No f***s left to give

[Patrick Thistle]

Behold my field of fucks. It is barren. I have no fucks left to give.

I was having a frank discussion today with a work colleague about why everyone seems so on edge, burned out, despondent, fraught. It ended up on a meta level with us blaming the current political chaos which leads to stymied leadership and works down the food chain. Limbo is exhausting. Not knowing is exhausting. We are all lashing out. We are all fatigued.


I'm one work day away from a much needed holiday.

[San Bernardhinault]

I go through phases of finding the situation on both sides of the Atlantic utterly enervating, and I end up switching off from the Normal Life Things I should be doing rather than switching off from the shitty wankstain clusterfuck of public life which I have literally no control over.

You have my sympathies.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I lose myself in whatever I can. Novels from the 1940s, crap poetry (mine), music from the 1950s, photos of anything except people (also mine.) I realise I haven't watched any North American sport for over a year, and no English football either (QPR excepted.) None of it's conscious, but it's certainly a response to the world out there and over there. I only have so much energy and I'm not using it up on shit.

[Hot Pepsi]

I need to find some things like that. I have trouble controlling anxiety enough to develop a new hobby, but it’s a good idea.

[Sits]

OTF is an excellent oasis if I avoid certain threads.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I was at Uni in the early 90s and we all genuinely thought the first Gulf War was going to lead to nuclear war. Even though we knew that would mean the end of us (we were about two miles from what was then a major RAF air base) it was somehow exhilarating.

[ad hoc]

Hyperpedantically, the one in the early nineties was the second "Gulf War", the first one was the one in the late 80s between Iran and Iraq

[E10 Rifle]

It's terrible, all this, but if there's hope to be had, it's in the idea that a lot of bad ideas and philosophies are dying, even as other bad ones are reviving. Good ones are coming through too - reinvigorated environmentalism, the new left. We can still fight this, and win.

[pebblethefish]

Once you give up all hope, and just accept the fact that whatever happens is going to be a disaster, then the whole political situation is absolutely hilarious.

[Balderdasha]

I'm not totally convinced the world is getting worse. Look at these charts:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/98825/seven...er-place%3famp

The second and third ones on child mortality and fertility rates are the ones that really get me. 100 years ago, I'd have had no access to decent contraception, resulting in around 5-10 children, with one or two of them dying before age 5. Oh, except that I'd have died in my first childbirth because low-risk caesarians and decent antibiotics didn't exist.

The emotional fall-out of everyone dealing with their children dying of childhood diseases, or their wives, daughters or mothers dying in childbirth must have been insane. I am very glad to live in the century I do.

[Nocturnal Submission]

[oscar mike]

Going back to the OP, totally agree about limbo & not knowing. We were told in June that our unit would be closing. We have subsequently been told it will be by December. That's December 2020. Although it could be any time before that, we simply don't know. Now, I'm lucky, I've been with company nearly 24 years and will walk away with a decent wedge. But there's plenty of others who are not and have the double stress of possibly losing their job but not knowing exactly when. Those of us who are leaving can't really plan ahead until we've an exit date. So morale has plummeted, people are on edge, there are mental health concerns etc. Leadership has been lacking, in fact it's been near invisible. That's something that seems to be everywhere and, yeah, maybe it does come from the very top.

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm not totally convinced the world is getting worse. Look at these charts:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/98825/seven...er-place%3famp

The second and third ones on child mortality and fertility rates are the ones that really get me. 100 years ago, I'd have had no access to decent contraception, resulting in around 5-10 children, with one or two of them dying before age 5. Oh, except that I'd have died in my first childbirth because low-risk caesarians and decent antibiotics didn't exist.

The emotional fall-out of everyone dealing with their children dying of childhood diseases, or their wives, daughters or mothers dying in childbirth must have been insane. I am very glad to live in the century I do.

This is true overall. We are getting anxious about "rich countries' problems" to an extent. OTOH technology is not being used wisely in many cases and in places like Yemen it's being used for mass murder, not to mention destroying the environment beyond repair.

[ursus arctos]

Though that has always been the case to a large extent.

What I sense happening is a re-emergence of the kind of existential dread that was associated with Mutually Assured Destruction and the seeming inevitability of nuclear war in my childhood, with climate change having replaced MAD as the primary driver. I think that this is especially difficult for those who haven't previously experienced such a period, though that also reflects the immutable fact that those of us who have have less time ahead of us.

[Etienne]

Yeah, I think existential dread is exactly the right phrase, though the MAD would have been sudden swift and clean, while climate breakdown looks like it will be gradual, protracted and messy. Not to pick one type of catastrophe over another, but the way that it is to happen must alter how we react to the prospect of it.

