A few days ago, I watched a talk about a concept called “the fault finding mind.” Or, as the Buddhist monk giving the talk put it, an addiction to negativity: People get negative. And this is one of those addictions which no-one can see. […] When I came across this in Buddhism, in the teachings of the Buddha, I thought, ‘Wow, what a great concept! It’s like a mind that gets addicted always to finding faults in things.’
I want to note a superficially similar but distinct phenomenon.
There are times when it can seem like I am focusing attention mostly on what's wrong rather than what's working.
My partner and I have a name for that: "debug mode". We have both been programmers as part of our history, so we easily grasp the metaphor. A small percentage of a body of code often gets most of the attention for a while - because it needs debugging. The part that works doesn't need attention right then.
We use that term to bring non-judgemental attention to it. Like if we were dealing with some issue in our relationship, we might want to zoom out and spend some time or attention on appreciating the things that work well. Debug mode can be useful, but too much of it can become draining and can negatively affect our emotional perspective. Breaks can be good.
The key difference is that this comes from our focus on fixing the bugs, NOT from becoming emotionally attached to a negative interpretation. Backing off for a while feels more like relaxing and remembering the bigger picture, rather than a let down because we aren't getting our expected payoff from having a negative attitude validated.
So that's the piece of awareness we want to cultivate - am I just in debugging mode (but happy to acknowledge the non-broken facets), or have I become attached to a negative narrative such that I feel disappointed unless it gets reinforced?
To me the negativity of cynicism feels like a coping mechanism, so I try to treat it sympathetically (in myself or others) rather than demeaning it. I liked how you responded in your excerpted dialogue.
"My partner and I have a name for that: "debug mode"."
God, I absolutely love this! I'd love to see this concept in a relationship advice book, although, as you say, it could really apply to any topic.
Yes, absolutely. It's ridiculous to blindly ignore problems or to refuse to address them. It's important to be honest when something isn't working, whether it's in a relationship or society in general. But fixating only on problems very quickly becomes psychologically toxic, and begins to colour your view of *everything* instead of just the areas that need improvement.
I see different uses for cynicism. For some it's a coping mechanism, but for others it's an excuse for passivity. Others it's a way of projecting their personal failures onto society. And for others it's something like an addiction (which is why this conversation reminded me of that talk about addiction to negativity). It becomes something like an identity to some people, until they instinctively resist any view of the world that isn't some version of, "Everybody is terrible. Everything is hopeless. Just give up and be angry."
> "For some it's a coping mechanism, but for others it's an excuse for passivity. Others it's a way of projecting their personal failures onto society. And for others it's something like an addiction."
Is it not possible that all of those ARE coping mechanisms? Ways of numbing out or unconsciously avoiding feared disappointments?
Within myself, I notice that when I start to feel helpless to improve things, fearful of the future, tired of seeing things deteriorate - is when I feel the tug of "F it all, humanity is a failed experiment, I give up".
I try to keep the level of that stuff down to occasional dark humor and wry comments, rather than full blown negativity and cynicism - but I recognize within myself a diluted form of cynicism (or a different but related expression of underlying forces which could instead have led to cynicism?).
Sometimes I instead try to cultivate a Buddhist-inspired detachment from outcome, with engagement in process.
One of the things I've learned over time is that we have more control over our minds than we tend to initially think we have (one of the top tips I'd like to go back in time and tell younger self). One of the ways I keep my love for my partner alive, is to take time thinking about all the things I appreciate, in the present or over our history together. I will think about and discuss problems, but I do not dwell on them, thinking about them all the time. This mixture has a good effect on my mental state.
Likewise, if we are constantly looking for microaggressions and obsessing over remembering them, we will be living an a dark and grim world largely (not entirely) of our own making.
We can affect our minds by being conscious about the stories we tell ourselves. And the neo-progressive ideology encourages telling ourselves some pretty dysfunctional stories. Or more broadly, the cynical negativity you describe can be thought of as "the story somebody is telling themselves" - perhaps as a coping strategy.
"Is it not possible that all of those ARE coping mechanisms?"
Hmm, I guess you could argue that if you say that cynicism is a way of with "coping" with insecurity or resentfulness or passivity. But for whatever reason, I've never really had that instinct to say "F*** it."
