Warmongering psychopaths in power. Fake news. School shootings. Rampant paedophilia. Divide and conquer. Escalating censorship. Endless propaganda. Voracious corporate greed. Out-of-control technological advancements. The total perversion of nature, healthcare provision, and nutrition. Shit music. The list goes on.
I know how you feel. It seems so natural to sink into despair when you consider the scale of the challenges we collectively face. For what it's worth, this is how I’m able to deal with it.
I am generally able to maintain a healthy degree of optimism and good cheer because from my point of view, we are indeed consciousness having a physical experience. I don't say this out of vapid adherence to some trite & trendy McSpirituality: it's something I've been thinking about very deeply, and reading about very widely, for many years.
The implications of consciousness being the foundation of reality are far greater and more profound than most appear to be able to appreciate.
It means that even though we can’t deny or shirk from the reality of the deep waters we find ourselves in, we are the Captains of our own physical vessel. The experiential Tomorrows awaiting each and every one of us are like a vast ocean in front of us; they await merely the orientation of our senses. The waters we will sail into tomorrow (to continue the metaphor) are entirely dependent on our sense of the possible today.
Now.
For example, if I am only able to seriously conceive the possibility of there being one physical Earth, which is heading uni-dimensionally into the future at a vector set by the collective conscious frequencies of all 7-odd billion of us, then I can only move forward within the parameters of that very vector which my imaginative parameters allow.
In other words, my steering wheel is jammed. I am unable to navigate the full range of potential destinations on the map of reality. If I can’t get past the notion that we’re all screwed, when I set a course for that very experience, and then it’s “engage warp drive, Captain! Dystopia ahoy!”
Furthermore, the buffeting winds created by the feelings and actions of 7 billion other human beings are apt to blow my vessel wherever those feelings and actions are bound to lead.
In the vast majority of cases, this is nowhere good.
If, however, I have learned a degree of mastery over the rudder of my thoughts and the sails of my emotions, I can harness those elemental forces (regardless of their source, over which I have no control) to navigate myself into a favourable Tomorrow.
Other Captains of other ships will end up perceiving and experiencing the waters of other Tomorrows - other Earths - according to their own skill and mastery over their respective rudders and sails.
What this means in practical terms is: a bad sailor blames the weather for where his vessel ends up. The better we learn to steer our thoughts and handle our emotions, the more of a chance we give ourselves - individually - to navigate our way towards a better Tomorrow; a better Earth.
Every life is its own timeline. As long as we focus on our own game, keep showing and living by example in the truth that we are more powerful by far than we have ever been led to believe by any orthodox State-accredited or religious mentor (with a very few honourable exceptions, of course), our fate will never be the fate of those who despair.
Try it and see.
As John Lennon once said: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”
To put it another way: It isn't the end until you - yes, you! - give up.
If you haven't given up, it isn't the end.