"What is the point?"

On fatalism

First: you do not need to apologize for feeling this way.

Ours is the historical period in which humans have the most evidence for our own self-sabotage. Ours is also the time in which we have the most evidence that our future will be more difficult (in many ways) than our present. This evidence-richness is unprecedented; before, thinking about the future was based mostly on sentiment and myth. This makes right now a hard and painful time for people who value truth and respect others.

But I think often about what Rebecca Roanhorse, a Black and Native writer, said at a reading for a novel of hers. She noted that indigenous peoples have been living in post-apocalypse for a long time. In other words: life continues. There are billions of humans. A more chaotic and destructive climate will not end the human story, nor will dipshit cowardly fascism. Many people will die unjustly—and that will be the primary agony we all have to carry with us as we try to help ourselves and others live. Yet there is and always will be good that can be done. Political and social work, artistic work, cleverness and kindness and more.

But it is okay and appropriate to mourn your expectations for certain futures. We likely won’t get a large-scale democratic socialist nation in our lifetimes. We don't get to avoid natural disasters. We will not be gifted some sci-fi leisure utopia. We might not even see functional representative governments again, at least not at the scale with which we’re familiar.

As long as you are alive, other dreams and hopes may form. I am trying not to feel numb in the run-up to the construction of an unprecedentedly large police state because numbness will kill me faster than any coward with a gun. I refuse to go that way. I want to stick around to keep answering your question.

I'm sorry we're in this shit together; we deserve better.

I hope the words above help in some way.