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of problems I'm not smart enough to solve, but none that I think there is no solution to. So I'm interested in pulling as many smart people into the conversations as possible until we figure it out. There is nothing humanity can't achieve if we put our collective minds to it.
Funny you should mention Buddhism. An upcoming conversation touches on some Buddhist themes (I'm not a buddhist, but have an extensive background in meditation)! I'd never thought about it that way, but maybe that background helps me avoid getting too sucked in by negativity.
"Given all the disintegration happening in the world I would say that optimism verges on psychosis. There is simply no justification for it."
Let's say this is true. What's the sanest, healthiest response to this? What would you have said to MLK in 1955, say? Emmett Till had just been lynched, black people were murdered with impunity, often by the police themselves, George Wallace had just become governor of Alabama on a platform of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Surely, and with far more justification, optimism would be described as psychosis. MLK's dream would have been (and was) more correctly described as a pipe dream. Yet 13 years later the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act were all the law of the land.
And I'll go a step further. Even if none of that had happened. Even if the Civil Rights movement had achieved nothing notable at all, I'd *still* argue that their response to their circumstances was the only sane one. Because what's the alternative? Apathy and cynicism and impotent rage? To grumble about one's circumstances but do nothing about them? To tell oneself that the "bad guys" are just too smart and it's hopeless to oppose them? We can look at certain quarters of the black community and see how self-defeating this is.
Oh, I am not counseling despair and inaction, I'm saying that there are no circumstances right now that justify Smile. Everything is falling apart at once and there are very few things getting better. Yes we absolutely should do all we can to mitigate calamity where we can't stop it and those of us who don't regard cruelty as entertainment should strive to be nice to each other, but optimism? No.
I guess I’d say optimism is a prerequisite for productive action, no? Or at least that you’re more likely to do your best work if you believe that work will succeed.
Looking at the successes of the past is a constant source of encouragement when it comes to social issues. Environmental issues I find it a little more difficult to be chipper about😅
All the social progress since serfdom won't matter a bit if the environment continues on its current path.
Frankly I am glad to be nearing the end of my life because I don't want to live to see what's coming. Yes I do everything I can to prevent it; any money I have left after I shuffle off the coil goes to Loro Parque Fundación and all the donations I make are to wildlife causes. I recycle as much as I can, I'm almost vegetarian, but I think our extinction is going to come from wars of food plunder that get out of hand.
I disagree that optimism is prerequisite for activism. Look at the religious right; they worked for generations toward a world they knew they would not live to see, but which has now arrived. They were determined, We can be too.
My despair about that is that for all but a very few Americans, war has been "over there" for all memory, and they have no clue about how horrible a civil war/war on your own soil is and actually want it.
The war in Vietnam that I marched off to was essentially a civil war that America put on steroids. What I saw was beyond death and destruction. In villages I saw sandbag bunkers next to people's homes. Every day they might come home to no home or family. How would anyone want to live like that?
I could go on and on, but my point is that there is little more awful for the people living in it than civil war where even victory is pyrrhic. Optimism in the face of such idiotic *thinking* (sic) is difficult.
The MAGAs are not the only ones arming themselves, it's an American phenomenon.
I live in Vietnam and when I first came here as a tourist in 1998 there were still a lot of victims of land mines wheeling around on little carts. By the time I moved here in 2010 they were mostly gone, now they're all gone. The way they think about it one would think it was as long ago as ours.
But there are still unexploded mines and once in a while I would run into someone who'd been unlucky
"But more and more, it feels as if people are focusing on the negative because they enjoy it, rather than because of any desire to do something about it."
So true!! I believe it is indeed an addiction. Humans love to complain and criticize even if it does not change anything. I had a good friend who used to say, 'if you can do something about it, if you can actually affect change, do it! If you can't, don't bitch about it.' I took that as excellent advice.
"f you can do something about it, if you can actually affect change, do it! If you can't, don't bitch about it.'"
I've received very similar advice over the years! Truly words to live by. And I think with this attitude in mind, we discover we can do more than we think.
