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I realised long ago that the human brain is not capable of handling everything that's happening all around the world, all the time. I'm selective about what media I consume and I make extensive use of blocklists for things that aren't my fight.
A ridiculous amount of copeing mechanisms and my supportive close family and friends where we keep eachother sane. Growing up in all this bullshit, you get used tovit somewhat.
I gloat at the odd Epstein article but I don't read everything. I don't need to know all that. If you want to keep your sanity in times like these you gotta live in the moment. Enjoy every little thing like it's the first time you're experiencing it. Keep your worries to what you can control. And don't try to control things you can't. It's actually easier to learn this while times are tough.
What has helped me is realizing that I could literally be a federal judge right now--hell, maybe even a Supreme Court justice, a Senator, whatever. And even if that were the case, there's no guarantee I could single-handedly address any of the bullshit happening. It helps me feel better when I feel like I "need" to be trying to fix the entire world.
I don't consume a lot of content from mainstream news sites, and that helps. Those agencies, like major social media sites, are designed to piss you off and keep your eyes glued to ads.
Most of my news exposure is through Lemmy or Mastodon, through which I can automate the curation of my feed and I don't see things that are going to rile me up as much; and therefore, I only see things that might rile me up when it's my intention to do so.
What good does being in a constant state of fear, anger, shock etc do for the events causing the fear, anger, shock etc? Most of us exist in a torturous state where we have no control over the goings on of the events around us. We scroll and consume and dig ourselves deeper and deeper into despair all the while children are being killed, people are being raped, villains are running the world etc regardless of whether we as individuals keep ourselves informed. As good as we want to be or as active in a solution as we want to be, none of us are making a difference. Maybe suffering in our inaction is some kind of atonement.
I listen to one weekly news podcast (Lage der Nation), that focuses on the most important topics for where I live, which includes big international events.
Getting an update on the relevant happenings once a week, feels way healthier than reading what's going horribly wrong somewhere multiple times a day.
I had to unfollow and unsubscribe a bit on mastodon and Lemmy to reduce the amount of news I see there, but now it's tolerable.
However, I still have to take breaks, when I feel my mental health isn't up for it.
There's a lot of it you can just tune out
Not because it doesn't matter, but because it's not actually new.
"oh Israel is still doing its genocide. Yeah, they would, no one is bothering to stop them. Don't give me details. Let me know if something CHANGES"
The "news" cycle has a way of always finding further details on what is actually very old information, and those details serve you, the reader, no purpose other than creating emotional distress.
My philosophy is: "if everyone behaved like I did, would we have any/this problem?" and if the answer is no, I'm fine.
The thing is that many people see injustice in the world and want to fix it now, which means forcing other people to not be assholes. But the problem with forcing other people to do/think something is that it doesn't generally work, at least not without causing a massive amount of suffering in the other direction. Everyone generally thinks they're the good guy of the story, no matter how much evil they do. They think the evil is necessary to stop other, more evil things.
Like for example, Israelis think that Muslims wanna wipe them out, and so it's only good to wipe these evildoers out first... And exactly the same thoughts happen in the other direction. At this point, it doesn't matter anymore who started it. Both sides wanna stop the other side from doing more evil, and this attempt to stop is creating more evil.
Doesn't have to be so severe though. Could just be parents forcing their child to eat their veggies. Eating their veggies is good, and so you might think the parent is doing the right thing of forcing their child to eat it. But, most often, all that happens is that the child will forever hate eating veggies and as soon as it's away from the parents, never eat veggies again. Until they turn adult and learn for themselves that eating veggies is good, and try to do it, but the trauma of being forced is hard to reverse.
And that example is our constant state of existence with basically everything.
Everyone wants to force everyone else to do/not do something, and even if one side is right, the action of forcefully trying to change someone else usually backfires in some way. Force doesn't need to be physical force btw, shame (mental pain) is also a kind of force.
