The world isn’t ending — that’s the problem

One of the interesting parts of my job is I get an inside look on the activist class of the Democratic party. I’m in chats and slacks with a lot of the people who do the work of making the Democratic party function. Often times this is interesting, but since Tuesday night it has been worrying to say the least.

Over the last few days I have seen intense doomer energy even from people who are normally quite engaged. I’ve seen a lot of messages and sentiment to the affect of “the world is ending and so I will give up and be comfortable in the meantime”. This sort of response makes a lot of sense. The country truly choose Trump with full knowledge of him this election. That is really depressing, and it will mean regression on climate change and Democratic values both of which can feel apocalyptic.

Unfortunately, neither is likely to cause extinction of humanity. We are quite hearty and adaptable. Excepting a particularly large meteor, or thermonuclear war the human race will survive. It will just make life much much worse for the people who live here.

At the end of the day that is what I care about. If the world were truly just doomed then blatant hedonism would be a reasonable approach in my book. However, the question is about what life will be like for people in the future. We can’t give up because that future is coming whether we want it to or not.

To illustrate my point, I’ll provide an example. The most important thing the government does is provide social security and medicare which are absolutely essential for roughly 1 in 5 Americans. Without those programs, millions would nearly immediately run out of savings and be unable to pay for necessities such as food and housing. Within a year we would see an unprecedented spike in preventable deaths. People would suffer. If we are able to ensure that these programs are protected and paid for it will make people’s lives substantially better.

I think it is reasonable to let people have their space and grieve what is an upsetting loss. I was pretty distraught Tuesday night as well. But when you are ready you must get reengaged. Unfortunately, the world isn’t ending. We will be stuck living in it. The question is what the conditions will be.