Larry wrote this on Facebook. I saw it and thought ‘this one definitely needs to be archived on the blog instead of buried on the Book of Faces’ -Jack
I’m so weary of black pilled doomerism:
“Everything sucks. This is the worst it has ever been. Nothing matters. Nothing you do matters. Defeat is inevitable. Failure is inevitable. Everything used to be better. Nothing ever improves. Things only get worse. We can only lose. Winning is impossible. You can’t better yourself. Your efforts don’t matter. Everyone will let you down. Your only community is other people who are equally miserable. If anyone says there is hope they are a liar and must be attacked. If anyone else has made it, they cheated somehow. The lessons others have learned cannot be applied to you. Your situation is hopeless. If their situation is not hopeless, it is because their situation is somehow better than yours. You will never be loved. You cannot give love. Everyone around you is unworthy of love. Every person in the world is worse now than they were at some unspecified time in the past. The past was a rosy place and everything was comparable and better. You cannot find happiness. If someone else has happiness it is a lie. Or they achieved happiness at some time before and everything has changed for the worse since then making you achieving that happiness now impossible. Do not listen to real people. Listen to fake internet people only. The ones trying to sell you a seminar are the only ones who really care about you. Doom. Doom DOOM. DOOOOOOM.”
There. I just summed up several thousand social media posts for you.
What a bunch of miserable, bitter, loser ass cranks. Whatever the sub culture is, whatever their pet peeve is, it’s always this same schtick. Holy shit, it is tiresome. Get over yourselves.
Is life hard? Yeah. It’s fucking hard.
But you ain’t milking cows, so it could be worse.
You are the master of your own happiness. Me telling you that life doesn’t have to suck and you can improve your situation isn’t some Pollyanna nonsense. Shit is hard. Shit can be harder or easier depending on the choices you make. Some shit really sucks right now and is all sorts of screwed up… So?
Sometimes life kicks you in the balls. Sometimes you get hit by a truck or get terminal brain cancer. Most of you won’t.
Until then, do the best you can and look for opportunities to do better. Some stuff you can improve. Good. Improve it. Some stuff you can’t. That sucks. Some stuff is beyond your power to do anything about. Deal with it as best you can.
And now the doomers will yell at me variations all that bullshit I put in quotes. The details will vary, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Insert DOOM here. Doom can be for any topic, from dating to politics to jobs to whatever. It doesn’t matter. Pick one and there’s gonna be somebody who is miserable about it and won’t be content until everyone else is just as miserable as they are.
They’re like CS Lewis’ demons.
I know it is unfashionable to be an optimist nowadays, but there are people in gulags who sound happier than most of the Americans you run into on social media nowadays.
Because honestly guys, life is pretty fucking awesome most of the time. Yeah, there’s a lot of bullshit out there, the world is really screwed up in a lot of ways, and if you fixate on those you’re gonna be pretty miserable.
Sarah Hoyt once referred to me as “a happy warrior” because I enjoy fighting. I don’t mind conflict. I know that some stuff sucks, but you can make it better if you club it hard enough. That’s probably why this perpetual whining defeatism galls me so much. It’s like the opposite of being a happy warrior, like bitter pacifist instead, moping and complaining, and worse, trying to discourage others from actively doing anything to make it better.
You guys know I’m right. Pick whatever topic it is you’re passionate about and you know exactly the kind of people I’m talking about. It’s cancerous.
Plus, the doomers are usually full of shit anyway. If they actually believed what they were selling online, they’d have checked out. Instead they are extra invested in the debate (getting back to the demons of CS Lewis there). If the topic was politics, if they actually believed what they were saying, they wouldn’t be on Twitter yelling at people that all is lost why bother… they’d be improving their apocalypse bunker and digging more booby traps.
A lot of these guys get off on the doom. Doom is their identity.
And then there’s the doom profiteers. For only $19.99 a month you can subscribe to my newsletter of real secret manhood/success/knowledge/profit. These jerks are out there making a buck off of other people’s depression. Of course they’re gonna spread doom. Doom is good for business.
