How do you cope with the state of the world today?
Everything just seems so out of control. The US seems to be tearing itself apart. The world is on fire. We seem to be going backwards when it comes to freedom and human rights. We’ve turned our backs on each other. How do you cope with all this without just giving up?
Meditation (as in, observing your thoughts without judgement, allowing them space, cultivating awareness and compassion). You don’t have to sit and focus on a candle or image or get the right breathing techniques or follow any kind of religion. Pema Chodron’s books are a very accessible and easy to read, and you don’t need to be a Buddhist to follow her work.
Look for spiritual sustenance in nature and in compassionate people. I find a lot of reassuring and helpful approaches in Jiddu Krishnamurti’s works, particularly his understanding that cultivating awareness and honest, open observation will increase compassion in yourself and will spread compassion in the world. (It’s more nuanced than that, but that’s an element of his observations). People with something genuinely helpful to say are not selling you anything - neither an idea or a product.
The news is there to sell things - ideas and products. Most news sources are selling a political and/or religious idea and bias as well as literally advertising products. News media is a business, making money from advertising. They don’t make money from selling ideas that life can be satisfying or enjoyable without buying stuff or doing things that make politicians and religious leaders more rich or powerful. Always read the news with a critical eye and look at what isn’t being focused on, not what is. Search for interesting personal stories, not headlines to get a slightly better perspective on the world.
There was a study done a few years ago that found that 60% of social media accounts were fake. That number is probably higher now, and there is more AI, too. The news and media and even federated systems are all manipulated in various ways. Huge congregations of right wing end-times Christians work like bot farms to spread fear and misinformation across all platforms: their goal is to speed up destruction because they believe in an afterlife that is only possible if the unbelievers are destroyed. They spread so much fear around feminism, LGBTQ+ issues, trans debates, flat earth nonsense, climate change denial, pro and anti vaccine arguments, etc. They just use whatever works to stir people up; they will take either side of an argument. The Taliban and Al-Queada worked in the same way, to similar ends. Israel and Russia and China all use these manipulation tactics too, to slightly different ends. The UK and Europe have other methods and goals (destroy threats to capitalism and neo colonialism, be seen as good guys). There are bot farms, hackers and paid accounts for every type of greedy power addict. But they all want destruction of perceived rivals, and they want one group of people to be afraid of another. It’s all lies and manipulation - some of it works, in a way, but a lot of it doesn’t. The fact they are all using these tactics show how desperate and afraid they are. We need to remember just how manipulated news stories and media are, and how the governments and organisations of the world are all trying to fool each other’s populations. Before the internet, you only saw your own country’s propaganda - now you see it all, and the system is falling apart in front of our eyes.
The news is not the sum total of things that are happening; it’s what is making someone more money or more power. The news doesn’t report all the people who had a pleasant day, or did a little bit better than yesterday - but how can it? Remember that for every horror story in the news, a thousand times more people were doing OK or better.
Do something that brings you actual joy every day. If you are honest with yourself, you find that actual joy is always the simple things - a favourite food, bouncing a ball, sitting under a tree, reading a good story, caring for a pet, holding hands quietly with a loved one, watching the clouds, riding a bike in nature, making music and art, reading a comic… Whatever small joys you can find, do them every day if you can, even if you’re living in a war zone. The small joys are reality, and sometimes you’ll experience big joys, although you don’t need them so often. News and depressive thoughts are not reality, only skewed and biased ways of looking at parts of reality. Moments of small joy are often all of reality that really matters.
Meditation (in whatever form works for you) can help you to experience the sensation that you are not your thoughts. “You” are something that exists with or without thoughts. It is not enough to consider this idea, it is something you need to actually experience, as often as possible. By extension, the world is not the collective thoughts and opinions of people: there is a reality of existence beyond all the nonsense we project on top of it.
Look for humour and go back to things that help you remember that there is always a lot to laugh about in world. Try to avoid cruel, mocking humour and yet be open to finding life-affirming humour even amongst the worst tragedies.
Cultivate compassion for yourself and the world around you. Ultimately aim to do everything out of compassion - not obsession or selfishness, fear or greed. If you need to be alone, be compassionate for yourself and others that need to be alone; if you need to be with other people, be compassionate for them. Don’t look for things in return: it is not a transaction. Compassionate action will not only bring you joy and peace, they will spread it. Practice compassion for everything - plants, animals, yourself, and other people. True compassion is not draining or tiring; it is a letting go of things like prejudice and judgement. It is not easy to do, it is something to work at.
Have positive, achievable goals and work on them whenever you can. You will get setbacks; it’s OK. Life shouldn’t be lived on a flat surface, there should ups and downs. It’s a journey, and a true journey should be interesting, across a changing landscape. When you have downs, recognise that there will necessarily be an up before long. The same us true for people around you, and the world.
Work on things you can change for the better, don’t focus on what you can’t. But actually work on the things you can change. It doesn’t matter how small they are; in many ways, the universe is not interested in big or small; and small things can make big changes anyway, like atoms or bacteria or blood cells (which can all do equally good or bad things, from our human perspective).
