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Thank you.

Fascinating, thanks for posting. If you have any reading recommendations where I could find out more about this, they'd be much appreciated.

Stronger morals, perhaps, but also redirecting the collective moral compass from favouring the individual to favouring the collective. Today, one can feasibly frame working for a megacorp for $$$ as morally just to provide one's own family with a comfortable, safe life. Morality focused on the individual.

Things like effective altruism seem to be an attempt at redirection, but they have their own problems. Until someone or something succeeds with redirection, having stronger morals will only make the problem worse.

Could you share some information about the earplug type/brand that works for you?

I am looking for a decent sleeping earplug or earbud as I have recently moved to a noisier place. I’ve tried sleeping in noise-cancelling over ears and AirPods with white noise but neither worked for me, they were far too uncomfortable. I am also concerned that an industrial ear protector would prevent me from hearing alarms or emergency situations.

I have been suffering from anxiety and depression for the majority of my adult life. Recent events have had an interesting effect on this. I was following the COVID-19 news in early January and I felt very anxious all the time. Strangely, my anxiety felt lighter when my country of residence locked down. I've seen this reported elsewhere too. I think seeing everyone reacting to the outbreak was almost comforting to me. For the first time in my life, people were reacting to an event with anxiety in the same way that I was. I no longer felt that anxiety was a disability but rather a reasonable response to events. Purchases of supplies slowly over a period of 8 weeks before lockdown proved a wise move and family members commented on my sensible reactions. Behavior that I have been trying to eradicate with therapy and medication for many years had proven to be the right choice.

This experience seems to have confused my brain. I am questioning old patterns of thinking and having to establish boundaries for negative thought-patterns again. It feels very odd and I feel I have gone backwards many years in my mental health development. My thoughts go out to the many people suffering from these problems, indeed many much worse than I.

Yes. I am feeling lonely and depression is causing me more daily distress than pre-COVID19. I moved to a new city three years ago but have struggled to make any meaningful friendships. Without the small talk and board game nights from my workplace, loneliness consumes a lot of my mental space in these days.

Edit: In fact, this is my first HN comment. As a long-time lurker I thought maybe participating might alleviate some of these negative feelings.