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?
I compartmentalize. Focus on things at a smaller scale, and work through them one by one. Try not to distract yourself too much on the things that are out of your control. Prioritize the ones that you can actually control. Then identify the short term and long term ones and further prioritize based on that.
Keep in mind that American news is not really news. It’s strictly entertainment and you should treat it as such. FOX, MSNBC, CNN are all for profit enterprises and they are completely focused on that and nothing else. That asshole fuck face that owns FOX even admitted it in court under oath.
So instead of informing the public, these entities present “news” in a way that is designed to make you emotionally react, give you a dopamine hit, instead of actually informing you of anything. Are some worse than others? Yes, but all of them do it to some degree or another. I personally believe that the down fall of this country will eventually be tracked to the elimination of equal time laws and the limits of entities owning media outlets. It used to be a single entity could not own more than 11 broadcast stations. Those laws need to come back and it’s an absolute emergency that they do.
To sum up the above: You are constantly being manipulated by the media you watch to make you feel that things are a lot worse than they really are, so some asshole somewhere can make more money. Yes, your feeling of things being out of control is only because some fuck face is making money from you feeling that way.
My suggestion is do not watch TV for your news. Read. If you want to learn about American politics, read a foreign newspaper that comes from a country that really doesn’t have a lot of skin in American Politics. Better yet, get involved in your local political scene and make yourself a part of the news cycle.
Unlike most, I don’t believe its possible (or even a very good idea) to ignore the news. What I do is limit my news source to two places a day, BBC and The Guardian which I know are not perfect but I believe they can be largely trusted. Other than that, I read the odd link on here but I won’t doom scroll.
I also do things that have a tangible effect for people who have it worse than me. Hands on in my immediate locality, and via donation nationally and/or internationally. I have a list of charities that I support and donate to two for 6 months then switch to another two and repeat. Doing this means that most importantly, people are helped in some small way and less importantly it offsets the shitness of life a bit. If I can feel a bit happy that I’m doing something, that’s a good thing.
I have a small circle of focus on my own life. It’s working, and my life is getting better.
In my work, I focus on doing the best possible job. If I succeed at my job, then my customers’ lives are better. That’s how I make the world a better place. It gives me a reason to do my best every day.
What I do is design kitchens. I also bridge the gap between the plan and the execution of the plan. There are lots of little details to pay attention to. When I get everything right, people get new kitchens.
With kitchens the way they want them, they eat well. They have peace in their house. They have social space to invite people over. Everything works smoothly, and they have a solid building block to build their own lives on.
If I try to do more, I might fuck it up. This task of making kitchen rebuild projects go well is the perfect balance between my own competence and the needs of the world. It takes everything I’ve got.
Having the match between my mission and my skills, having the mission be just hard enough to take everything I’ve got, is my own personal recipe for not falling into despair at the state of the world. The thing that bothers me the most is if one of my customers has a problem. I worry more about that than I do about Gaza.
For me, personally: Shit’s always been out of control, and even though it may seem like human rights are going backwards, we’re better off now than we’ve ever been. Interacting with my own kids and the college students I work with gives me a lot of hope. We really just need the boomers to stop getting nostalgic for the “good old days” when you were allowed to bully anyone who was different from you.
The kids are progress. Support them! Let them turn the world into what they what it to be, and not what we think they need.
Well, I like to remind myself that the only constant in the world is change, and that mostly, we aren’t watching the world crumble, we’re watching it change.
And I recognize that change is hard and that it’s mostly an unpleasant process. But I also know that in aggregate, the change we’ve seen throughout history has been far more positive than negative by almost every metric. For example, I live every day knowing that an infection is not going to kill me, I couldn’t have said that 100 years ago. As a person of color, I enjoy the amount of freedom I have, I certainly wouldn’t have had that in the US 250 years ago. If you look back further, I enjoy more luxuries today than an emperor could have 1000 years ago (hell, I can eat strawberries in the winter).
The point I’m making is that in general the world is on a positive trajectory, and has been (for the most part) for all of recorded history. If you consider the context, things aren’t really all that bad right now, and history suggests they’ll get better.
I stopped worrying after the hamas terrorists attack in Israel. Not because I don’t care and think this is horrible and all people should live in peace. But because it is too much information I can handle. All the media is full of wars and crisis but I don’t think there are more or less crisis then 20 years ago for example. The thing is we are so exposed with social media and news websites and stuff. I can’t even surf YouTube without getting actual news about what’s going on. Sometimes I just want to watch dumb or nerdy stuff or read some which is not related to bad things. Some say this is selfish or ignorant - well I still get enough news from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza - I just stopped reading and watching all the stuff I stumble across. I cannot even change much on the situation so it is kinda human to get used to stuff like that. I cannot even Imagine what it was like to live during the Cold War with permanent threat of getting nuked and stuff.
I’m 51, I grew up with media fear mongering of the Cold War, the hole in the ozone layer and AIDS. I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where there hasn’t been a threat in some form or another, and I sleep like a baby. We aren’t going backwards, it’s just another day at the office.
If you find yourself worrying about events on the other side of the world then you need to switch off the news and focus on what you can control in your own life. Sure, WW3 could be around the corner, Covid 2 Electric Boogaloo could be more lethal or the icebergs could melt, but we can’t do a goddamn thing about it, so what is worrying going to accomplish?
Worry about paying the mortgage, making sure your family are fed, and stay safe.
Isn’t this a mindset for complacent people, though?
Don’t get me wrong, I think exactly like you. But sometimes, I feel that by thinking this way, I’m just taking a shortcut. It seems like an easy way out for issues that should be tackled by humanity (of which you and I are a part), and instead of contributing, we’re just letting it happen.
Think about activists, for example. To do what they do, they can’t just turn off the news and be oblivious to what’s happening. They might not be directly solving the problems, but they are doing something within their reach, even if it means feeling overwhelmed, like OP seems to be feeling.
Agreed. If enough of us look the fuck up instead of taking what we’re fed… maybe it doesn’t have to be “another day at the office”? I was in middle school when we had the ill-fated assembly in the cafeteria to watch the first teacher astronaut go up, but that didn’t kill my dreams of exploring the stars (the realization in my teens of its extreme unlikelihood did).
If the “best advice” is just to keep your head down and focus on your work, then that’s more about accepting your fate as an infinitesimally tiny cog in someone else’s cash engine. Fuck that.
By dedicating a certain amount of time for things I enjoy while pretending that the world outside doesn’t exist. That time when I watch an anime, or read a book, or write fanfiction, or cook something delicious… that keeps me sane, it keeps me from falling back on my natural tendency to focus on all the bad things and ignore the good in the world.
You cannot allow yourself to be in that “constant stress” because it wears you down and grinds your sanity and willpower like a big belt sander.
That timeout revitalises me, and gives me the balance to deal with the stresses and worries about everything else.
Obviously there isn’t a silver bullet, and mindfulness is probably the best bet here.
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