Some heavy thoughts here, just a warning.

I'm far from the only person feeling so overwhelmed by the global chaos surrounding us. I read an NPR article this morning that says 3 out of 5 people report feeling lonely. I'm certainly in that majority, and it feels like no matter what I do I just can't form the community connections I need. Faith communities, Meetups, political involvement, public events, social media, and online dating, and nothing at all has come of it.

My evening work shift adds to the isolation because there's a lot I'm left out of, and applications for other jobs within my employer and outside it have not been fruitful. Most of the time I've never even gotten a reply. I'm trapped in a meaningless and low-paying job, and that, like loneliness, is also an epidemic, especially here in the US.

I've been involved in a grassroots political campaign and for awhile that was giving me hope, but that hope is fading, and I haven't been able to form any friendships with the other people. Just like in any other social setting, people already have their own social network and show no interest in expanding it.

If there are so many lonely people in the world, especially here in the US, why do connections get more rather than less difficult to make with each other?

Part of it is the vicious rancor that surrounds us, especially given the current sociopolitical environment. The US does not have the monopoly on that. Hope is so hard to maintain when so few people can agree on the most fundamental interpretation of reality. People have carried their internet trolling into public discourse. They're so concerned with venting their own emotions that they justify the most bitter vitriol, which only forces others into farther and farther extremes. So few people feel they have any place to belong, unless they side with fringe camps or even extremist groups. God help me, but I understand why people join these cells, or join cults. People need something to believe in, something to work and even fight for, a leader who seems to know what they're doing and why, to follow someone who seems to have a vision and the know-how to make that vision a reality. People need heroes who represent our aspirations, a sense of belonging, and a community of support and acceptance.

What we're living through right now is what leads to civil or global war. Genocide is already taking place. People are in concentration camps. Others fleeing war and poverty are shut away from safe havens and caught up by human traffickers. Nations are developing deadlier weaponry than we have seen before. How can anyone feel anything but powerless against all this? We can speak out for our values, but it's one voice among 8 billion. The ones in power who make the decisions are shielded from the consequences, while the most vulnerable in society experience the worst effects. And the vulnerable are voiceless.

Some people take the route of violence as a means to reclaim power, and we've certainly seen that on the rise. But the targets are others who are equally if not more powerless, and violence only begets further violence. We see that all the time, too. That in turn fuels more hopelessness and powerlessness, and a desire to retreat into a protective hole. When that happens, the powerful claim even more power, and we lose what little we had. We're living in a dystopia, and it can and probably will get much worse before it gets better.

Through political involvement and giving to food and clothing drives and doing park cleanups I try to help alleviate some of the effects of poverty and hunger and discrimination and environmental deterioration, and so many other forms of worldsuck, but it's like an ant fighting a well-organized army of ten thousand hydras.

The powerful refuse to listen to the powerless, only concerned with the consolidation of even more power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Spend any amount of time researching the collapse of civilizations, and you'll check off box after box. I just don't see how humanity can pull itself out of this nightmare if we can't even come to a consensus about the most objective, documented facts. Mistrust of any expertise and institution is the highest in my lifetime, and not without just cause.

Just when we're the most in need of hope and the promise of a better future is when we're the most vulnerable to false messiahs promising us our dreams, and instead giving us nightmares beyond imagining.