But Correia, you’re so full of shit! Why can’t you provide an easy answer to my specific situation of doom! Well first off, I don’t even know you J Rando Fake Name, or your actual situation. And unlike the doom profiteers, I’m not selling a self help seminar. I’m just some optimistic dork out there telling people that they have the power to make their lives better than they are now.
The grocery stores are full of food.
We have boundless entertainment.
We have air conditioning in Alabama.
Without modern medicine (diabetes drugs & heart stints) I would have died a decade ago. (and no, I’ve never been fat or inactive).
Life is really, really good now compared to even 50 years ago, much less 100 years ago.
We have a choice in life to be happy or to be miserable.
Choose well.
It’s amazing that you were able to type so much, yet say nothing
Hear, hear. You are so right. We are just now in the place Central America has been in for many decades. Gross corruption, crooked Pols, mercenary government. Yet unlike them we have a foundation and a constitution that gives us a way to recover from this. Also there is a deep and abiding religious base that created this country based on truth that overrides the pop culture pseudo science that seems to change weekly. It may take awhile but one day someone will say ” The Emperor has no clothes”
Thank you.
Oh my goodness!
You’re an ANTI-DOOMERIST!
That’s “Doom-DENIER”!!!
“But you ain’t milking cows, so it could be worse.”
I AM milking cows, getting up at 4 am, and am old with arthritis, and I am actually pretty happy. But then, I don’t have social media or smart phone, so maybe I don’t know any better.
And your comment immediately brought this little ditty to mind:
“You know, I shun fancy things like electricity
At 4:30 in the mornin’ I’m milkin’ cows
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows, fool
And I’ve been milkin’ and plowin’ so long that
Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone”
🙂
Honestly “happy” is a state of mind, a person living in a tar-paper shack in some Louisana bayou without electricity or running water can be happy and a multi-billionaire in a 9000sqft mansion can be miserable.
Me? Yeah, I’m pretty happy, my job is going well, the wife and I are pretty much healthy, the cats are healthy, the family is largely healthy, so really, what do I have to be doomer about?
The gov? Falls into the category of “beyond my direct control, so what happens, happens.” Be ready for the bad and hope / pray for something less-bad (it’s government, can it ever be “good?”)
“But you ain’t milking cows, so it could be worse.”
I spent my summers on a dairy farm. I’m not bad with livestock in general. Cropping is what killed me with boredom. I only stopped working on the farm after some of my cousins tried to kill me. Why murder? Apparently because they were bored. So, relatively speaking, I rate milking cows over many other things in life. – SomeRandomGuy (because I can’t remember the name I used here)
Whenever feeling a little blackpilled I just pick up gg-grandfather’s CW memoirs or a book that was written based on another relative’s diaries written while leading one of the first wagon trains to Spanish California in 1842. That was tough. Even a couple of generations back was “tough”. Today? We obsess over the trivial.
Thanks I really needed to hear this today. So easy to get l I st in self pity.
“they’d be improving their apocalypse bunker and digging more booby trap” Yep. been hard at it for years now
I could not agree more. Raised in a coal mining town on the Ohio River. Parents married during depression. Four sons three daughters. Four sons and one daughter server in the United States Military one son died of cancer agent orange, one son suffered a stroke, I my self suffer from multiple things, I was one of two boys who made a career of military. By the way I am 78 . Been married or will be 60 years in December. I wake up every day and say life is good. What a great country We live in some of the third world countries I was sent to makes me think how wonderful I and thankful I was to be born in The united States of America.I fly the Flag every day.
TPTB are evil, no question, but they are also undeniably incompetent. I do not know anyone that has the ability to record music videos. I would like to see The Age of Incompetence sung to the tune of The Age of Aquarius. Probably take a decent conservative ten minutes to draft two verses’ worth of lyrics. Standing by…
“Why can’t you provide an easy answer to my specific situation of doom!”
Have you considered buying Larry’s books? It’ll cheer you up immensely!
Well, maybe not Alpha…
The dog Larry? You had to kill the DOG???