We are having serious discussions over selling our house and going travelling while there is still a world to see. If it was just me, I'd have done it already, but a 4 year old and a baby on the way complicates things, while my wife is more attached to our house (a lovely one, which she has worked very hard to be able to afford) and doesn't want to give it up. I also feel it might be selfish, that the children wouldn't appreciate it enough, and given that they are going to grow up into an almost uninhabitable planet at some point in their lives (I veer between hoping it might not be until their 50s, though I suspect it's more likely to be their 30s) that we should be doing whatever will give them the most enjoyable childhoods.

[ursus arctos]

Bruno, as someone who was alive during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the sense of existential dread by the end of the Cold War was a mere fraction of what it had been during the 60s.

Etienne, that's very true. In fact, one of the ways that I dealt with the existential dread as an overly informed and sensitive child was to focus on the fact that it would be over quickly and that New York was very high on the list of Soviet targets.

[delicatemoth]

Though that has always been the case to a large extent.

What I sense happening is a re-emergence of the kind of existential dread that was associated with Mutually Assured Destruction and the seeming inevitability of nuclear war in my childhood, with climate change having replaced MAD as the primary driver. I think that this is especially difficult for those who haven't previously experienced such a period, though that also reflects the immutable fact that those of us who have have less time ahead of us.

And mine/many other OTFers'! We didn't have the Cuban Missile Crisis but we did have Early Eighties Doom, the films, the bellicosity of Reagan and Brezhnev. I lived near Heyford under the flight path of the F111s and on the odd occasions they would pass very low, screaming out of the sky, I would be terrified. Me and a pal once heard an air-raid siren wailing out over the estate and looked at each other like WHAT THE FUCK. I think it was someone playing the start of Two Tribes very loudly. Either that or the bombs were duds, cos I'm still here.

This is a great post and the comparison of global warming to nuclear dread makes me feel better about the former, thanks Ursus!

Also yes to your comment about being close to a major target. We used to hang out with American airmen and consume their exciting food and booze from their big store at the Upper Heyford base. We didn't see them at the base, they had a house in Westbury and we would go there to party with Bill and watch his laser discs.

[ad hoc]

It's terrible, all this, but if there's hope to be had, it's in the idea that we might be a lot of bad ideas and philosophies are dying, even as other bad ones are reviving. Good ones are coming through too - reinvigorated environmentalism, the new left. We can still fight this, and win.

I agree with this. Maybe I'm being over optimistic, but i do believe that this could all turn around. We either have a very good future ahead with a genuine international effort on climate change and its effects, and a crushing of the far right forces that currently dominate, or we have the opposite and the world ends (for most of humanity) in the next 20 or 30 years. I'm going with (a)

[ursus arctos]

I have found that there is an interesting time shift w/r/t to this particular issue between Americans and Europeans. For a host of reasons, "you" were much more aware of a kind of second wave of dread that was associated with all of the things you mention, plus CND, anti-US base demonstrations on the continent, revelations of CIA involvement in various atrocities, etc. In talking about this to Europeans of my age, it seems as if the fact that Western Europe was still in its post-war boom phase in the early 60s crowded out the kind of dread we felt (though that definitely wasn't true for Berliners or people living near the Fulda Gap). There's also the fact that all of the primitive graphics of what a nuclear exchange would look like had the missiles flying over non-Soviet Europe in both directions.

[delicatemoth]

Ah, that makes sense. The bases were one of the reasons you cite, along with the cultural stuff I mentioned. Protect And Survive! Also, my parents were lefties and my mum was in the Labour Party and went to Greenham and stuff so I was Very Aware. My mum very vividly remembers Cuba terror here, too, but she was an adult at the time. Didn't you have to do 'duck and cover' drills, that must have been horrible?

[ursus arctos]

I only had to do those once or twice, and it somehow wasn't as bad because I was already very aware of the risks and knew how ludicrous they were.

My mother was also essential to my "radicalisation" as a child, though our issue was the Vietnam War.

[ursus arctos]

As was I. There is a lot of value to me in comparing different generational perspectives.

The Day After (which did star Robards) came out in 1983 and does seem to have been a kind of wake up call for that generation (though probably not as essential as Threads (1984) was in the UK).

[E10 Rifle]

The second and third ones on child mortality and fertility rates are the ones that really get me. 100 years ago, I'd have had no access to decent contraception, resulting in around 5-10 children, with one or two of them dying before age 5. Oh, except that I'd have died in my first childbirth because low-risk caesarians and decent antibiotics didn't exist.

Excellent point, and one that would be made a lot more often in these debates in a less misogynist and patriarchal world.

[delicatemoth]

Also, loads of young people are great - more accepting than my generation for sure. And it does seem to me that more men are saying no to toxic masculinity. I certainly see more of them holding their children's hands and sweet stuff like that. I hope that isn't a naive comment.

[E10 Rifle]

At the risk of sounding like Whitney Houston, I've confidence in our kids and the generation of young adults below us. It's people my age - particularly those of my ethnicity, culture and gender - who are the problem. Dreadful people, we are.