I'm not saying you should turn the other cheek to everything. That force should never be stopped with force. I'm just saying that most of the time, you can't make other people change their ways. But you can always completely change your own ways. And if everyone did that, we'd actually have no problems anymore. But most of the time, people start trying to fix problems in others before they fixed their own, and that is almost a complete waste of energy.
Of course, that philosophy doesn't stop injustices from happening right now. But it gives a peace of mind in some way. If you are truly convinced that if everyone was like you, the world would be a nice place, then you can be content, at least with yourself.
Honestly, this is only part of the answer, there is more to answering your question fully, but I don't wanna write more right now. If you want to know more, let me know.
You can only decide what you yourself do. Yep that's one of those truths that you only get once you experience it. The saying I personally use is that.. drinking poison one.
But about kids though? Those you have to decide for. It's hard to explain until you've had one. They have autonomy, yes, and it's absolutely great to let them try and fail half an hour to put on shoes, but at several points throughout the day you absolutely need to decide what they do.
This makes many people slip into educational and fostering roles here and there. Many boomers got drunk with power when it was their turn, but overall they improved on the whole beating kids until they obey or whatever
Yeah the more people who deal with their own stuff, the better everything gets. It's the foundation for everything else.
Great point about trying to make other people do stuff by violence (right) and shame (left). Violence is far worse than shame; both are us trying to make other people do stuff instead of working on our own crap.
Well I for sure fuck ain't
Both sides wanna stop the other side from doing more evil, and this attempt to stop is creating more evil.
Irrespective of your wider point, this is plainly untrue. Israel's goal is and has always been territorial expansion. The Zionist position has never been about security; that's just what they use to cover up their motivations when talking in English.
Well yeah of course, but you're generalizing a bit. That's definitely part of it but the other thing I said is also part of it. Both can be true at the same time, I didn't presume to cover the whole conflict in one statement.
I haven't really been doing either, honestly.
I gave up trying to keep up with local news a long time ago. That's why you'll rarely see me talking about India even though that's where I am from.
I used to keep up with UK and US news as a sort of long distance view/broad strokes/whatever.
And after the US election I gave up watching John Oliver and other late night shows.
For me, it's getting my news via memes/Lemmy. It's like filtering water through sand. Much less dirt and grime.
My sanity is more important. I can't do anything about current events if I'm not sane. I take breaks as needed.
news - disinformation bureau. might read headlines. can't watch national news with daily disasters
By becoming willingly non informed. Mixed success so far. 🙁
I remove almost everything that is considered breaking current events. Someone is going to do something stupid to someone else. Disasters are going to happen. Wars are being fought (IMHO WW3 had already begun and everyone is trying to stay out of it like the US did in WW2) just that everyone is avoiding it. I have watched a local to me longlines station have a lot of new activity and a person is living there in a travel trailer but two years ago it was basically defunct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHyy-4W5X0 is an example of a different one but gives an idea of the use.
All this crap happens and there is nothing I can do about it nor does it help my daily life. I get a little bit of local news directly from their site and everything else is related to tech or science. I also block Javascript on the browser I use for news feeds, it prevents headlines from other crap being shoved into articles I choose to read on many sites and if breaks a site I just remove it from my feed.
I'm also doing a lot of repairs on a 100 year old house while I live in it, trying to work towards teaching people who have dealt with childhood trauma and others with PTSD how to SCUBA dive for free, and doing my best to stay sane with everything that has happened in my life.
I just don't really read the news. Might listen to a bulletin here or there on the radio.
Focus on what you can change. Try not to let what you can't bring you down too much.
Basically some reasonableness.
Set boundaries. Meaning you probably should choose specific times to check the news. You could for instance check once in the morning and once in the evening. Or even only on specific days.
Also curate your sources. Follow outlets that offer reasonably balanced reporting. Misinformation and sensationalism are your sanity’s worst enemies. For example, don't get your news from social media (as is so common with many and which leads to a host of other issues...).
Try to avoid doomscrolling. If scrolling starts feeling like sinking, it’s ~~okay~~ necessary to stop. You really don’t need to absorb every detail to be informed.
