Is everybody angry where you live?

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lavengro
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby lavengro » Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:45 pm

SpanishInput wrote:
sfuqua wrote:I wonder if anything good is coming out of this pandemic.

In my humble opinion:
-There is now more acceptance for "working from home".
-People of all ages have now used online meetings, and haven even been "virtually" to weddings. This helps both the environment and people that would otherwise be isolated.
....

I think this pandemic has accelerated many beneficial workplace changes that may have occurred anyway over time but which would have been very slow in coming. My workplace was forced in a huge hurry to upgrade to support us working from home and like most places rose to the challenge well, out of necessity. Absent the pandemic, it would have taken years and years to get around to this, mostly through inertia. It has resulted in what I expect to be a permanent shift for many - subject to how management decides to handle things down the road, my guess is the majority of my colleagues will elect not to return physically to the office. The courts (the Federal Court as well as the provincial courts) have massively reoriented court procedure, to the point where remote attendances are now very much the norm rather than a rare exception (it used to be just incarcerated litigants who could attend court remotely via videoconferences, and even then there was usually a glitch in the technology), and these all now run seamlessly, again because everyone had to adapt. I no longer have to fly to various places in the province to conduct various matters, and instead can conduct them remotely. Much of this results in greater efficiency, huge savings in time and expense and (mostly importantly from my perspective, and as noted by Spanish Input) lower impact on the climate.

But to answer sfuqua`s question from my perspective concerning Vancouver, both my subjective impression and conclusions drawn from media reporting of increased aggressiveness (including an increase in physical violence) between people in the municipality comparing the present time to the Before Time, yes, more people seem more angry currently. And way less civil.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby mick33 » Thu Nov 25, 2021 5:19 am

I live in Washington state and I would not say that everyone is angry, rather there is a sense of being tired of the COVID restrictions and ready to get on with life.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby alaart » Mon Dec 06, 2021 11:06 am

In east Germany's Saxony province where I currently live, people have been angry for a long time. Because when German reunificated in the 90s the eastern people where at a disadvantage. Their work, education and achievements were worth less than that of western people, and a lot of work opportunities and jobs moved to the west and disturbed the lives of many. People adapted but when they look back in retrospect they sometimes feel forgotten and a bit frustrated. So there is a big number that is really anti-government, and usually against a wide range of changes, and now in Covid they haven't vaccinated to the degree necessary, resulting in another lock-down like situation. That in turn frustrates the people that are vaccinated, because they feel like they get restricted thanks to the others.

But not everybody is like this, there is still enough smiles and laughs and when people do go out and meet they appreciate it more, because they experienced the value of not having this privilege.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:17 pm

I spend my time between California (Santa Clara and Santa Cruz County), France (Lille, Paris, and Lyon), and Germany (Frankfurt area).
Everyone seems angry on the news. I personally don't really see people feeling angrier in person.

I do people being more isolated, in search of contact and adjusting.
I personally hear of struggles from friends with depression, isolation, memory, and sedentarism.

YMMV.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:58 pm

The Covid situation is just the blue touch paper for what was already there. Things weren't 'good' before Covid hit, we've been limping ever since 2008 and that itself was a massive crack in the facade of 45 years of psychopathic monetarist economics. I've been hammering this for 25 years and it seems to me (as always) that it takes widespread negative effects for everyone to focus and start taking notice.

Practically everyone born around the early-to-middle '80s is oblivious to the idea that things were once different; that you didn't have to expect perma-stagnation, frozen wages, infrastructure collapse, practically abolished public services to the point of personal bankruptcy. That's the real root of public anger, but it is expressed in so many confused ways when people are offered 'reasons' they decide to adopt.

The consolidation of power by that large online retailer is not a good thing. It just speaks to monopoly, social isolation and the breakdown of variety.

I'm like anyone else, I want to retreat into books and language learning and to forget, but I don't think fiddling whilst Rome burns is the answer.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby tungemål » Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:09 am

People are generally not angry. But maybe tired of the situation.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby wheresmycookie » Mon Apr 18, 2022 4:29 am

sfuqua wrote:It seems to me that a lot of people in the US are just fed up with the way things are right now (11/18/2021). There is a growing realization that there is no magic bullet to fix covid and make everything the way it used to be. There is also a growing realization that things weren't all that great before covid either, especially with jobs and for many people, their lifestyle. My wife is spitting mad about the way her 13 year old students behaved today, so maybe it is affecting kids too. People are quitting; people are going on strike. :o
It is a very dark mood here, even here in California, which often does not follow the rest of the county. People seem fed up, and they often can't really explain exactly what they are fed up about. :D

Is it the same way where you live?