With the advent of people associating virtue with oppression (nearly) everyone is finding fault with their oppressors, real and imagined. Reaching a point where the least oppressed are becoming radicalized.
It seems to be getting worse. Here I am finding fault with society and people finding fault with different aspects of the same thing. Contagious.
I gave You 50 claps, Steve. I'd give this one here 50 as well. It reminded me of "The Power of Bad" by Roy F. Baumeister (and I think John Tierney). They identify a big part of the problem: A whole industry built on everybody being encrusted with layers of fear.
When Eve ate the apple, and learned the power of "good," wo/man-kind could look to the future an plan a better one. They rose above the capabilities they had when they were animals. But she and Adam also found the power of bad. The mind takes 2 1/2 good things to overpower the effects of one bad thing.
Would that we even saw 1/2 of a good thing for every bad thing we get foisted upon us by the bad industry.
"The mind takes 2 1/2 good things to overpower the effects of one bad thing."
Yeah, this is definitely a problem with human psychology. There are all kinds of examples of this, right? In marketing especially. A customer is X times more likely to remember a negative customer service experience than a positive one. And Y times more likely to talk to their friends about it. There's a clear evolutionary advantage to focusing on the negative.
The problem is, the issues we're trying to solve today are so much more complex and nuanced than those humans were worrying about when we ran around in loincloths. We can't fix anything if we don't maintain our perspective. Which social media and the 24 hour news cycle makes it especially difficult to do sometimes.😅
Well said. There's also the obligatory reference to content ranking algorithms. Negativity is more powerful, the algorithm grabs it, promotes it, creates more negativity, and boom, we're in a despair death spiral.
Yep, we really need to reckon with “the algorithm” at some point. These companies are knowingly dividing and deceiving people for profit.
As I was saying to someone else recently, it was t until I started writing seriously and researching sources carefully that I realised how partial and/or flat out inaccurate a lot of the information we receive is.
"The problem is, the issues we're trying to solve today are so much more complex and nuanced than those humans were worrying about when we ran around in loincloths."
Haha! And, yeah. True... And about why it's so difficult.
That's why I don't listen to news or social media. But that's just me.
When I was a little kid, Pollyanna, was one of my favorite books. Pollyanna’s glad-game was my magic too; when everything was going wrong, I could always find something good. I got so good at the glad-game people called me Pollyanna (they still do).
Pollyanna did not spread gladness, by making shit up. Pollyanna listened for the reasons people were bickering, arguing and angry. When Pollyanna spoke those reasons out loud, it melted hearts and changed minds.
The reasons we fight and argue make us feel so small and vulnerable, even stupid, no one has the courage to say their reasons out loud. People can shout and scream, even kill, but they cannot bring themselves to say their reasons out loud.
Let me take the first leap. Instead of telling you all about my fights, arguments, disagreements, negativity and anger, I will tell you the reasons I do all those things. Here goes… I am leaping
My reason is that I want a peaceful life where I can spend my time with the people I love, doing the work I love, in places that I love. That’s it. That’s the reason I do and say most everything I do and say. I want that so much that I will fight global corporations, presidents, politicians, billionaires, cops, soldiers, neighbors, teachers… anyone and everyone who tries to keep me from it.
I just told everyone here, my honest reason, and half of you are laughing, making fun of me, shaking your heads in disbelief at my naivete and stupidity and ready to hit the keyboard and type “Grow the fuck up”. Other readers, just dismissed me and moved on to another comment.
For those who stayed, I wonder can you tell us your reasons. You know what you do NOT want. Do you know what you want? Do you need to write pages of words to express your reasons? Or have you thought about what you want so deeply you can express it in a short and simple sentence? How about you, Steve, will you take the leap?
My point is simple. People who are afraid to say their reasons out loud, blame other people for not getting it – and that’s what causes fights.
We cannot fight FOR something, if we don’t know what that something is. Until people start saying what they want, out loud, we will keep on fighting.
"I just told everyone here, my honest reason, and half of you are laughing, making fun of me, shaking your heads in disbelief at my naivete and stupidity and ready to hit the keyboard and type 'Grow the fuck up'."
