UK national security and safety. Quite rightly and for good reasons the government don't tell us about everything they are doing in this regard.

They don't advertise what they are doing for good reason even those that work in the military are sworn to keep certain things secret for their entire life's.

AI threat and the extreme warnings we are being given about the impact if climate change. These seem quite intense and no one is concerned?

I’m not concerned about any of that. None of it’s something that I can have any control over, so I’m not going to give it headspace or get wound up over it.

People have largely become used to, exhausted by, or actively numb by the constant stream of global crises.

I'm surprised climate change isn't being given a lot more prominence. Glaciers crashing down, wild fires all over Europe, no rain in the UK for months. I expect these are our last 'warnings'. We may already be stuffed. I've not seen government react at all really!

What makes you think nobody is concerned? Of course the general population who are reading the same information you are are concerned, of course the government is aware of all of this and are acting on threats and much more information than is available to the general public.

Exactly, I’m honestly amazed at the naivety of some people who think there isn’t huge areas of government and military dealing with very complex classified confidential situations all the time that aren’t made public for very good reason.

It is obvious that we (humanity collectively) are destroying the planet. It is only a matter of time. Given our capitalist economies based on materialism i see no hope of salvation. I am glad that I do not have grandchildren.

Honestly, don’t waste your life worrying about it. Enjoy yourself.

People are concerned but what can you do? You just have to focus on the good. There are things worth fighting for too

Of course normies are concerned, but whoever you vote for there will be bad consequences for individuals and those at the top slicing off everything they can. The heyday of the '90s are long gone.

Yes I live in France which is on the edge of bankrupcy, of a Right Wing government, had wildfires all over and yes I am putting an offer in on a house in the middle of a woodland. Am I concerned, yes, but you have to live going forward and hope that it all works out. Otherwise you will end up never leaving the house or getting ill with worry and stress.

The other alternative is come up with policies that answer problems, and get elected into your area and then watch as the people that don't want the issues resolved destroy your life.

It is very concerning! But I wonder how you would know what other people are feeling about it, what are you expecting to see? No trivial news when the news is big and serious?

Various people have been working on climate change since at least the 1990s.

The Kyoto protocol was signed by most member states of the UN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol

It was extended in 2012 by 37 countries until 2020.

The UN has the UNFCCC which meets yearly (known as the COP) and works on climate change .
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change

the unfccc has a secretariat (so people who work permanently there and work with governments to reduce emissions).

The currently in force agreement on climate change is the Paris agreement which began in 2015 and is still in force.

see here for details:
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

so yes, people are doing things.

This! If I worried about all the shite going on the in the world I’d end up with a mental breakdown!! I came off Threads because it was all doom and gloom and I choose not to spend too long on social media and only read the news once a day on the BBC app.

@EmberR The world is mad.
I have to allow it all to be—for my mental health. All I can control is what I do myself.
I advise that you stop consuming the news. I stopped in 2016. Obviously for some things it is unavoidable, you hear about them via others who consume news, but it helps me not hearing about it all the time.

Life has had threats and difficulties for hundreds, in fact thousand, of years. Whereas 24 hour news is a very recent thing. We are probably better off now than at any time in recorded history but, of course, that certainly doesn't mean life is perfect.
There is absolutely no point in worrying about things outside our control, so I suggest you watch far less (or no) TV news, and restrict your social media.

You’re very much not mad. I’ve noticed that now that the intense heat in the UK has lessened and some of us have had rain, there’s little talk of the climate disaster here, even though it’s horribly hot over Spain. And even though scientists are pointing out that this is exactly what was predicted decades ago. The rate of change is increasing. MI6 warned last year of the insecurities we are facing as the crisis intensifies.

As for what we are “meant” to do: meant by whom? Our responsibility is to inform ourselves and prepare as best we can.

I don't think you're mad or unreasonable.

I don't know what age you are, but I'm 57 and every day I boggle at where alleged "progress" has brought us, because I remember a time when we didn't have the technology / media and ignorance now seems like bliss.

It does seem surreal in so many ways.

My only approach is to take each day as it comes and fingers crossed x nowt much else we can do.....

I’m with you OP. Did you read about the humanoid olympics in China last week? That Indian government guy who said something like ‘it’s all very amusing watching robots run faster than Usain Bolt and than crash headlong into a wall but it’s going to be somewhat less funny when they are patrolling the Chinese border with a machine gun’.

People have always put their head in the sand when terrifying things are happening that are beyond their comprehension. Was it the Māori who behaved as if Cook’s ships weren’t actually on the horizon as they’d never seen ships before and only ran away when European sailors got into smaller boats to land on the beaches?

These are terrifying times. The development of AI prevents risks on the scale of the invention of the atom bomb, except that it’s masked by people making miniature versions of themselves with accessories in Barbie boxes and posting them on instagram for likes.

I think psychologically, we are not equipped to manage risk on this scale that we cannot do anything about so we are driven to minimise and ignore it as a protective mechanism. We are genetically programmed to be optimistic because otherwise, given that the odds of the earliest human beings surviving were so low, people would have just given up. Over millions of years, the most positive and resilient would have survived, and now, the optimism gene is biting us on the bottom.

How would people have felt in 1930s / 1940s with the slide into war then a very long recovery?
Sure you just hope for the best and keep muddling on.

I also think physiologically we simply can’t take all this variety of information in and do what we’d naturally expect to do when there’s crises, react with emotion. We didn’t evolve to have this much information flung at us daily.

I only read news when I know that I’m reading as an observer with interest, simply to be aware of what’s going on in the world but not if I start to feel I’m personally responsible. I can recycle and buy ethically and donate to things but at the end of the day, changes have to happen at a higher corporate and political level. Which is why it’s important to be aware of the news and world issues in order to vote or effect changes at the lower smaller level I can do.

Many of these things need to be tackled on a global level and we don’t have a global government. Most countries have a government which is either only in for a fixed term so are concentrated on short term successes or a government which is in indefinitely which is usually a dictatorship.
We, as individuals, can attempt to get into parliament to try to influence things, we can take direct or indirect action to have our voices heard or we can accept that we can do very little on the global scale.My choice is to do what I can to reduce my own impact on the environment and to give back where I can to the local community.

This is right. We know more about the tragedies of strangers on the other side of the world in real time than people in world wars knew of what was happening to their sons and daughters months later. It's too much for a basic human brain and flips into apathy/overload.

The Government is not quietly solving the climate crisis! There are bits and pieces but they're slow moving and often then undermined by another part of govt or economic reality.

And AI threats are real, probably already unstoppable by even those who control the systems and our govt is responding by agreeing to data centre infrastructure (growth obsession) which will knock out climate goals.

I work closely to some of this stuff and I do despair. My only response is to try and take care of my own patch and be decent to others.