Those of us in the west tend to forget that much of what we see is a form of propaganda, whether by governments or businesses, or even a large number of people. When you keep this in mind, everything you see becomes an opinion and your mind can comfortably (or at least not emotionally/hurriedly) form your own opinion over time.
I agree that most messaging is propaganda, but that doesn't really counter the real pain that is being inflicted upon large populations of people by these government (and corporate) moves, and being cheered on by pretty large masses of people. The propaganda is like environmental pollution -- hard not to breathe it in. That said, I have no answer here..
There was just as much "large pain" being inflicted on people in the previous 4 years, it just didn't affect you personally.
Statements like this seem to originate in that environment polluted by propaganda that the previous comment mentions. For example, I genuinely don't know how someone can look at something like the dismantling of USAID as anything but an increase in "large pain". Sure, there are almost certainly individual programs within that organization that are wasteful and aren't the best use of our tax dollars, but there is (or at least was as of a few weeks ago) broad bipartisan support for this type of investment in humanity and stopping it will clearly inflict pain on people and this administration is at best indifferent to that pain.
Just using your example tho, I feel there are two kinds of framing.
1. This is literally a worse outcome than the alternative you prefer. You should care enough to try to fight it politically, especially if you are well positioned to do so.
2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for.
Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world.
I think a lot of people walked from a world where they had no idea what the normal tumult of human political society is like, even normal American political messiness, and into the world of 24/7 current political news without any context what came before. It’s like, the sausage has always been made this way, you’re just now finding out.
I say these things and it always pisses people off. But I don’t recommend not caring, the world moves forward one micrometer at a time by caring, it’s just not worth the existential angst I see so often.
>2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for.
>Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world.
To me, this is an utterly nihilistic framing that renders one's entire life meaningless because the logic doesn't just apply to bad things. Like why did you even leave this comment? Maybe you or I remember for a little while. Maybe a handful of other people who read it will too. But no one is going to remember it, let alone genuinely care about what either of us said 100 years from now.
How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning?
I don’t connect distant political to my own personal experience of meaning in the world, so i can’t follow this line of reasoning.
>How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning?
The primary difference I see between these two is how you define "your immediate experience". At what distance does something become "distant political changes" that can be ignored? Because almost all of us lead "par for humanity" lives that "don’t matter in the long run" so why care about any of it if that is the extent of what matters?
I’m not advocating for ignoring the world. I’m advocating for contextualizing it so that your emotional response is sane. I think I put it in another post, but someone I know closely has become catatonically depressed this year because of what political news he reads on Reddit. He makes statements like “there has literally never been a worse time to be alive”. His personal life was great, there was nothing in it to suggest the US president’s decisions affect him, but his emotional response to Reddit news is about as extreme as if his wife died. He stopped going to work and won’t get out of bed most days, which will actually impact his life and give him things to be depressed about.
Caring should not be binary. If in your life, caring about things is all or nothing, and a political event that is extremely common and minor in the context of political history feels as acute as the death of a loved one, then I’m really sorry for you. The world will always be a miserable place for you.
>there was nothing in it to suggest the US president’s decisions affect him, but his emotional response to Reddit news is about as extreme as if his wife died.
Do you not realize that you are judging what "decisions affect him" exclusively from your own perspective? You clearly have some established distance in your mind in which you think someone's suffering is immaterial to you. You seem to imply that this reaction might be appropriate for a partner dying, but what about for other people? Would it be appropriate to be depressed because of a friend's suffering? What about a distant cousin? A neighbor? A coworker? An acquaintance? What about the parent of one of your kid's friends who you haven't even met before?
You don't seem to actually be objecting to the reaction your friend is having, you seem to be reacting that your friend just has a larger circle of people he empathizes with than you and therefore more people have the potential to "affect him".