Hey Raffey! I'm really surprised you're braced for this reaction! I don't think anybody here, and most people in general, would have this reaction to what you wrote. And, in fact, I think the vast majority of people can completely relate to it. I certainly can.
I also don't really think it's a leap to state one's motivations. I've stated them here on more than one occasion, and in my writing pretty much all the time.
I want to live in a world where we aren't divided by meaningless things like skin colour or sexuality or gender. I want us to be able to work together and communicate honestly and generously when we disagree, and I want us to celebrate our differences instead of hating and fearing each other over them.
I want that so much that I'm willing to face criticism and abuse and attacks on my character. I'm willing to put myself out there and spend hours of my free time trying to understand different perspectives. And I want this because if humanity started pulling in the same direction, for our common benefit, it takes my breath away to imagine how wonderful the world could be.
"Hey Raffey! I'm really surprised you're braced for this reaction! I don't think anybody here, and most people in general, would have this reaction to what you wrote."
Argh. I forgot I was on your page. You're right - accusing the people in your space, of behaving like people outside of it, was wrong. I apologize to you and your readers. In the future, I will try to remember who might be reading what I write.
No problem, no apologies necessary.😁 But yeah, I think you're far less alone in your feelings than you seem to think. Only a very few people would ridicule you for saying that. And many of them, only because they're too scared to admit it themselves.
Steve, our conversation nagged at me. After I thought it over, I decided to return.
Gaging one's audience is important. On your substack page, we pay money to read your work – and it is fair to assume people here are interested in conversations with you and like-minded people. Hence, my assuming on these people was wrong, and you rightly brought that to my attention.
You also write on Medium and I read your work in both places. In the future, I must try to keep these different audiences in mind.
That said, I’ve been saying what I wrote here, in public, for a very, very long time and I was responding to the responses I’ve received in real life – I was not imagining or exaggerating them.
Here in the virtual world, civic activists are safer than those of us who work in full public view. In fact, I do not know one civic activist or organizer working in the real world who has NOT faced real threats and real violence at one time or another.
Surprisingly enough, the behaviour we’ve all been seeing at school board meetings this year, over CRT, library books, the 1619 project, and history classes has been going on in rural communities for 20+ years. Since the media does not cover rural communities, most Americans never knew this was happening until it had moved into the suburbs.
I liken it to the canary in the cage miners take down into mines. People in rural communities have been coping with on-line violence spilling over into real life for a very long time. I first encountered it fifteen years ago.
In 2007, our small-town, rural newspaper had just started an on-line comment section, when some serious problems emerged in our school district. By the time anonymous people in our little town newspaper’s virtual world were done with me, my home had been torched (arson), my car had thousands of dollars in damage, and my children, my employees and I had coped with dozens of filthy, disgusting, vile, threatening letters and packages containing realistic toy guns, knives and bombs mailed to my home and business. And I had spent 18 months under police protection.
If you wonder what I did to attract this kind of attention, here is the answer. Racism and the corruption it cultivates in rural institutions, such as schools, hospitals, policing, economic development, and housing is rampant. I’d taken a firm stand against racism and corruption in our school district for a very long time. Suddenly, when our school district was faced with state receivership, 64% of local voters put me on our school board.
Cleaning house wasn’t easy, and opposition to my efforts led to a recall election. Following a two year long, expensive and heated recall campaign, 61% of local voters kept me in office.
At the time, no one could figure out why the opposition (aka recall proponents) spent more than $50,000. to recall me – when the next regular election for my seat would be just 3 months after a recall election could possibly be held. We could not figure out why the Republican party (I mean that literally) paid for large 4 color glossy postcards and mailing costs in a small school district in the middle of dumb-f—k nowhere. We could not figure out why a Washington DC lobbyist (I mean that literally too) organized and ran the recall campaign against me. Harder still, in the midst of the 2008/2009 global economic crisis, and housing market crash, that recall election cost our school district over $100,000.
Steve, can you figure any of that out? Does any of that make sense to you?
Well, we finally figured it out. I had been used as an example. After seeing what happened to people who fought racism and corruption, people refused to risk their families and businesses by serving in local office. As a result, ultra-conservative candidates ran un-opposed in local elections and ended up controlling every local government agency in our community. Using me as an example turned out to be a dirt-cheap way for the Republican Party to assume control of rural communities. And they did it all across America.
