How can I navigate in the fear and anger of this political moment? | Mental health
How can I navigate in the fear, anger and uncertainty of this political moment?
Eleanor says: A long and distinct tradition in philosophical thought on emotions and politics, from Aristotle TO Henry David Thoreau and up to Amia Srinivasan AND Myisha CherryHe asks exactly this question. Anger and fear are really unnerving. How can we ensure that we are not completely flattened and exhausted by these feelings when we also know that they are totally reasonable?
I have never known the answer. I don’t know how to say the difference between comfort as balm and comfort as anesthetic.
When I was in kindness, I had to be dragged away by a memory thing at school in Flood of Lacurine, hicupup and unable to develop the number of deaths in war. Well as a child – Death is frightening. But see something similar even in adulthood: “Turn off the TV, I can’t stand it”. I worry that there is something self -indulgent in this, as if we are not suffering things about the news should still be spared on the pain of listening to them.
But I also know, so well, that an orange and burning “pad witness” can burn your mental health and exhaust your ability to help. It can transform you nihilistic, suspicion, pessimistic and you are not help to anyone.
The problem is that we risk you between these two points: either hear it so much is unbearable or, as a self -otement, not feeling enough.
I don’t know exactly how to find the stable meaning. But maybe I can tell you what I’m trying.
First of all, I think it is worth distinguishing “I want to manage my feelings so that I can help and live well” and “I want to stop feeling like this because you feel bad”.
Political moments are not ultimately aggregations of feelings. The most urgent question we face together is not like managing how we feel. This is a means for an end. The question is how we can manage our feelings so that we can introduce ourselves in the ways we think we should, For other people, for the world we want. The reason to present yourself is not to make you feel better. You may very well feel worse. The greater your daily knowledge of various forms of encouraging power, the greater the personal risk for exposure, the worst you may feel. But if we are not doing things now, we are required to remain blocked between “overwhelming” and “head in the sand”.
I think it is worth investing in hope. Hope is compatible with a rather gloomy vision of how things really are. You can think that things are going very badly, and also that they will probably continue to go wrong, but still have the fire of hope.
Finally, I think it is worth trying to learn from the many intelligent and sensitive people who have lived dark things. Internet and social media are generally not good places for insights, but there is no shortage of books This can take their place. You can be selective with your time and attention: when you commit yourself to the material that induces despair, you can insist on the fact that it gives you an idea in return, not only bad feelings and quick content.
The point is not only to feel better necessarily, but to feel in ways that allow us to present ourselves in moments that count more.