And just something I personally found is to balance bad with good news. Spend time with positive stuff. Even in this timeline there's good to be had.
That's the fun part I don't. As someone who's pretty much the exact target for this facism regime there is absolutely jack shit I can do about it besides I guess voting. So I pretty much avoid it all because there's nothing I can do about why of it and need in Amerikkka is all about getting people angry sad or anything that boosts engagement without care of people. So I don't play there games. I avoid it all. New depressive shit happening? Alright I'm already completely fucked so idc
I can intelligently read/listen to only as much crappy stuff as my mindfulness can extract nutrients from and shit out. I take active internal notes on the ratio of helpful nutrients to amount of shit produced, even for sources that are usually good.
There are many evil billionaire-employed full-time professional liars trying to make me stupid enough to believe that being pissed off is the same as being informed. It isn't, and fortunately once you catch the gross corporate overlord fear stench they leave in you as they talk, you can internally identify them every time. If they make you more likely to hate and distrust, they are acting in service of bad shit in that moment.
I went insane already in the early 2000s, when I realised nobody gave a shit about climate change and ecological destruction and nothing I could say or do made people understand or care. I had a good chuckle when the whole Greta-thing happened and suddenly more people cared, even though we've known this is happening for decades now. Too little, too late. There's always war and genocide going, now we just know it's happening in real time. Knowing changes nothing, we don't learn from history, too few care and those who do get in power too rarely for any lasting change to happen.
I was about to kill myself for the first time in 2013 and honestly I should just have done it, it's the decision I now regret the most in my life. I already died that day anyway, I have just been sort of lingering remnant after that, barely a person anymore. At least my parents could have had a decade to grieve me, now I've just dragged more people to care about me and will hurt them as well with my death. My suffering has just gotten worse and worse together with my physical and mental health; sometimes thing not only don't get better, but just get worse. I don't even know how I'm still here, probably just out of spite and lack of access to handguns. Eventually I'll get to see what will manage to end me first, my body or my mind, I don't even know which one is leading the race.
To conclude my insane and personal rant: not everyone can get a happy ending. Enjoy and do good if you still can
Take breaks.
I have hope that enough of the people who voted for Trump now see they were duped and that the mid-terms will be a rout for the Rs. Not a lot of hope, but hope.
However, I don't want to think too hard about what they will try to do if that comes to pass.
I have next to zero urge to “keep up with the news.” I’m under no obligation to know what’s going on in the world at all times. If something is important, I’ll hear about it from somewhere anyway - and if I don’t hear about it, it probably wasn’t that important to begin with.
I’d argue the “optimal” amount of news is whatever’s left after you actively take steps to avoid most of it. Unfiltered news consumption in today’s environment is almost certainly way, way too much.
I bought a camper van that is useful to focus on when I need a break. Lots of projects to work on and then actual trips.
By looking at it from a larger perspective. You can always get worked up about things but if you zoom out, you see that most of it is just a temporary trend. Some things trend well, some trend poorly, but these tend to be blips in the span of a lifetime.
Especially when comparing with the past you will see that things really aren't all that bad in general.
That's a great way to look at it if you're coming from a place of privilege where it doesn't affect you directly. The Palestinians don't get to say "it's just a trend". It's not just a trend for the immigrants being rounded up in concentration camps. Or for the homeless and mentally ill Trump has just declared will also be rounded up. And for the LGBTQ who are soon to follow.
And the destruction of the environment we all rely on to survive isn't "just a trend".
You're only able to have the luxury of thinking it's a trend because it hasn't affected you. Yet.
I use RSS for sports and tech news, and read once per day for couple minutes headlines. For Lemmy and mastodon, I had to block communities and words because too much USA news.
I mostly don't do either.
It's a balancing act. You have to learn how to gauge when you're getting overly-stressed/depressed by news consumption and stop doing it. Limit yourself to engaging with it in short bursts, so you can keep up with the general knowledge of what's happening, while not getting bogged down in the details.