Summary
Donald Trump’s re-election has fueled a surge in misogynistic, homophobic, and racist rhetoric among young men, reportedly emboldened by the president-elect’s history of inflammatory remarks about women.
In schools, boys have been caught using phrases like “your body, my choice” against female peers, prompting districts like Minnesota’s Hopkins Public Schools to issue warnings to parents about harassment.
The impact extends beyond schools, with activists on Texas State University’s campus displaying signs asserting that “women are property.”
This hostile climate has left many women feeling unsafe as a new far-right administration takes power.
Bruh, I hate this timeline.
I feel like I accidentally triggered some portal and walked into a TV show / movie.
Nothing feels real anymore.
It was December 21st 2012. The Mayans were right. A timeline ended and were falling into some clown mirror black hole ever since or something.
I thought everything went crooked the day Harambe died
Tbh, for me, I’m realizing it’s triggering a sort of sea-change in terms of how I, as a citizen, want to interact with American society.
Laws, ethics, human dignity and empathy clearly aren’t important to people here. Money and power are. This is fully incongruent with my personal beliefs in a variety of fundamental ways. I’ve tried to aim my career at areas that are going to help better society - that’s a big part of why I work at an oncology-focused biotech now. But like… I’m faced with the realization that this country just doesn’t share my values, and doesn’t actually care that I willingly take markedly less compensation than, say, working at Meta, and it’s primarily because I want to make the world a better place.
I admit it’s starting to feel like an abusive relationship. I don’t think the world is going to become a better place in my lifetime. It’s going to get a lot worse in a lot of ways. My initial reaction was to begin taking steps to just fully fuck off from this country, and find someplace else with a society that hasn’t fully eaten itself. Try to keep my sanity and ethics in one piece by finding a new society to call home that’s not America.
But I ALSO have begun to realize in the last couple days that there’s another darker path I could take that denys the society I’ve honestly come to resent pretty strongly the my true capabilities and abusive consumption of my efforts: Malicious compliance. I could just fully jettison my ethical guidelines and engineering principles and simply min/max the absolute fuck out of comp and just retire early. Work for Meta or OpenAI or some health insurance company or whatever the fuck is the absolute most lucrative job I can find and just fully shoot for leadership metrics, not really fucking caring about the toxicity of the management class, the morale or well being of my team, the impact my work has on society, the quality, reliability, and integrity of the code I ship, or any of that ivory tower crap I’ve previously held as crucial elements to my profession. Stop trying to move the needle in the right direction. All gas, no brakes. If this country is determined to not give a fuck, why should I? Why shouldn’t I try to get to a place in my career where I can just retire, or do whatever I want without worrying too much about the personal consequences, because I can just fuck off at my own discretion due to money?
And the second, darker option has the added benefit that I wouldn’t have to essentially abandon my family here, who are definitely not considering moving away as seriously as I am. My parents are both not in the best of health; maybe I should try to at least spend some more time closer to them before I just fuckin leave - or at least, as long as I can stand it here before the “fuck off and leave” route is truly the only viable option.
When I have gone through this thought process lately, I’ve concluded that even if I plan my life in the most cold robotic way possible, my mental health and general well-being are at their best when I am compassionate towards those around me.
So first you must ask yourself what your true goal is. Do you want to “win” some shallow materialistic version of life? Or do you want to help others, or just be happy regardless of what it takes? Then that helps inform later decisions.
My automatic assumption has always been that saving everything, retiring early, and being a recluse was my path to a happy existence. It’s just what I felt I wanted to do. I bet I’m not alone there.
But then I had the great luck to have COVID come around and fuck up my career and finances in a few different ways. Now I’m stable again at work and my finances are a disaster, but I’ve waded through so much shit mentally that even though big retirement account balances feel great, that’s not what creates real joy, contentment, and even optimism.
…In my brain anyway. It’s like we all have slightly different owners manuals but we don’t get a copy of it and have to reverse-engineer it. In my case I had some things I cared about a lot get torn away, but I still had my family, and I realized that without that stuff that got taken away I was still the same person and was just fine. That definitely flipped a switch or two. Well, that and a grueling couple years dialing in medications, lol. Anything that helps!
I do understand what you’re saying. But at the same time, the foundation of the premise you’re presenting begs the question “do I still consider this society worth saving”? And quite frankly, I can no longer give an unambiguous “yes” to that question. THAT is what I mean when I say the result of this election has made my sense of misanthropy spin wildly out of control.
Oh yeah I get that. The disbelief and disappointment are off the charts for me.
But to continue my train of thought, what’s worked well for my mental state is to give myself permission to focus on the small scale and those close to me rather than (justifiably) dwelling on the fucked up state of society at large.
So instead of worrying about whether society is worth saving, I worry about whether my own sanity is worth saving, and by extension whether it is worth trying to have a happy and fulfilling life. And that’s not just being selfish. It’s equivalent to putting on your own oxygen mask on an airplane before you help others. With my head on straight, I can help improve the lives of those around me, and that is not only worth it but feeds back into making my own life and mental state better.
And from time to time I also like to remind myself about how insane it is that we even exist, that clouds of matter formed billions of years ago in supernovae were able to coalesce and form self-aware brains. It just makes me more interested in learning about existence and the universe.
And when I point that attitude towards the fucked up things in society and the world, it certainly doesn’t make those things better. I think about how I am watching significant history being written, and I can at least be an engaged witness even if I can’t change the course of that history. Though I do try where I can, and of course vote accordingly.
That’s a really healthy and rational way to unpack the situation. I’ll have to give it some more thought. For what it’s worth, thank you for sharing that.
I appreciate the reply. Thanks for the discussion!