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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/29\/opinion\/boring-politics-exhaustion.html?emc=edit_nn_20260930&nl=the-morning&segment_id=227287",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOpinionSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTGuest EssayI\u2019m Exhausted. You\u2019re Demoralized. We Weren\u2019t Built for a World Like This.Sept. 29, 2026Credit...Sam GulliverListen \u00b7 6:42 min Share full articleBy Bill McKibbenMr. McKibben is a professor at Middlebury College and the author of \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201dLeer en espa\u00f1olSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Psychologists have claimed that evolutionary biology leaves humans ill-equipped to deal with giant, slow-moving problems. But suddenly we live in a moment when problems are speeding and piling up.The climate crisis now consists of walls of water sweeping down Nepali rivers, obliterating entire towns in the blink of an eye, and wildfires that wipe out California neighborhoods in hours. And we\u2019re confronting the birth and Bunyanesque growth of a new technology, artificial intelligence, that, according to some of its creators, is fairly likely to kill us all in the near future. We have to sit and listen as men worth unfathomable sums speculate about whether our species will survive their companies\u2019 initial public offerings.We definitely weren\u2019t designed to cope with all this \u2014 our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains. Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they\u2019re simply wearing us out. A lot of us would like politicians to offer, alongside their promises of affordability, even a glimpse of serenity.A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released in early September found that in 2024, 71.5 percent of adults reported that at least some of the time in the past three months they felt fatigued, defined as \u201cphysical or mental tiredness or exhaustion that does not improve with additional sleep or rest.\u201d As the survey\u2019s lead author, Natalie A.E. Young, told NBC, fatigue has become \u201cone of the most frequently reported health concerns in primary care visits in the U.S.,\u201d and sufferers \u2014 which, again, includes a vast majority of us \u2014 are \u201cat higher risk of activity limitations and disability, including permanent work disability.\u201d The most recent Stress in America report from the American Psychological Association found that a majority of adults reported feeling isolated and more anxious about the future than they used to be, and that much of the trouble could be laid at the door of our impossible politics: Almost two-thirds of respondents cited \u201csocietal divisions\u201d as a significant stressor.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTA kind of overwhelming weariness and even sadness is increasingly the default state of what, in living memory, were optimistic, get-up-and-go-ish fellow Americans. I think if we had some way of surveying Americans at 3 a.m., we\u2019d find huge numbers of people awake, wondering what new strain might be in store come morning. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fragility at work \u2014 how are we supposed to respond to the now almost daily news that roving bands of A.I. agents are up to mayhem, or that the onrushing El Ni\u00f1o will take temperatures to heights no human has ever experienced?Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.I arrive at this point with an unfair advantage, having spent the past four decades facing down the steady and so far implacable rise in the planet\u2019s temperature. Over the years I\u2019ve worked out remedies that keep me mentally healthy enough to keep fighting. I\u2019ve helped build big movements in no small part so that I\u2019ll have others to lean on, and I\u2019ve learned that I need an hour or two of exercising in the natural world most days to reset my soul. Yet even those strategies increasingly come up short; the level of pressure that an even somewhat engaged American feels at the moment is very nearly debilitating.In past periods of pervasive crisis, Americans at least had some institutions on which to lean. We\u2019ve traditionally thought of the president as a kind of national father figure. It helped a Depression-haunted nation when Franklin D. Roosevelt told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself (and then backed it up with wave after wave of programs designed to make it so).President Trump\u2019s main response to our A.I. fear is to rename it \u201csuperintelligence,\u201d while the country\u2019s chief health authority, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has decided it\u2019s time to go to work on chemtrails from airplanes. The tech chieftains wring their hands a bit about the trouble they\u2019ve caused (remember, their creations have broken into companies and government agencies) and then get back to making their fortunes. Very few people feel like placing their trust in these powerful figures, young Americans most of all: Recent polling shows that roughly seven in 10 people ages 18 to 34 distrust Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and the other would-be wizards leading the big A.I. companies.A not irrational response to all this would be to try to ignore it. Lots of people are doing so. Yet this kind of avoidance will just get us in deeper trouble by ceding control to those who profit from it, so I hope we won\u2019t choose quietism or escape. I\u2019m hard at work volunteering in this fall\u2019s midterm elections, for instance; we simply can\u2019t tune out.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIf we elect serious leaders who can take control of Congress and the presidency, they\u2019ll have to work hard \u2014 we need all kinds of reforms to prevent a relapse of the sickness to which we\u2019ve fallen prey. None of it will be low stress.But it would be nice if those leaders could at least have, as one goal, a country and a world where we could occasionally ignore them, where we didn\u2019t have to live under constant tension. A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time. Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York doesn\u2019t issue hourly tirades. Instead, he offers occasional videos of him and his crew cheerfully filling potholes; by most measures, his popularity has surged and the city\u2019s mood seems to have improved.I\u2019d be happy to listen to Jon Ossoff or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for half an hour every Thursday if either of them runs for and is elected president. And then I\u2019d be happy to think about something else that weekend; civic participation should be a part of life, not something that keeps you up at night.Restoring some kind of calm is easier said than done, and will require hard choices. If A.I. represents a mortal threat, then it should be wrestled to the ground and stuck in a cage. Whatever its putative benefits, they aren\u2019t worth any of us having to contemplate human extinction. The climate crisis is almost easy by comparison; we have inexpensive solar, wind and battery technology that can replace the fossil fuels driving temperatures ever higher, though of course getting to that point would require standing up to Big Oil. These hopes and fears will animate the next presidential election. Someone who figures out how to talk straightforwardly with Americans about the trade-offs will win the votes of a grateful nation.Because if human survival and economic resilience are important goals, so is a world calm enough to meet the needs of the human nervous system. We can\u2019t keep on like this \u2014 it\u2019s simply inhuman. We\u2019re creating a world that\u2019s only fit for something artificial.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTFrom the commentsBill McKibbenOpinion guest essayistIt increasingly feels to me like we just aren't designed to cope with the pace and scale of events that keep crashing down on us \u2014 I mean, how are parents (or grandparents like me) supposed to cope with the notion that AI might wipe us all out, or that the El Ni\u00f1o now bearing down on us will take temperatures to unprecedented heights for our species? Along with affordability, might it be wise for some politician to start thinking up a few strategies for serenity?Bill McKibben is a professor at Middlebury College, the founder of Third Act and the author most recently of \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201dThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here\u2019s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-29T09:03:38+00:00",
    "author_name": "Bill McKibben",
    "site_name": "The New York Times",
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    "ai_headline": "I\u2019m Exhausted. You\u2019re Demoralized. We Weren\u2019t Built for a World Like This.",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Bill McKibben Discusses Societal Exhaustion and Demoralization in Modern World",
    "ai_excerpt": "The author argues that humans are ill-equipped to handle the rapid pace of modern problems like climate change and AI, leading to widespread fatigue and demoralization. He suggests that political leaders should aim to restore a sense of calm and address these overwhelming issues.",
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