For the better part of the past few weeks, I’ve felt overwhelmed and unmotivated. Shit, ever since January 20, 2025, I’ve felt overwhelmed and unmotivated. With news that 3 out 4 Americans feel exhausted, I can take some solace in knowing that I’m not alone. Everyone is tired of everything all the time. The simplified version in my head sounds a little like this: the world is crap, greed and corruption are everywhere, the climate is a mess, we’re living through a surveillance nightmare, the current administration is unusually cruel, nobody trusts anybody, and AI is killing jobs and maybe even us… so why bother?
While it’s hard to describe, much less pinpoint its cause(s), I can feel the change. It’s as though my grumpiness has far outpaced my propensity for joy – despite the fact that I do lots of joyful things: bars, concerts, poetry readings, long walks, short walks, time with friends, etc. etc. Yet, I have days (especially on those long walks) when I blame my current circumstances: single and underemployed in the land of the get-rich yahoo grifters. I’ll feel grumpy because the world is crap and think “San Francisco is breaking me (spiritually).” That’s when I have to remind myself that it’s our modern moment that’s doing the breaking. I’m pretty sure this change in mood from being more joyous to being sour and dour would have happened anywhere. Only when I pull back and reflect do I remember that we’re wired for negativity (bad shit stays with us longer than good shit does) and that we often mis-assign blame to whatever is closest to us or in front of us (in my case a beautiful but expensive city that’s only getting more expensive with the influx of tech money).
That said, rightfully (and a little wrongfully) so, I place some of the blame for our modern moment on SF (and Silicon Valley). This is ground zero for the AI arms race and ground zero for the techno-fascist thinking that is ruining our government. A lot of bad, cult-like shit emerges from the Bay Area (Jonestown, Charles Manson, Symbionese Liberation Army, and now the cult of AI and tech fascism). Everywhere I look, I see AI billboards. Half the conversations I overhear are about AI this or AI that. When I log in to LinkedIn to look for jobs, every other post is about AI. And then of course, there have been the bombshell news pieces with scientists very publicly setting the odds on whether or not AI will kill us all. This constant low-level anxiety over the near-term fate of humanity can’t be good for the soul. It makes me think, “can’t they just get on with it and put us out of our collective misery?” Can’t I just retire to a quiet seaside village where I read and write and know Bob and Nancy who run the local market?
The only place where I seem to find some consolation (other than at the end of a pint glass) is in reading Cory Doctorow’s assessments of AI. While he doesn’t downplay the technological threats (the ability to hack into systems), he has interesting (and I believe informed) takes on why things are playing out the way they are. For one, he states that all AI is, is a word-guessing program. It’s not sentient and it’s not doing anything that it wasn’t designed to do. It can’t create anything novel or surprising because it’s limited to what it’s been trained on and is, by design, a prediction machine. Statistical analysis is not creation. Perhaps even more interesting is that Doctorow seems to suggest that halting AI development will only be beneficial to the AI companies who without any slowdown or halt would essentially spend themselves to death (they’re blowing through massive amounts of money). If it weren’t going to tank the economy, I’d probably be ok with that. (oh and that’s another modern worry to add to the list – the bubble will burst and we’ll all be screwed).
But again, the bigger challenge is finding motivation and/or purpose while faced with the constant threat of imminent catastrophe: war, climate crisis (El Niño is all the rage out here), economic collapse, AI apocalypse. And finding motivation can be even more disheartening when one is intentionally tyring to avoid being a part of the problem. I may be naive in doing my little part, but I walk and take public transportation, I recycle and compost, I try not to consume wasteful things, and I abstained from using AI. But my choices do little to mitigate the problems and even less to shelter me, and my attention span, from the scale of these problem. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to look away or focus on anything else. As a recent article in The Atlantic stated, “In the past week, consulting virtually any major news source—not to mention social media—has meant confronting the prospect of an AI apocalypse. Using AI has already diminished many people’s capacity to focus, work, and think; worrying about AI is making the problem worse.
These gripes and worries aren’t new. I write about them often (like here, here, and here). I have yet to find an antidote. The walks help less than they used to. The bar, while fun, is more of a distraction than anything else. And finding wonder and joy in small things is harder to do under these circumstances – though I’m trying to get back to that practice. And maybe that’s the business idea I need to start: a doomerism support group where we express our concerns, vent our frustrations, maybe punch a pillow or two?
Politically, things might change with the midterms, but I’m no Charlie Brown… I know how that football gets pulled away. As for everything else… sigh, shrug… as for everything else.