I am not whining or asking for sympathy. I am simply saying that activists working in the real world confront very different experiences than activists in the virtual world.
Obviously, I had tons of support, but I have never felt as alone as I did, when I was a target in the real world. While that did not happen here, in your space, I thought explaining it might help inform discussion. :)
"I’ve been saying what I wrote here, in public, for a very, very long time and I was responding to the responses I’ve received in real life – I was not imagining or exaggerating them."
I feel like there's a layer to this conversation that I'm missing. In fact, I kind of had that feeling from your first post. You spoke about the importance of saying what you're *for*. Even though I think I've done so many times before. In fact, you asked me to do so directly. And as part of that request, you explained your reasons:
"My reason is that I want a peaceful life where I can spend my time with the people I love, doing the work I love, in places that I love. That’s it."
Now, I don't know you. I don't know where you live or who you spend time with. I don't know about your personal experiences. All I can respond to is the words you write on the screen. And the quote above is just so perfectly reasonable and universal that I can't see how 99% of people would have any problem with it.
I'm not accusing you of imagining anything, I'm not saying you're exaggerating, I'm saying that If you're expecting people to laugh, or make fun of you, or tell you to "grow the f*ck up," for saying *this* I don't think the people you're talking about are representative of most people.
The abuse you describe above sounds absolutely awful. I know a thing or two about abuse myself, both online and in real life, though nothing on this level. Any body would feel alone if they were treated like this. But I didn't say that activists in real life don't face different challenges to those online. Nor did anybody in the conversation.
I really hope it doesn't feel like I'm trying to dismiss what you're saying. I'm not. I just don't understand where this is coming from.
I want to note a superficially similar but distinct phenomenon.
There are times when it can seem like I am focusing attention mostly on what's wrong rather than what's working.
My partner and I have a name for that: "debug mode". We have both been programmers as part of our history, so we easily grasp the metaphor. A small percentage of a body of code often gets most of the attention for a while - because it needs debugging. The part that works doesn't need attention right then.
We use that term to bring non-judgemental attention to it. Like if we were dealing with some issue in our relationship, we might want to zoom out and spend some time or attention on appreciating the things that work well. Debug mode can be useful, but too much of it can become draining and can negatively affect our emotional perspective. Breaks can be good.
The key difference is that this comes from our focus on fixing the bugs, NOT from becoming emotionally attached to a negative interpretation. Backing off for a while feels more like relaxing and remembering the bigger picture, rather than a let down because we aren't getting our expected payoff from having a negative attitude validated.
So that's the piece of awareness we want to cultivate - am I just in debugging mode (but happy to acknowledge the non-broken facets), or have I become attached to a negative narrative such that I feel disappointed unless it gets reinforced?
To me the negativity of cynicism feels like a coping mechanism, so I try to treat it sympathetically (in myself or others) rather than demeaning it. I liked how you responded in your excerpted dialogue.
"My partner and I have a name for that: "debug mode"."
God, I absolutely love this! I'd love to see this concept in a relationship advice book, although, as you say, it could really apply to any topic.
Yes, absolutely. It's ridiculous to blindly ignore problems or to refuse to address them. It's important to be honest when something isn't working, whether it's in a relationship or society in general. But fixating only on problems very quickly becomes psychologically toxic, and begins to colour your view of *everything* instead of just the areas that need improvement.
I see different uses for cynicism. For some it's a coping mechanism, but for others it's an excuse for passivity. Others it's a way of projecting their personal failures onto society. And for others it's something like an addiction (which is why this conversation reminded me of that talk about addiction to negativity). It becomes something like an identity to some people, until they instinctively resist any view of the world that isn't some version of, "Everybody is terrible. Everything is hopeless. Just give up and be angry."
> "For some it's a coping mechanism, but for others it's an excuse for passivity. Others it's a way of projecting their personal failures onto society. And for others it's something like an addiction."
Is it not possible that all of those ARE coping mechanisms? Ways of numbing out or unconsciously avoiding feared disappointments?