Why couldn’t you have had it be a couple Evil Canadians?? NOBODY likes Canada Geese!
If you’re unhappy, buy a gun.
You’ll probably still be unhappy, but now you’ll have a new gun.
I know it would cheer me up immensely.
I bought a Sig P239 9mm, and it made me unhappy. First, because it shot so good that I want more 239’s, and second because they’re not making them anymore.
worse they aren’t making P-239 magazines either.
You are perfectly correct, sir.
Now is not the time for whinging and complaint about how shit everything is.
First, nothing is nearly as bad as it has the potential to become. We will face terrible things in the next few years. This is as it must be; the fire must hot if it is to properly temper the steel. For steel we must become, or we will perish.
Second, now is the time to make those choices and come to those critical decisions regarding one’s comportment under whatever circumstances seem most likely to one. During those events is no time to be figuring such things out. One’s reply should be pre-determined, a plan being executed, rather than the result of decisions on the fly.
Third, while the stores are functional and there is yet time, one must take advantage of the amazing propensity for retailers and others in the marketplace to accept, in exchange for all the fruits of our industrialized society, the pixels that now represent currency (Spare a thought for the owner of the grocery in Fort Repose, at the end of that first day, when everyone realized what was happening: That poor fellow ended up with an empty store and a safe full of worthless money…. and the knowledge that he may have misunderstood).
There will be time for remorse, regret, and defeatism later, when the last defences have fallen and the gates are groaning under the weight of the onslaught they restrain. Now we must focus on ensuring we are most advantageously placed, that our plans are set and well-made, and that we have done and said all that was needful. For what is to come, for those responsible… let the memory of their fates cause men to tremble for the next thousand years.
I shall see you all across the green fields of Elysium.
That’s the first “Alas, Babylon” reference I’ve seen in a while.
Still a good book even to this day.
Gloom despair and agony on me
deep dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck I’ve have no luck at all
GLOOM DESPAIR AND AGONY ON ME.
Good memories of comedy on the 1970’s show “Hee Haw”!
Aaaaand, thanks for the earworm. 🤪🤣
I thought of that before I scrolled down this far.
Great minds think alike, it appears… and so do ours!
(By the way, I much prefer the ‘Gloom, Despair, and Agony’ song to the Internet doomsters. I never saw a doomster yet who had a catchy tune.)
Or a sense of humor!
Steve McQueen’s story in The Magnificent Seven about the man who fell out a window comes to mind.
FTR, I read somewhere the dinner served in first class on board Titanic the night of April 14th was top-notch.
Sometimes, people trying to get your attention are trying to warn about what’s just around the next curve in the road, because they altruistically really do have your best interests at heart.
Realizing that last is true is exactly the optimistic outlook you’re talking about. And assuming everybody suggesting you move away from that smoking mountain outside Pompeii circa 79 A.D. is getting off on the possibilities, or just looking to make a buck selling chariots and wagons, is exactly the pessimism being disparaged.
Isn’t that ironic?
Everything in moderation.
Including moderation.
“Sometimes, the guy walking around with a smile on his face all the time doesn’t understand the situation.” – grafitto at Khe Sanh
good one. temper the silly optimism with reality.
Well sure, for most people in America life is much better than it was even 50 yrs ago.
but, the Republic is dead, there is no rule of law, the Nation is $34T in debt (and counting and that can NEVER be paid off) and there is no party (Dems or Reps) that cares about that
The populace is being replaced by 3rd world peasants and flooded with a militant religious death cult
As Mark Styen notes the lines on the map are moving inward, that is your safe space is getting smaller
So, embrace it, we’ve all got a front row seat for the end of the world as we know it
In point of fact, both of those statements regarding the population are untrue. Muslims make up less than 1% of the population (and most American Muslims aren’t into jihad against the infidel, that’s usually why they came here), and “third world peasants” make up considerably less than 10% of the population.
Get over yourself.
Yup, yup, yup, strawberry fields forever! Nothing to get hung (or beheaded) about!! Words and music by the Lee Rigby Band.
