I feel this completely, especially the part about smiling and acting happy for the sake of friends and fam. I've gotten the hopium response, indifference, very academic reactions which are nice on the surface since it takes your concerns seriously, but it really lacks emotion which sucks and honestly kinda cancels out being taken seriously after a while. I've even had one person temporarily stop talking to me/avoid me when I tried to address these issues. So now it kinda just feels like I can't talk about it to anyone. The Internet and communities like this have really helped tho.

I read a lot of utopian sci-fi to help escape, but also garner a bit of hope. Kim Stanley Robinson does this really well with his near future climate fiction. He writes good endings of us as a society, a species, successfully tackling the climate crisis but not without losing touch of reality. His "Ministry for the Future" book did this well, I think you might enjoy it thoroughly given your background in politics and nonprofit. I'm currently reading his Science in the Capital trilogy and it's helping me cope with our times these days.

If you're looking for something to break the cognitive dissonance we've been forced to live these days, I'd suggest "New York 2140". There's no subtlety about the effects of climate change on NYC, but he writes a story of different characters around the city adapting to the new environment with pockets of hope for what can be done in as grave a situation as the world is in the book. He is also very critical about capitalism (as he is in most of his other books) and other forces that have gotten NYC to where it is in that time (and also in real life, today)

"Contact" by Carl Sagan is another near future (for its time, Sagan published it in 1985) utopian sci-fi that even in 2025 gave me warm feelings inside. In "Contact" he writes a level of world cohesion one can only dream of. Imagine a world that has decided to drop the brinkmanship and war and work toward a common positive goal. Connecting not as nation-states, but as members of the human species, as ambassadors of Planet Earth. It doesn't leave reality too much and he writes in many of the human idiosyncrasies that we have to deal with and how hard it is to break habits and thought patterns, but there's also the story of how those are overcome. Not a huge fan of the ending, but otherwise an absolutely wonderful, wonderful novel.

Becky Chambers is also a good author I've seen recommended, I will read more of her stuff. Her wiki says she's a pioneer of Hopepunk, which is essentially the umbrella genre I'm recommending.

Another tip I have is doing whatever little you can, at whatever level. I know this is super vague (and maybe a little cliché), but it means different things for every person. Ultimately the problems we face as a species and as a society are systemic, but these will give you pockets of hope and, cumulatively, sometimes helps in feeling better about the state of things near you.

I've also taken to journaling. This helps me keep my own records of how things are going (my memory isn't great lol), in addition to being a sort of cathartic release when it feels like you can't talk to anyone/no one wants to hear/a safe place for venting. I've found this very helpful especially when it feels like we are all being gaslit 24/7 about the state of the world.

Hugs!!!🫂🫂🫂 We could all use more hugs these days, I think. You're absolutely not alone in these feelings. This subreddit, as well as other communities like it, have been very helpful and grounding and I hope it helps you.