Within myself, I notice that when I start to feel helpless to improve things, fearful of the future, tired of seeing things deteriorate - is when I feel the tug of "F it all, humanity is a failed experiment, I give up".
I try to keep the level of that stuff down to occasional dark humor and wry comments, rather than full blown negativity and cynicism - but I recognize within myself a diluted form of cynicism (or a different but related expression of underlying forces which could instead have led to cynicism?).
Sometimes I instead try to cultivate a Buddhist-inspired detachment from outcome, with engagement in process.
One of the things I've learned over time is that we have more control over our minds than we tend to initially think we have (one of the top tips I'd like to go back in time and tell younger self). One of the ways I keep my love for my partner alive, is to take time thinking about all the things I appreciate, in the present or over our history together. I will think about and discuss problems, but I do not dwell on them, thinking about them all the time. This mixture has a good effect on my mental state.
Likewise, if we are constantly looking for microaggressions and obsessing over remembering them, we will be living an a dark and grim world largely (not entirely) of our own making.
We can affect our minds by being conscious about the stories we tell ourselves. And the neo-progressive ideology encourages telling ourselves some pretty dysfunctional stories. Or more broadly, the cynical negativity you describe can be thought of as "the story somebody is telling themselves" - perhaps as a coping strategy.
"Is it not possible that all of those ARE coping mechanisms?"
Hmm, I guess you could argue that if you say that cynicism is a way of with "coping" with insecurity or resentfulness or passivity. But for whatever reason, I've never really had that instinct to say "F*** it."
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of problems I'm not smart enough to solve, but none that I think there is no solution to. So I'm interested in pulling as many smart people into the conversations as possible until we figure it out. There is nothing humanity can't achieve if we put our collective minds to it.
Funny you should mention Buddhism. An upcoming conversation touches on some Buddhist themes (I'm not a buddhist, but have an extensive background in meditation)! I'd never thought about it that way, but maybe that background helps me avoid getting too sucked in by negativity.
The Pareto principle leads to 80% of time spent on 20% of a thing. The 20% gets the most attention. With social issues it's even worse.
Given all the disintegration happening in the world I would say that optimism verges on psychosis. There is simply no justification for it.
Trump is now calling for civil war and nobody will do a thing about it, except the MAGA filth will buy more ammunition.
"Given all the disintegration happening in the world I would say that optimism verges on psychosis. There is simply no justification for it."
Let's say this is true. What's the sanest, healthiest response to this? What would you have said to MLK in 1955, say? Emmett Till had just been lynched, black people were murdered with impunity, often by the police themselves, George Wallace had just become governor of Alabama on a platform of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Surely, and with far more justification, optimism would be described as psychosis. MLK's dream would have been (and was) more correctly described as a pipe dream. Yet 13 years later the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act were all the law of the land.
And I'll go a step further. Even if none of that had happened. Even if the Civil Rights movement had achieved nothing notable at all, I'd *still* argue that their response to their circumstances was the only sane one. Because what's the alternative? Apathy and cynicism and impotent rage? To grumble about one's circumstances but do nothing about them? To tell oneself that the "bad guys" are just too smart and it's hopeless to oppose them? We can look at certain quarters of the black community and see how self-defeating this is.
Oh, I am not counseling despair and inaction, I'm saying that there are no circumstances right now that justify Smile. Everything is falling apart at once and there are very few things getting better. Yes we absolutely should do all we can to mitigate calamity where we can't stop it and those of us who don't regard cruelty as entertainment should strive to be nice to each other, but optimism? No.
I guess I’d say optimism is a prerequisite for productive action, no? Or at least that you’re more likely to do your best work if you believe that work will succeed.
Looking at the successes of the past is a constant source of encouragement when it comes to social issues. Environmental issues I find it a little more difficult to be chipper about😅
All the social progress since serfdom won't matter a bit if the environment continues on its current path.
Frankly I am glad to be nearing the end of my life because I don't want to live to see what's coming. Yes I do everything I can to prevent it; any money I have left after I shuffle off the coil goes to Loro Parque Fundación and all the donations I make are to wildlife causes. I recycle as much as I can, I'm almost vegetarian, but I think our extinction is going to come from wars of food plunder that get out of hand.
