So, okay, I personally don't care too much about being depressed. I care more about how the world is fucked up and it's getting worse and worse every day and how I want to help in changing that. Living on a commune won't do shit to change that. Traveling the rails won't do shit to change that. Hitchhiking won't do shit to change that. Dumpster-diving won't do shit to change that. And, sorry, squatting doesn't do shit to change these systemic things. I do and have done all of these things - it's exciting to live on the outside of society, living off it's excess. It feels like you're accomplishing something living this alternative lifestyle, but, it's not sustainable and completing dependent on living off the excess of an exploitative culture. I want to destroy that dominant culture.
I want to devote myself to something real, something that challenges the system on an existential level. I don't merely want to change my personal surroundings and actions, although that's something that I have done and will continue to do. I want more, and, I don't know what that looks like.
So, when y'all say "fight back", what does "fighting back" look like to you? How does your "fighting back" challenge the dominant culture in a way that actually threatens its existence?
The thing is, that as long as you have already lived inside of that system, you have been trained to think that it is ruling the world. You're just as brainwashed as those that support it, in believing that the west rules the world. I don't mean this in a cruel way, but had you been raised in a different place, or a different time, you would have a different view on it.
Now I don't disagree that people are sick. There are too many of us alive to live without industrialization, without technology, without cities and metropolis'. And unless you are going to go on a mass killing spree for the rest of your life to help that cause (There are some nice, well supported
organizations to help you maximize your potential), there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop this progress. It seems as well, that you are living a major contradiction, by using resources that are assisting the systemic change of the planet to serve man's needs, by getting online and posting things like this. You know about rare earth mining, you know about resource exploitation, yet you perpetuate it (without question I imagine).
Well, with the evidence of global warming piling up, and the indisputable fact that the west's consumption leads to the exploitation of the peoples of the east and south, as well as the destruction of the lands that sustain us, we see that there is more than one way to cause mass death, and lower the world population to a sustainable level.
So, it seems that thos who think they are being conciouss, are only being conscious on behalf of making the world better for people, which is the problem that got us here in the first place. As far as the progress of civilizations lifespan, they are just slowing it down. And those, who we often criticize for being the problem (consumers, CEOs, military... "the system"), are actually taking measures to push the problem over the edge, and cause a catastrophic collapse of the system which has brought us to this point.
Every idea, every belief, has a lifespan. The more you fight it, the more reason it has to survive. even those who are "anti" anything, are only perpetuating the ideas that they claim to fight (there is no such thing as bad publicity, you know?).
So what should you do? Whatever you want. I would really ask you to quit reading the news, get off the internet, and go do something you like. You seem to be having a hard time with the overflow of information that the internet offers (unless you have recently been in Alberta and Mexico, and have history in these places, a personal tie to what is happening there, and are really having a hard time with that...). If you start to care too much about these things, you start to realize that there are more and more problems all around the world, and it WILL overwhelm you. You absolutely cannot stop it. And it would be egoist to think that you even should.
Go walk down the street, and see whats wrong in your own neighborhood. I guess, plenty. more than enough to give you something to do, more than enough to work on, and possibly things you can actually take a role in changing. Give up on this view of the world, because what is right for you, is wrong for someone else, and the world feels fine. It isn't "fucked up", and it doesnt give a shit about your petty opinion.
To round things up, if you had never met the west, you might not even believe it was there. You certainly wouldn't believe that it was ruling the world. Nothing people can do will ever truly have the ability to rule the world, only their own image of it, which is so entangled in society (for those in the west), that it absolutely blinded to what the world in essence is. If humanity drives itself to extinction, the world won't shed a tear. It is infinitely more adaptable that us, and has a hell of a lifespan. we might leave things in a bad way, but they have a way of fixing themselves. Not in this outdated ecologist way that thinks they will re-balance themselves to a prior state, but to something new, different, and more suitable for the time.