how to cope with the bad, bad news and state of the world?

May 26, 2022 11:50 AM

feeling deeply affected and demoralized by the news lately and a country that doesn't care about protecting its people - my own problems and day to day stuff feels really meaningless. all these concerns about jobs and achievements that i was so invested in days ago now seems unfathomable to care about. genuinely can't imagine a better future for the US.

what does one do in times like these? (please don't suggest therapy -- therapy might make my day to day a little better but it will not fix the broken system that we're living in.) looking for - practical ways to cope and make a difference even when the odds are absolutely dismal.

posted by lightgray to Society & Culture (19 answers total)

Exhaustive exercise and good music is what I don't do nearly often enough. Reaching out to equally cynical and angry old friends one can bitch to with in complete trust is something I'm learning to do recently and has been incredibly useful. Neither makes a difference except for possibly giving you the resilience to go on to things that make a difference.

I genuinely don't know how useful protests and direct actions are, but they sure can be cathartic. (Empathy and best wishes. For all of us.)
posted by eotvos at 12:03 PM on May 26, 2022

Take Lukas Nelson's advice and turn off the news, and build a garden.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:06 PM on May 26, 2022 [18 favorites]

Find groups working on the issues that you care about, and join them. Being around other people who get how messed up things are who are willing to put in effort to change them can be huge and can go a long way to at least knowing you are not alone.
posted by bile and syntax at 12:10 PM on May 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

So first there's one big choice: stay or move? Things are legit bad enough (and could get much worse) that I wouldn't fault anyone for making a plan to move to a different country. Obviously that's not an option for everyone, though, and nowhere you can move will definitely be a paradise. If the US goes full-failed-state, no one's going to be protected from what all could go down.

But aside from that soul-searching, try to keep things in perspective. Things are bad now, absolutely, in so many ways! But it's really hard to tell if things are getting substantially net worse. I turn 50 next week. I grew up in the Reagan 80's and was convinced nuclear war would destroy humanity before I got old. Things were bad. Racism, sexism, and homophobia were so casual and so pervasive in ways that are hard to fathom now. Before my time was Vietnam, and the wholesale slaughters of the two World Wars. Scratch the surface of history anywhere and anywhen and all you can find is despair and inhumanity.

My therapist told me to focus on the things I can affect, and it helped me. I follow the news a lot less than I used to. I stay informed, but I don't go deep on things I personally can't make better. I try to focus more locally, where my voice makes more of a difference. I try to boost other people's voices more than my own. Sometimes I tilt at windmills (I contacted every house rep to ask them to expel Madison Cawthorn after he was elected and rallied on January 6), but I do so knowing that my actions are symbolic and won't change things.

If you have a good DSA group (some now seem to be Russia apologists) or another progressive umbrella, join up with other people who are doing their best. Hope can be a choice, something that comes not from evidence or momentum but because it's better than living in despair. Hang in there.
posted by rikschell at 12:19 PM on May 26, 2022 [15 favorites]

The way I’m working through this is to frame my job and career growth (that I found otherwise meaningless way before the pandemic or the Trump years) as a means to take care of myself and others. I am also becoming more and more involved in local and national mutual aid groups, including creating guides and technology for people who are food, goods, or housing divergent/insecure. We have to start taking care of each other now, because no one else is. It may sound bleak, but this is the first step toward improving the system at large: rewriting the status quo.
posted by Cyber666 at 12:50 PM on May 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

So one of the valuable lessons I took from the book Politics is for Power is that your approach to political issues should best be bi-modal. The point of the title is that political activity should be focused on taking and using power and not as a thing to wile away the hours worrying about.

It's absolutely not a call for quietism, it's actually the opposite, but the author's view is that you should participate deeply and meaningfully in politics but in areas of politics where you cannot do that, you should pay just enough attention to vote "correctly" but not more. All your political activity should pass the test of concreteness.

