So for many, there's always going to be an imminent apocalypse thats more interesting and urgent than any of their actual day to day problems.
But the emergencies in the media don't work that way. It doesn't matter how much you recycle, the media will keep screaming about catastrophe. It doesn't matter how many solar cells adorn your roof, the media will keep screaming. It doesn't how careful you are with your children, the media will keep screaming about child abductions. It doesn't matter if you pour hundreds of hours into organizing your neighborhood and fighting local crime, the media will keep screaming about crime.
It's the nature of this particular beast.
Consequently, you're never able to escape the "crisis" atmosphere, and stay stressed full time. That's not normal, especially in the absence of real, proximal crisis of that degree.
I can conclude that the only sane things for an individual to do is not to counter these issues with individual actions, but to instead organize for a societal response strong enough to change the media narratives, or switch off the media completely and live life as best as one can.
This is what I do. And I am confident that no matter what choices I make individually, they have no impact whatsoever on a global scale.
So you have young people in their 20s with no sense of purpose. Why not LARP on twitter and pretend you're saving the world by trying to ruin the lives of people you don't agree with?
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting this, but I think it’s more about attention and feelings of social acceptance, than it is about purpose.
People find purpose in dunking on others and they do it almost as a job. They even give up other social obligations and post regularly between certain hours.
The evidence does not support that.
People will often ignore their own plights (from which they are tired and feel trapped or impotent) to engage in remote problems with a feeling of authority and power. Voting for a federal office is the ultimate diversion. Rather than argue and campaign for local changes where they understand exactly what impact they can make (or not make), they invest in a far away problem for which they feel like there is a different performance profile.
People are sick of some crisis mongering, they just like a change of pace.
Even if there isn't a huge difference, I feel like the relationship is more like that of an alcoholic or other addict. Do addicts really "like" their drug? Surely most of them know at some level that it's really unhealthy, and there's diminishing pleasurable returns even in the short term, but they still crave it as a release from their short term anxieties and problems.
People are also “allowed” to focus their attention on whatever they want. It seems like you’re saying we are powerless to ignore the news, although I am curious if you mean something else.
C. Elegans would like a word!
No, we aren't. Adversity from other humans, but not adversity from nature.
Natural disasters routinely kill huge numbers of people, because we don't know how to deal with them.
Anyway It's not necessarily the surviving the immediate disaster that's evolutionarily selected for. No adaptation is going to make a human volcano or tsunami proof. It's the survivors piecing a viable way of life back together in the aftermath that matters.
It seems pretty good at what it does! :)