> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

I think quite the opposite — Geopolitics is impacted all the time by your actions. What you buy, what you say on forums like HN (where potentially tens of thousands read your comment), how you educate your kids, how many kids you have, how you influence co-workers.

The reality, is the world is smaller than you think. What’s the phrase, “everyone with 6 connections away from anyone else”. If you can have a major or even minor impact in your local region of the graph, it’ll expand outward.

I’m a cynical person by nature; but my cynicism comes from the lack of action / belief in action around me. You and everyone you know can really change the world in some way, if you push out your ideas and product(s) (like you are here btw, I’m not trying to claim you don’t)

That said, I always focus locally to build the community I want to see. It influences geopolitics, but that starts at the coffee shop, book store, school, home, etc.

Beyond the local level, it seems like you’re conflating the “amount of influence an individual has” with “the amount of influence individuals can have [if they act at scale]”.

Sorry for the short reply, I don’t mean to be dismissive; I hope that this makes sense.

I posit that the primary reason for this is that humans are bad at correlating cause and effect where there is a large delay between cause and effect - or the effect is not what was expected.

Depends on if that "you" is understood to be everyone, or just myself as an individual. If collectively we were to thumb our ears with the same sentiment, then agree. Disagree that an unrelated individual would have such an impact - it's a romantic thought for sure, but a drop in the ocean is still a drop.

So interesting to see this thread. I carefully curate and limit my intake and am intensely aware of the anger economy news organizations have built to drive engagement. Glad to hear others are avoiding being a product and are staying healthy.

There is a large segment of media devoted to outrage but if you only follow serious news it's hard not to be outraged at things that unequivocally outrageous. Just watch a live feed of C-SPAN without commentary and there's plenty of insanity. And it's not the media had to tell me Russia invading Ukraine should make me angry.

>> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

Ironically:

>> I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else.

You'll make a bigger impact on geopolitics by doing this than ten people who incessantly post on social media about Ukraine, #MeToo, and spy balloons ever will.

I would like that privilege as well, but unfortunately the stock market moves based on geopolitical happenings.