For most people, that will mean directly engaging with very local politics and with volunteering and local activism. I think a lot of people's first response to that is resistance because they want to engage with the major issues that are national but I think my response to that would be: "Great, but do your actions pass the test of concrete, goal oriented action?". So campaigning for better local Democratic candidates so that the parties shifts in the direction you want is concrete and has real implications for what future senators are willing to do on the composition of e.g. the judiciary. Carrying out actual protests may have real implications for how elected representatives feel compelled to act.

Doomscrolling and just reading about bad things has no concrete impact (what are you going to do with that information) so stop it and stop fooling yourself into thinking that doing it is political. Reading twitter is the real quietism of our time.
posted by atrazine at 1:00 PM on May 26, 2022 [38 favorites]

Consider a media diet. The media feeds this problem almost as much as gun owners and the legislators they have intimidated. Controlling exposure to media may help with mental hygiene.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:30 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Going to Nth avoiding the news. The news is not Real Life.

The news — all forms of mass media, no matter the bias of the source — the news highlights extremes. It shows you mostly the very worst of the world. Sometimes it shows you the best with a feel-good story or two, but the general plan is to highlight the worst in human nature and human behavior. Why? Because that's what brings eyeballs for advertisers. Like rubberneckers passing a motorcrash, people are drawn to the dire details of outlier events.

The reality is that most people are good, no matter their political or religious beliefs. Most people want to help others. The system isn't nearly as broken as the breathless media (and breathless Mefites) would have you believe. Sure, there are problems. But those are solved by genuine Real Life interactions with other humans, not by watching more news or interacting more online.

• Want to make a difference on gun control? Have genuine conversations with family and friends who staunchly support gun rights. Listen to what they have to say. Ask questions. Try to understand their positions.
• Want to make a difference on reproductive rights? Have genuine conversations with family and friends who staunchly oppose abortion. Listen to what they have to say. Ask questions. Try to understand their positions.
• And so on.

Somebody long ago (can't remember whom) taught me that if I cannot state my opponent's argument/position in a way that she agrees with, then I don't truly understand it. From what I can tell, few people on the Left or the Right seem to be able to articulate their opponents' arguments/positions. They argue past each other without actually dealing with what the other side actually believes. As a result, there are a lot of people out there who have false impressions of what others think and believe.

The world doesn't seem any worse to me today than it did when I was growing up in the 1970s and the 1980s. The biggest difference is the all-pervasive news media. It used to be that newspapers and radio were the primary purveyors of news, with evening news up there as well. There was no internet. Now newspapers are basically dead. So is radio. Instead, we have highly-charged television news outlets that spin and spin and spin and spin on the same shit all day long, and we have corners of the internet that do the same thing. But these news sources don't represent Real Life. Nor does NPR.

How to cope with bad, bad news? Stop exposing yourself to it, especially if you're allowing yourself constant exposure. How to cope with the state of the world? Stop casting your net so wide. Focus on your self, on your neighborhood, and your community. Make a difference where you can make a difference. You can't make a difference in Buffalo or Uvalde or Ukraine, so why allow that to be a concern for you? You can make a difference in your immediate surroundings, though. So do it. Find a way to make a difference in your town, on your block, in your home.

I'm not saying that you should bury your head in the sand. But I am saying that the news does not paint an accurate portrait of the world. It reflects reality in a sort of scary fun-house mirror kind of way. It makes things look uglier than they actually are.
posted by jdroth at 1:57 PM on May 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

Wow. Love that "Turn Off the News and Build a Garden" song. That's fantastic. Thanks, Capt. Renault.
posted by jdroth at 2:02 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Shift your focus from macro to micro (or, to paraphrase, think less globally, act locally). I'm sure you know you personally aren't gonna fix everything. So still pay attention to the things you want to pay attention to -- donate everywhere you want to and can, sign all the petitions, etc. But start by picking a cause where you know you can make things net-better, no matter by how much. As per bile and syntax above, figure out what differences you can make in the causes that matter more to you. We didn't have to rescue a dog to help; we found an animal-support group that does adoptions and fostering, and most weekends we stop at a few chain pet stores, pick up quantities of food and toys/accessories that they're donating, and transport to the support group. Someone else (or sometimes we) get the food to those fostering the animals.

