Comment by fredphilo

Comment by fredphilo 4 days ago

this articles has a ton of typos but that reinforces the emotional state the author was - an emotional state that i think is becoming more and more common. theres an underlying anxiety here; the world you grew up in is gone. this is bad and we (the author and myself) are not falling victim to nostalgia. all the things i interact with are becoming more and more dysfunctional. everybody has their answer to whose fault it is, people to blame for the fact that things simply don’t work anymore, but i think an analysis of this “lack of care” or “i just dont dgaf” attitude on the part of the workers, the employees of the companies who, theoretically, make the USA and similar countries the beacons of good living that they appear to be, might be fruitful. i’ll definitely be thinking about this observation for a while.

aprilthird2021 4 days ago

I have a feeling this is a very common sentiment as one gets older though.

When you live somewhere where wages and costs diverge further and further every year, as you get to be 30-40-50-60, etc. you feel more and more like the world was better back then

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hn_acc1 3 days ago

I also think part of the realization is that as you grow up, the world was "whitewashed" for you when you were younger. Your parents took care of going to the DMV, or taking you to the dentist and paying / using insurance, and making sure there was someone to drive you there.
Now, you're the parent, and you have to figure out if you can drive your child, make sure they're covered by insurance, make sure you can pay the dentist if your insurance is maxed out for the year, heck, just in the last year, find a new dentist because the one you had for 20 years switched to "not taking Delta" and suddenly wants you to pay $500/checkup instead of previous $0, etc. And if you can't pay, well.. sucks to be you..
I'm in my 50s, and I kind of understand this attitude, and I also understand why people get cynical. I moved to the US due to finding someone to marry online (from Canada), and while I had heard some stories of how bad the US was, I felt like I had my eyes open going in, knew about insurance, etc. I never figured I'd have to worry about the government going openly hostile, somehow embracing Russia AND Nazis at the same time, etc - I always figured things would slowly improve over time (especially when Obama was elected), not get drastically worse. So I've stopped caring as much - during Covid, I canceled several charities we used to donate to regularly - suddenly, after feeling quite secure financially (not rich, but ok), I didn't feel that way anymore. I got laid off the day after my 50th birthday and after transferring to another position in the same company, again 1.5 years later and I stopped donating to the local food bank where I was employed. Finally found a job ~1 year later - actually with better pay, but less WFH and it's hard to go back.
Eventually life gets to you. Looking around, there are a whole lot of people who care greatly - but what they care about is hurting specific groups of "others" in specific ways.. Or in grifting as much $$ as possible. So now I don't care as much. I just want the ants to stop crawling into the house and the neighborhood dog to stop barking at night so I can sleep. Because I'm (*&@#$ TIRED.

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