I've been nomadic for the past couple of years and every time I'm in the US I feel what you're describing. That said, it's been 5 months since you posted your question and during that time I feel like sentiment has improved a bit. I hope it's just a phase!
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby CarlyD » Wed Apr 20, 2022 6:18 pm

I'm in northern California and I'm seeing a much higher amount of "acting out" than I've ever seen before. There's always been people that felt rude/nasty, but used the social smile. Now it seems like true feelings are coming out more and there's less concern with acting right in society, if that makes sense.

Also, here, the brazen seem to have taken over. Roving bands of thugs that are doing "smash and grab" robberies during the day, or people filling baskets with stuff and just walking out of stores, like it just doesn't matter any more. Odd. In the last two weeks we've had two active gang shoot-outs--that I've never heard happen here before--and in one three bystanders were killed.

My best friend--a level-headed mom with her own business--just told me that she thinks there's going to be huge war soon (she's not sure if a U.S. civil war or WWIII) but we're all going to be dead soon. That's not a good place for your mind to be.

I'm hoping it gets better soon.
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby tangleweeds » Thu Apr 21, 2022 5:11 pm

On Monday I was stranded for hours across the river in another state because the driver who was supposed to take me home was ATTACKED by her previous rider.

Yet when she learned that I was stuck at a medical facility that was about to close and toss me out into the cold wind & rain, she got back in her vehicle and got into rush hour traffic to cross the river into Washington to rescue me. So she's now my hero!

So those are the two sides of the coin that I'm seeing here in Portland, OR. The good people may feel tired and battered, but they're stepping up to do all the good they can. The other half have gone feral, and are attacking strangers for irrational reasons.

At least some of us know that you don't attack the driver because you're stuck in the entirely predictable traffic for that hour on that road!

Speaking of good people stepping up, multiple friends who live across the river in Vancouver, WA saw my social media and got in touch volunteering to rescue me after work. But by then my driver was back on the road, so I didn't get to hang out with them after all.

So yeah, we're all lonely too, but finally starting to get together again.
:D :) :lol: :mrgreen: :roll: <= friends hanging out

(I don't think my sig looks appropriate after this post--it's just about my brain injury, which I was actually entering a new therapy for at the clinic where I got stranded. This will continue VIRTUALLY, so I never again get stranded out of state at closing time again!)
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Re: Is everybody angry where you live?

Postby Cavesa » Fri Apr 22, 2022 11:53 am

Yes. It's not just my observation or that of friends. I have a lot of patients with depression, burn out, anxiety. And the way people in general behave is definitely a contributing factor, some even list it as the number one change in their lives. A job they had previously liked (driving a bus, caring for elderly, selling stuff, even driving goods etc) has turned into a stressful hell, where they get shouted at every day. Or worse.

Mine is too. I hate it here so much and I am getting angrier too as a consequence, the behaviour of the patients is one of the top problems. I don't like it about myself, but the pressure simply gets too much at some point. We all have the limit, we are just different in at what point and what kinds of pressure. Mine is a lot of stupid, uneducated, poor people many of which shout at me or really put me under a lot of pressure to do pointless stuff (or abusive to the system, or even potentially harmful to their health due to no benefit and all risks), behaving as if they were more educated than me. The whole Covid chaos has strengthened that. At first, healtcare workers were the heroes, now we are the too trusting idiots (because illiterate Ahmed saw a fake news video and now wants to lecture me) and oppressors (because we surely must know when does the next wave start, and it is just our stubborness keeping us from telling the patient, so that they could plan their holiday in Iraq better).

The patients' behaviour is the last thing that is really breaking even my previously very strong wall protecting professional skills from personal anger or unhappiness or even grief. I am stopping to care. I am hanging to the last bits of my values. And this is happening to most people, we no longer care about lots of things.

It is not just Covid, even though all the restrictions have been a huge contributing factor. It is the incessant stream of tragedies. We are supposed to face one "exceptional" situation after another and there is no time to recharge for the vast majority of the society. We are supposed to suffer some consequences of covid and draw from resources "hoarded" before (except for most people not having had opportunity to hoard, no matter whether we speak about a financial reserve, or solid relations and life stability), but at the same time give up a lot of comfort because of stupid ecology (all the annoying changes demanded of the general population without hitting the biggest players won't help anyways, it is a lost cause), now rising prices due to war (but people had already spent all their reseves before) and sharing with a new wave of refugees, the stories of whom are breaking our cicatrised hearts again and again, until many people have a too hardened one.

Anything, no matter how small, can become the last drop. And the mug can overflow even every day again and again, because there is no real time to let it all out, recharge, and prepare. And all the advice on "dealing with stress" is just mockery. We need hope, it is severely lacking.
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