There are injustices and tragedies and traumas happening around the world; there are as many beautiful, loving kind things happening at the same time, probably more. The internet, the TV, the newspapers, magazines, books and media are just very small windows for an infinitely large world. We often think we’re seeing everything, but we are seeing very little. Our only reality is when we are not looking at life through these small windows - but we spend so much time looking through them that we forget reality. Do things that take you back to reality. If that reality is painful, approach it with compassion and it will gradually get less painful.
Work in reducing suffering in all forms for yourself and everything around you. Don’t contribute to suffering and don’t dwell on guilt and fear. Acknowledge those experiences, but let them pass. Don’t push bad things away, but don’t give them energy - just observe them, and return to things that create joy and peace, no matter how small. You don’t have to fix things or cure things that are bad, just work on making them a little bit better.
Remember that a lot of bad news is only a matter of perspective. So much of what we hear about - wars, corruption, illness, oppression, greed - are clear signs that the perpetrators of those things are desperate. Desperate people feel as though they are losing; they are doing everything they can to hold on to power, and they are lashing out. But they are losing the fight (most of which is with themselves or each other). Yes, we are the victims of their lashing out, but their viciousness and fear-mongering is because they are losing. They are losing because they have lost compassion and kindness and love. If we don’t cultivate those things, we will join them in desperation and fear; if we do continue to cultivate those things, they can never defeat us, because we are not even trying to win or to fight. We are surviving and growing and living. They can hurt us, but they can’t defeat us, and when they hurt us, they hurt themselves. But when we try to hurt them, we hurt ourselves, too. We end the fight by inviting them (the desperate, the rich, the powerful) to join us in compassion and kindness, by turning away from suffering and from causing suffering. There is no action too small to help make the world a better place.
To be clear I hate religion but wisdom is where you find it.
The world Sidrattha (the Buddha) lived in is more horrible than anyone alive can imagine, except maybe North Koreans. In a culture where you were legally allowed to beat an untouchable they let their shadow pass on you, in a culture where the penalty for a slave caught praying was to have their tongue ripped out. In this world he taught a message of the inherit goodness and inner strength of humanity. His last spoken words were to remind people that no one needed him and they should work on themselves with diligence.
Now if he could see our potential in that hellscape I think we can manage to see it. And no I don’t think you or anyone else should become a Buddhist.
Best advice I have is to reach out in your local community to help where you can.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a municipal food bank, a church running a shelter, a charity helping battered spouses, or some kind of a mutual aid group getting people caught up on the bills… just working with others to help fix what you can does an amazing amount for your mental health. Volunteer to help shelter and feed migrants or the homeless. There’s after school programs for kids in single parent households or who’s parents have to work too much to be there for them. Cities across the US have citizens councils where local problems are brought and attempts to solve them are made.
I know it all sounds cliche and it’s all a bandaid on the bigger picture’s problems but, in terms of your own mental health it can do wonders… plus I guarantee groups local to you need an extra set of hands on a regular basis. When bad things are going around, we start to worry… when the bad things are enormous and out of any semblance of our control we think we can do nothing. That’s not true, you can do something, just on a local or regional scale. Reach out and offer to help in any way you can.
I read a copy of my local, still-Independent newspaper free every morning with digital access to my library.
I vote in every local, State and Federal election.
I vote Progressive in the Primaries and Democrat in the General.
I say ‘Yes’ to any/all referendums that Tax the wealthy.
That’s about all I can do without financially impacting my family or my career. If it was feasible I’d maybe even start attending my Town Hall meetings just to get a barometer reading on my local Council Members.
Crazy thing is I’m 36yo, and sanity checks have required me to act like a 60yo from the 90s… minus the ‘got mine’ Boomer attitude.
Things do seem bad, things do need fixing. My advice is to pick one singular part of the world you want to improve and figure out how to fix it. Something like abolishing prison labor or environmentalism. It needs to be something you can make a noticeable dent in, where you can see your own contribution to the effort.
Don’t change tack every time something new like Isreal-Hamas or the scuffle at the US-Mexico border happens. You picked that one thing to fix, remember? And unless you plan on going down to the border with a gun, how do you plan on making a real difference? If you can’t make a difference, why let it bother you?
Also it’s good to have perspective by comparison but life happens in the moment to moment. If people are reporting feeling worse then that is current state and that is what matters.
Ingenuity: The helicopter drone that flew on Mars for the last 2.5 years when it was expected to fly just a few times. It is the embodiment of human achievement. Of our minds in this great unknown. I get so wrapped up in politics and war and social issues, then if I think of Ingenuity it scales all these issues down and makes me feel like a fool for that last period of time I’ve been lost. Science and engineering to further the incredible human story of understanding is everything and that is how I am able to reset where we are in this and where we can go.
Part of it is the mantra “out of my control, out of my concern.” Or “not my circus, not my monkeys.” That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I do what I can do, and try not to despair about what I can’t change.
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