Chat @beehaw.org Evergreen5970 @beehaw.org 1 yr. ago

How did you find a healthy balance between staying informed and not despairing about the world?

I don't want to be totally uninformed about what's going on, but I also don't want to fall into doomscrolling.

I know that I could very easily just avoid any news sites and only find out about these things secondhand from people I talk to whether in real life or online. I also know that it's not good to bury your head in the sand quite that far.

I could also very easily doomscroll different news sites and actively seek out more depressing news when I'm done scrolling one site. I've been doing more of this option lately, and as a reaction to that I've started doing total avoidance, which I know isn't good.

So how and where did you strike a healthy balance between reading enough news to stay informed, but not enough to be in a constant state of anxiety about the world?

I'm looking for genuine advice here. I don't want to be mean but I'm not too sure else how to say the following: I don't want to come back to a lot of replies about "I didn't find a balance lol I just doomscroll/stick my head in the sand" and "I feel this, same." Not really sure if that's going against the spirit of the chatting community, but seeing a lot of "same problem" and zero advice tends to make me feel more in despair. I already know this is a common problem, so what would usually be the correct social move of saying you relate in order to empathize and let the other know they're not alone isn't helpful for me in this particular instance.

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My personal methods for this, may or may not work for others.

don't take personal responsibility for things you can not personally control. This is the source of despair.

choose where you get your information from carefully. If the source is pushing a particular version of events too strongly they're trying to get a reaction from you. Drop em.

Getting more than one source prevents being pulled too far in one direction. Having too many causes confusion and uncertainty. Two or three good sources of news is enough.

study history. Read about politics and events throughout all of human history. This gives you context and can be very soothing as you get a perspective broader than any single human life.

focus on yourself and your life. Is that improving? What small steps do you want to take to improve that?

drop the scripts you're given. You've been told what Your life should look like but it's rarely possible to meet those expectations and the news re-enforces this. Drop the scripts and live your own life based on what is possible and desirable for you.

There's probably more I could say here but that feels like the heart of it.
- don’t take personal responsibility for things you can not personally control. This is the source of despair.
  
  Also one of the reasons why I no longer participate in activism. As a cisgender, hetero white guy, it was expected that I assume personal responsibility for a lot of things I never actually did.
  
  As a cisgender, hetero, white guy, I've never felt like I needed to feel responsible. Is this something you experienced specifically in the activist circles?
  
  Although I think OP meant responsible as in needing to do something to fix it. The same responsibility every person has. And accepting that you as an individual only have so much influence. Not about being responsible for causing it.
  
  I still struggle with this one. I feel like my life lacks meaning without having some kind of external interaction. It used to be building a small community, then a random poly disaster came flying through and revealed a lot of problems with half of my friend group, including three of the 7 saying "I'm not a transman because men and transmen are toxic" (to me, a transman). So I dropped that half of the friend group, fortunately the other half also saw that as a red flag. I feel like they're the only external interaction I have that's worthwhile but I don't really 'build' anything anymore, and that makes me feel like I'm wasting my life.
  
  Then I tried activism, but I hate feeling angry and sad all the time, because there’s certainly no good news and probably never will be.
  
  I try engaging with the pre-existing queer communities around me, but they're massively fem/enby skewed so even when there aren’t any problems with misandry (which is rare), I end up feeling like I'm a weird relic of the past that shouldn't exist anymore. Plus they're heavily skewed towards unstable poly so it's just a constant ongoing orgy/disaster all the time.
  
  It feels like regular society doesn't want men who are anything left of far right. Conservatives don't want you because you don't agree with them, moderates are rare and often have their own problems, the left doesn't want you because you're a man and men are guilty unless proven otherwise (if there's even a way to prove otherwise). I just don't know.
  
  I'm sorry you've had that experience.
  
  I grew up in a huge family so, for me, having a handful of really great friendships has always been perfect because I spent two decades being vastly overstimulated.
  
  With that said, I know enough of the trans experience to know that, for transmen, it can be very jarring to experience the existence of manhood and how society in general treats us. Forming friendships can become significantly more challenging post-transition, and I wish it weren't that way.
  
  As a cisgender, asexual Asian woman I don’t experience most of the oppression I’m “supposed” to and functionally share the experience of a cishet white guy. This is what everyone is supposed to have, a privileged experience, and yet I’ve managed to feel bad about not having more problems which is incredibly fucked up.
  
  I’m not sure what the activists are doing that focuses on guilt-tripping you instead of actually helping the underserved and oppressed. The point is for those in a position to help to help others, not to tell the people in a position to help to feel bad about themselves for being well-off/unoppressed enough to be able to help. My sympathies that that happened to you. I always thought that was more online behavior that would disappear in real life, but I suppose I forgot that as much as people would like to think otherwise, nasty people online sometimes get off the keyboard and do things in the real world—they “touch grass” just as much as normal people.
- This is pretty much my approach as well. If I don't have agency over what's happening I stay deliberately months to years behind the news cycle. By then, I can study it as recent history, with less panic, rancor, and propaganda. That also gives me space to stay up to date on the few things I can affect, like decentralizing the internet, breeding locally adapted potatoes, and enjoying life.
  
  A friend commented on how wonderful a life we must lead, to be unconcerned about the news. I don't understand it, because all you have to do is stop watching it.

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