I don't believe I'll ever see a story on Apple News headlined 'Abandoned Pets Are Being Put Down in Verrrry Slightly Smaller Numbers; WTF Is Going On?' But for sure it helps mentally to know you're not doing literally nothing. Anyone who's sat through a corporate training in the last few years knows there are studies showing that our outlook improves when we help others. So research the many different ways there are, and find the ones that fit your personality.
posted by troywestfield at 2:35 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

You can do something to help people. Do not despair.

Start where you live. Do something to directly help your neighborhood and community. I love to garden, so I built a free garden in my front yard and I give away herbs, vegetables and fresh cut flowers. Many neighbors have thanked me profusely in the two years the garden has been a thing so it's obviously making a difference for some people. You can volunteer at a community garden if you don't have your own space to grow things for sharing.

Do you love to cook? Join your local Food Not Bombs chapter or start one. Is reading your jam? Volunteer to read to kids at your nearest library or elementary school. What about spending time with animals? Shelters and rescues always need helping hands. Literally anything you enjoy doing can be helpful to people in some capacity.

None of these things you do will stop people from doing terrible things but helping others will help you feel better about this stuff I bet.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 3:35 PM on May 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

I realise this is very niche, but one of the things I do is listen to community radio. Fortunately I live in a place bursting with stations and I alternate listening to the two stations that suit me best, but there's probably at least one in your local area. Honestly, a well-produced local radio station tells me about what's going on the world, makes me feel less alone, and makes me feel like a member of the community. I'm delighted to pay my annual subscription every year.
posted by happyfrog at 3:53 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

One thing that helped us during this time was reviewing and reassessing our hard-line list of what would trigger us to begin the process of leaving the country. It helped us get a better sense of the long term time frame we think we may be facing and clarified our sense of what we're looking at right now. And of course, writing it down on paper allowed some of the difficulty to be lifted from our mind.
posted by donut_princess at 4:37 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Do what you can. Start and attend protests/ demonstrations. Connect to Indivisible or other organizations and help encourage actions. Write to legislators and call them. Be active in any way that works for you. I write postcards to potential voters. I am a Meme Daytrader. I edit memes to get rid of cruft from sloppy screenshotting, choose the best ones, post them and tell people to share if they wish.

I find Heather Cox Richardson to be a good voice to listen to. She writes about what's going on in good detail. My friend posted this Today Heather Cox Richardson said something that helped me while I, like many others, struggle with the never-ending onslaught from all directions. I'm paraphrasing some "You don't have to be a witness to everything. Take a break from the news if you have to; pick what you can do".

It may not be particularly effective, but I do what I can. and lately, because it's not a Presidential election, and local races are not heated up yet, I turn off the news and live my life. I am pretty concerned that the US is heading towards Bad Things. I will work to avoid this, but once I have done what I can, it's okay to lay down the sorrow. The sorrow of slaughtered children will be with me for some time, as it should be, but I also delighted in my mischievous dog racing around the lawn.
posted by theora55 at 5:52 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Leaving the U.S. helps a bit logistically (everyone wears their masks here and I don’t have to worry about getting randomly shot) but it really doesn’t help emotionally. My friends and family are still living there, and my beloved country is still in a really bad place.

I cope by remembering that American history is one of dramatic pendulum swings. All I can do is hang on for the ride and maybe ease some of the suffering that happens on the way. The US has been in some much worse places than it is today and has always come back. I have faith.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:55 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

The news — all forms of mass media, no matter the bias of the source — the news highlights extremes. It shows you mostly the very worst of the world. Sometimes it shows you the best with a feel-good story or two, but the general plan is to highlight the worst in human nature and human behavior. Why? Because that's what brings eyeballs for advertisers.

I am a former local media member and as such I want to push back on this.