I’m very sorry that actual statistics get in the way of your fantasies of being a beleaguered Crusader beset by the Mahometan hordes.
Third world peasants….
You don’t live in AZ, TX, or NM.
I do, and it’s getting fucking scary.
Didn’t say that demographics were equal everywhere. Just that, overall, within the nation as a whole, the person I was replying to isn’t looking at actual statistics but is responding to alternative media fearmongering.
Spot on, sir.
If I were more of a collectivist than I am, I might be inclined to subscribe to the DoomPorn. It is so easy to blame all your problems on others, that you have it so much harder than anyone else in the history of the world.
But, shoot, every time you turn around, you find someone who out Sharptons Sharpton. Some grifter who cons probably otherwise intelligent people out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to buy leatherbound editions of public domain books. Rather than focusing on what kind of a moron would drop a grand on a couple leatherbound books he can’t afford to spend that he could download for free, he finds a way to make you feel good about making him rich by looting your bank account, simultaneously shifting the blame for your idiocy to someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the situation you made for yourself.
I have milked cows.
It was much worse than anything I’m doing these days.
Even though I spent yesterday morning taking out the last 1/4 of a stump. I’ve gone out and looked at the spot several times just to rub my hands together and think ‘No more stump! Yay!’
You don’t get that with milking cows. They always have to be milked again. And again.
Compared to other times in history, life today is pretty good despite the shitheads trying to fuck it up. The more they fuck life up, the more people get pissed at them. Eventually there will be a breaking point, and the shitheads will wonder what the hell happened.
Briefly.
———————————
I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.
“Cows don’t give milk, you have to take it from them twice a day!”
My dad while my five brothers and I were growing up on the dairy farm. But it didn’t kill any of us, and we all became better men because of it. Bring on whatever the world spits out. I believe me and mine are ready!
As long as there is water in the pipes, things are good.
Yes, while getting ready for the coming shit show, be happy & enjoy life. Find some enjoyment in getting ready for the end of the world as we know it. Get out in nature. Exercise daily. Enjoy being with family & friends. Quit watching TV & wasting your time & money on artificial entertainment like sportsball, movies, internet junk knowledge, etc. Keep yourself informed & read material that will keep you healthy & safe. Why? Just remember two important facts when it does happen. (1) Nobody’s coming to save you. (2) Once your dead, your dead.
“But you ain’t milking cows, so it could be worse.”
Indeed. Many out of their own ignorance would be milking a bull.
THAT would be entertaining to watch.
Milked cows some as a much younger man, quite enjoyed it.
But that was a summer job, not a lifestyle. Big difference.
Always preferred caring for horses though.
Has anybody ever FINISHED “milking” a bull?
And how was the funeral?
Maybe not finished milking a bull, but finished *by* milking a bull. 😉
‘Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.’ —Samuel Johnson
There are hell’s own herd of bull-milkers in the world today. Most of the DOOOOOM floating around comes from people who hear how loud the bull-milkers yap and imagine them to be the majority.
(If anybody ever figures out just how few people are creating all the noise in the echo chamber, the doom business will be doomed. Doomed, I tells ya! We’re running out of doom! Call a politician, something must be done!)
Of all the people, we who are Believers that Christ is King, should remember that since He is for us, it matters not who is against us.
We also know that in the end, we win.
I remember hearing coworkers talking a few years back about how by the end of the year there’d be food shortages, gas rationing, large scale power outages across the country that would result in people dying in droves due to the cold, lack of running water, the internet being shut down, whole families being disappeared in the night, how it was going to be made illegal to keep chickens or have a garden, and that there’d be roving bands of angry feral teenagers going from door to door and reenacting that stupid purge movie in the very suburbs where I live and no one would be safe!
…and all of those people are still predicting that by the end of the year things’ll be like that, reassuring? me that because I’m younger I can’t see it, because I apparently grew up in the dystopian hellhole that the world has become.
