Quote:
Originally Posted by btimbit
Sure, but that seems a little apple to oranges to me. All these major issues people are mentioning in this thread, how many people here in this discussion have actually been threatened by the things mentioned in the OP?
We've always had assassinations
We've always had conspiracy theories
There's always been gun violence
There have always been wars
What makes the current ones so much worse? The fact that people just mainline content telling them all about how miserable they should be, usually trying to make it seem worse than it actually is just to get clicks or views
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Kind of bringing back a topic from a few pages ago but I think the issue is visibility.
Even in the depths of the world wars, if you were some typical schmuck in the US working and raising a family, you knew awful stuff was happening but it wasn't in your neighborhood. It was a headline in the paper.
Before the world became so connected there were hurricanes and floods and earthquakes and massacres...we just didn't see the evidence the way we do now. Now we can see death and destruction and injustice on every screen we use, big and small.
We intake a vast amount of information on a daily basis, probably more in a day than our great-grandparents did in a week. And so much of that information is upsetting. We haven't evolved to handle this constant crush of bad news.
The pandemic just made this worse for people who have taken it seriously from day one. We've spent 2+ years in extended crisis mode. And we're the lucky ones, even with the mess that the US is in right now: I'm not in Syria, Palestine, etc.
But if you're informed about the world and have even a shred of humanity, it's going to affect you. And this is why I see a therapist once a month even though my personal life is pretty solid. She helps me work through all the tangled up emotions and helps me determine how to best straddle the "informed but not despondent" line.
And she's never recommended a single book.