Lumping news and media in this way contributes to the anxiety a lot of people feel about the news in general. A large amount of what becomes national news was initially reported on by local news sources. And the overwhelming majority of the local people who are reporting these instances aren't thinking about advertising or trying to highlight the worst of humanity--they are doing a sometimes difficult job and are as sad about the tragedies they are covering as you are about reading them.

So while I would encourage you to take breaks from consuming news when needed, and being active on a local level, I would discourage you from lumping all media in a way that will make you believe that they are purposefully trying to hurt you (save for you-know-who).
posted by girlmightlive at 4:45 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

I genuinely don't know how useful protests and direct actions are

They were certainly part of what worked for us.

Protests and direct actions are often not terribly edifying to watch, but they're useful to be in. Useful in that direct experience shows quite clearly to anybody with first, second or even third-hand involvement the extent to which mediated coverage of them, whether by mainstream broadcast news or axe-grinders on social media, is almost always misleading to the point of being actively harmful.

In this way, they oppose manipulation of opinion by propagandists and encourage critical thinking, especially critical thinking about what stories are being brought to our attention, how those stories are curated and shaped, and who benefits from doing that.

They're also useful because they help people who are dissatisfied with the way today's power structures operate to link up directly, in person, with others similarly pissed off - which is often a necessary first step toward getting properly organized to modify those structures from within.

Personally I apply the Murdoch Media Death Star test to help me judge how useful any given protest action is proving to be. If Fox or Sky After Dark downplays or disparages any given set of protestors, then those protestors probably have something to say that's worth paying attention to. If the MMDS stands more or less alone in failing to cover a significant protest at all, then it for sure has something worthwhile to say. And once they start actively trying to whip up opposition to any given movement, that's a really good sign that it's already started to achieve genuinely useful social change.
posted by flabdablet at 5:57 AM on May 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Future Crunch is a fortnightly roundup of "Good news you probably didn't hear about"

Recent sample:

The reduction in motor vehicle deaths in the United States is one of the country's most substantial public health achievements. In 2000, car accidents were responsible for 13,049 deaths among young people (13.62 per 100,000 persons). Twenty years later, there has been a nearly 40% decrease, with 8,234 deaths (8.31 per 100,000 persons) recorded in 2020.

A new global study on type 2 diabetes has shown disease management and education programs and are working, with a decline in death rates across 16 high-income countries. "There is still a long way to go to control the many risks, but these findings provide promising evidence that we are moving in the right direction."

New Mexico recently established the most extensive tuition-free scholarship program in the US, and Maine has proposed making two years of community college free for high school graduates. This would bring the total number of states with free-college programs to 30, i.e 60% of all US states would have free tuition opportunities.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:19 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

The extraordinary thing about failed January 6 insurrection was its unprecedented departure from the rule of law and the principle of free and fair elections. I say that in this thread to point out that many of the things in this country that seem bad or scary are the result of a free and fair election where half or more of the voters wanted this outcome. And if that’s the case, you can take hope — you can take action — by voting and working to increase voter turnout for the outcomes you want. Vote in every presidential election, every midterm election, every statehouse election, every school board election.

The outcomes you deplore came out of a lawfully elected White House, Congress, state capital, and school board that enacted policies under the rule of law that governs all of us. That same rule of law can benefit us and reverse the awful state of things if we keep control of the White House, build a Manchin-proof majority in the Senate, and over time, take back the Supreme Court. We got this way because Republicans have won too many elections over too many years. It doesn’t have to stay that way, even if they now enjoy (or have made for themselves) structural advantages.

Is this an idealized, or naive, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington description of voter efficacy? Maybe. Does it ignore the view that Jan. 6 portends a future where power dispenses with democracy in America? Maybe. But Jan. 6 failed. And this approach I’m talking about gives hope and it gives you something to do, and you asked for hope and for something to do. And this approach is, I am sure of it, how voting rights advocates like Stacey Abrams and John Lewis keep and kept faith and hope in America. And it’s how I’m keeping hope alive, too.
posted by hhc5 at 12:14 PM on May 27, 2022