It’s driving me fucking nuts because I have been hearing the exact same pessimistic story for years now, being warned that doom is less than half a year away and if I try to be cheerful or optimistic about the future I get treated like I’m the one living in my imagination.
You forgot, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Is the world going to hell in a handbasket? Probably.
Will that stop me from trying to make my corner of the world a better place? Hell no.
You do the best you can every day. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world is flying apart. God judges you on what you did, not the things outside your control. So you do what you can. Doesn’t mean you cannot plan for worst-case scenarios. I have six months’ food and medicine stockpiled and stuff to deal with the fallout of anything up to a Cat 4 hurricane hitting the fan. But that doesn’t mean I abandon life otherwise.
This year might be worse than other recent years, but it is nowhere as bad as other years survived by this country. Want really bad years? Try 1942, 1929 or 1862. (Although 1932 or 1938 may have been worse than 1929.) What about 1813-14 when it looked like the British just might dismember the US? Or 1777 when it looked like this country might never get born.
And, yeah, SHTF. It’s what you do afterwards that matters. Consider the Cajun Navy after Hurricane Ike and Harvey. Texas got hit hard by both but pulled itself together because individuals started independently doing what needed doing without waiting for the government (and the government got out of there way as well as doing what it should be doing). Most folks from Texas figured doing something beat waiting to be rescued. (To be fair, so do folks in other parts of the country. Post-hurricane recovery in Florida is not just due to a good response by the government. It is also fed by folks pitching in and not waiting to be rescued.)
Prior to DeSantis and JEB!, hurricane recovery was in spite of government. Though our state government has usually looked at building codes and what worked and didn’t and modified such. And hardened our utility distribution systems.
We’re actually far better prepared for hurricanes than most far north states are for blizzards. And we don’t get hurricanes every year.
All the ‘optimism’ in the world ain’t changin a thing – it’s all comin down and fast. Period. Without Divine Intervention – and make no mistake, Divine Intervention is the ONLY reason it has lasted this long – we are entering a phase likely not ever seen before in this world. Ignoring the signs doesn’t make it any less true. Signs? Shoot, just listen to what (((they))) are stating openly. Only the fortunate will even have a cow to milk….
And while it may be easier now than a hundred years ago, I don’t really think it is ‘better’. And it aint gettin no better. Bank on it. Some folk – like me – may have just been a bit early in their prediction. But we are accurate.
I try to keep a positive attitude and tone when commenting at places on the web, mostly because of the doomers. And you’re right about your own attitude towards them, it’s never ending DOOM, and they seem to hate sunshine and good things. The idea I think, is to pass on what you know that will help, and to accentuate the positive, as the song goes.
I like to remind people of a time almost a hundred years ago, that we called the Great Depression. Unemployment was rampant. Central Park in NYC was literally a shantytown. There was a great drought, widespread crop failure, and hunger was common. There were dust storms so bad that people’s lungs got choked up with mud in their own homes. There were plagues of rabbits, plagues of locusts.
Meanwhile, Western Europe alone counted three fascist dictatorships. Two of these banded together to ignite the most deadly war in history, which saw the introduction of industrialized murder for the express purpose of genocide, and culminated in the first and only use of nuclear weapons against civilian population centers.
And then? Well, things got better.
But never as good as they were before the 1930s.
Good as in what? Europe in the 20’s was still recovering from the effects of WWI, most of which was pretty bad.
Before that, you had WWI which was also a pretty bad time.
Before that, you had a pretty good period of time in Europe- as long as you were part of the middle class or better. Don’t forget that a lot of the European poor showed their appreciation of those ‘good times’ by permanently leaving for the USA, Canada, South America, and Australia.
Even then, you had a lot of people mad enough to assassinate various European leaders & royals.
Honestly, this is the best Europe has ever been.
Before 1934, the Constitution actually meant something.
In the US, sure. That’s why so many people moved here.
But, then again, it depended on where you actually lived and what color your skin was. It’s almost a cliche to talk about the rampant racism in the old South, but it was there and it was pretty bad.
