Thought Journal Entry: Thinking about the World’s Troubles, the Angst that Results, and How to Reframe It

I was thinking the other day about global warming, about how the oceans are infested with plastic, and about overpopulation, and I had a few philosophical thoughts that I thought it might be good to share. Normally such subjects lead me into a sort of feeling of angst, which I do not like, so I worked on reframing, which resulted in the following train of thought:

Despite all of these problems,

At some point you acknowledge that the world is

not a utopia.

_

And it doesn’t seem likely that it ever will become one.

There are limitations in the world that cause a great deal of harm to humans (such as the world’s size and the amount of resources it contains, and certain aspects of human nature) and which were not put in place by humans.

They are instead problems which come with existing.

These problems come with the territory of being alive/existing.

We constantly try to fight against them in order to make the world better for us, but at the same time we also must accept such problems as an unavoidable feature of existence (This is a sort of paradoxical task that we have in life; to fight the problems but also recognize that they are an ever-present part of life).

In other words, your existence came with an inextricable price; in order to exist in the world, you are also required to live among these pervasive problems.

Although we must fight against these problems, there is no reason to get overly upset about them since they are an unavoidable aspect of existing. There is simply no way of fully escaping these kinds of problems.

Such problems would include

Death

Pollution

Human Limitations: The Fact that Humans Have Certain Physical and Emotional Needs, Desires, and Instincts

Overpopulation

Ignorant Political Movements

False Propaganda

Sickness

Mental Illness

Stupidity

Poverty

Starvation

Lack of Access to Education

Mental Disability

Infidelity

Abandonment of Family

Child Neglect/Abuse

Lying

Censorship

Anger Expressed as Violence

Political Corruption

Substance Abuse and Addiction

Avarice

Murder

Racism and Other Forms of Tribalism

Non-ideal Climate and Weather (e.g. Global Warming)

The Finite Nature of Earthly Resources

Other Evils

The list goes on and on.

The point here is that these problems are all basically “built in” and are never going to disappear completely, although efforts can be made to reduce their impact.

Essentially the point is that one should not become overly upset that such types of phenomena occur in the world.

When such unfortunate problems pop up or arise we must simply acknowledge that we have always had a flawed existence and that this is just life, as it is. These problems exist because this is the nature of human beings and of our environment.

We seem to go wrong when we focus on certain of these evils and try to blame others for the existence of these problems. These problems do not exist because others do not want to do anything about them. They exist because that is the nature of the world in which we live. We should not get angry when others don’t go along with us and would rather try to work on their particular chosen problems first — which they feel are more important; rather, we should make our best efforts to discuss why each of us feels that our chosen problem should receive the priority of our efforts and should be made the subject of our particular chosen solution. We must explain why these problems are important, and why our individual preferred solutions will work at reasonable cost to society.

We also go wrong when we act indignant about these problems — like “How could these problems happen to ME?” or “The world is not supposed to be like this?”

Really? Says who?

Whether or not it is supposed to be, it is, and thus such thinking serves no purpose other than negatively impacting our mood. It therefore behooves us to avoid falling into these kinds of negative thinking traps by recognizing that we neither created ourselves nor our environment — something else did; and therefore we do not get to determine how it all works.

Additionally, it is also important to note that — although it may be tempting — we should not simply try to ignore the built-in problems as I have described since we are not the cause of them. On the contrary, we should try and become intimately familiar with them in order to see if there are any loopholes or openings in which we can apply our energies to reduce them in an efficient way. Those who ignore the problems do a disservice to the world, although they may ultimately be less burdened by troubling thoughts. But perhaps the troublesome emotional aspect of thinking and tackling the difficult human problems can be mitigated — by considering the problems’ nature — and their ultimate cause, which is in a certain sense, the mere fact that we are alive.