One of the reasons for the federal overreach is that too many states denied their people their Constitutional rights, and fought to keep things that way.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
Edward Bernays, Propaganda
Edward Bernays was a charlatan.
If he weren’t, the USSR would still exist, and the constitution would have been long repealed by popular vote.
“Life is not made unbearable by circumstance, but by lack of meaning and purpose.” – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
When an Auschwitz survivor says something about life and what makes it bearable, it’s worth a listening to.
The attractive thing about Doomerism is that it gives people an excuse to be slothful and lazy- or just plain sorry as my dad would put it.
Why do things if it’s all for nothing anyway? Well, for one you don’t know what the future is going to be. Could be bad, could be good, probably will be a mix of both.
Second, the people that hate you want you to be in that state of hopeless accidie. If you’re moping and doing nothing, you are doing nothing… except Debby Downering others who are. Why cover the crab pot if the crabs will pull down those trying to leave?
If you think the pessimism in the west is bad, China has (from what I’ve seen/heard) reached a point where the people have such a negative view on standard of living and the future they’re deliberately not having children (even beyond the natural result of how expensive it is and how poor they are) so they can laugh off the CCP’s threats of generational punishment.
Bro can I pay you to come give me and my buddies some training on the gun range, shoot the bull, get some barbecue just have a good time?
The leftists started their march through our country around 1960….after their original marxist buddies failed with their revolution B.S…..around 63 years….and they had no infrastructure….they just went in, plodded along and took over slowly and incrementally. We have all the tools we need to resist and fight back….we just need to use them and…you know….fight back. We know what they want, we know where this ends up. Mass graves and murder by leftists didn’t go out of style in the 20th century, they just put it on hiatus while they moved to get rid of the big obstacle….America. The people in the early 1900s had no idea what the left would do…..we know. It is our turn to stop them…..we have to say….”Never Again,” and mean it…..they used our good times against us and burrowed into our country…time to dig them out….
Their utopia is being ‘spoiled’ by us not complying with their every wish and giving them everything they want… And yes, life is MUCH better than it was 50 years ago! I know, I was there.
Things are going great! I got back from the gunshop this morning, and the first two books of the Vault Books Hard Magic limited edition were nestled comfortably in a box on my doorstep. Picked up the mail, and the new copy of Shooting Times was sitting there, and I aced my coursework for this week for my firearms technology degree I’m pursuing. Went on Smith Enterprise’s website, and they actually had an extended bolt release for my M1A I’m building. If by the time I fall asleep I get a notification that the last SoTFW book is dropping months ahead of schedule, this may go down as the greatest day I’ve had in forever!
“If by the time I fall asleep I get a notification that the last SoTFW book is dropping months ahead of schedule, this may go down as the greatest day I’ve had in forever!”
Ditto. And the TOWER OF SILENCE audiobook!
Strauss and Howe, The fourth turning. We go through this horse hocky every 80-90 years. We’re about 2/3s the way through it this time. Go back to sleep, it’ll all be better in a few years.
Re: 4th turning
I’ve been watching this 4th turning stuff since before it became popular, back when their book was newer and times were still generally perceived as good. I agree that they essentially got it right (except they misunderstood the generational cycle in the early-to-mid 1800s; there was no missing season) and we are about 2/3 through “winter” now.
Here’s the problem: when “spring” comes around again, it doesn’t necessarily mean heaven on earth for everyone. Just stability and public confidence in the new social order. It could very well SUCK for those who didn’t “win” the big conflict. Stability is better than chaos, but some folks will still insist on punishing the losers.
Further complicating matters is that Russia and China tend to be out of sync with the West (and possibly each other) by a season or two.
I just retired, and now I have all day, every day, to work on my favorite improvements–self, home, and community. I’m spoiled for choices. What a First World Problem to have!
Speaking of milking cows, what’s my favorite traveller been up to these days? Certainly not milking cows anymore but probably powerfully bored…
You know, I love it when Larry tells people to grow some friggin’ balls.
And how’s that old story go about how to keep a cow from swatting you with her tail when milking her? Don’t tie a brick to the end of her tail?