I disagree that optimism is prerequisite for activism. Look at the religious right; they worked for generations toward a world they knew they would not live to see, but which has now arrived. They were determined, We can be too.
Life has put me into the hope for the best, but plan for the worst camp. That does not preclude working for the best.
My despair about that is that for all but a very few Americans, war has been "over there" for all memory, and they have no clue about how horrible a civil war/war on your own soil is and actually want it.
The war in Vietnam that I marched off to was essentially a civil war that America put on steroids. What I saw was beyond death and destruction. In villages I saw sandbag bunkers next to people's homes. Every day they might come home to no home or family. How would anyone want to live like that?
I could go on and on, but my point is that there is little more awful for the people living in it than civil war where even victory is pyrrhic. Optimism in the face of such idiotic *thinking* (sic) is difficult.
The MAGAs are not the only ones arming themselves, it's an American phenomenon.
I live in Vietnam and when I first came here as a tourist in 1998 there were still a lot of victims of land mines wheeling around on little carts. By the time I moved here in 2010 they were mostly gone, now they're all gone. The way they think about it one would think it was as long ago as ours.
But there are still unexploded mines and once in a while I would run into someone who'd been unlucky
I know too many amputees resulting from mines. They kill and maim after the fighting ends.
Decades after.
Excellent post. And borrowing the language of Buddhism, one has to work to "uproot" such thinking.
"But more and more, it feels as if people are focusing on the negative because they enjoy it, rather than because of any desire to do something about it."
So true!! I believe it is indeed an addiction. Humans love to complain and criticize even if it does not change anything. I had a good friend who used to say, 'if you can do something about it, if you can actually affect change, do it! If you can't, don't bitch about it.' I took that as excellent advice.
"f you can do something about it, if you can actually affect change, do it! If you can't, don't bitch about it.'"
I've received very similar advice over the years! Truly words to live by. And I think with this attitude in mind, we discover we can do more than we think.
With the advent of people associating virtue with oppression (nearly) everyone is finding fault with their oppressors, real and imagined. Reaching a point where the least oppressed are becoming radicalized.
It seems to be getting worse. Here I am finding fault with society and people finding fault with different aspects of the same thing. Contagious.
"Here I am finding fault with society and people finding fault with different aspects of the same thing. Contagious."
😄
I gave You 50 claps, Steve. I'd give this one here 50 as well. It reminded me of "The Power of Bad" by Roy F. Baumeister (and I think John Tierney). They identify a big part of the problem: A whole industry built on everybody being encrusted with layers of fear.
When Eve ate the apple, and learned the power of "good," wo/man-kind could look to the future an plan a better one. They rose above the capabilities they had when they were animals. But she and Adam also found the power of bad. The mind takes 2 1/2 good things to overpower the effects of one bad thing.
Would that we even saw 1/2 of a good thing for every bad thing we get foisted upon us by the bad industry.
TY for writing, Steve.
"The mind takes 2 1/2 good things to overpower the effects of one bad thing."
Yeah, this is definitely a problem with human psychology. There are all kinds of examples of this, right? In marketing especially. A customer is X times more likely to remember a negative customer service experience than a positive one. And Y times more likely to talk to their friends about it. There's a clear evolutionary advantage to focusing on the negative.
The problem is, the issues we're trying to solve today are so much more complex and nuanced than those humans were worrying about when we ran around in loincloths. We can't fix anything if we don't maintain our perspective. Which social media and the 24 hour news cycle makes it especially difficult to do sometimes.😅
Well said. There's also the obligatory reference to content ranking algorithms. Negativity is more powerful, the algorithm grabs it, promotes it, creates more negativity, and boom, we're in a despair death spiral.
Yep, we really need to reckon with “the algorithm” at some point. These companies are knowingly dividing and deceiving people for profit.
As I was saying to someone else recently, it was t until I started writing seriously and researching sources carefully that I realised how partial and/or flat out inaccurate a lot of the information we receive is.
"The problem is, the issues we're trying to solve today are so much more complex and nuanced than those humans were worrying about when we ran around in loincloths."
Haha! And, yeah. True... And about why it's so difficult.
That's why I don't listen to news or social media. But that's just me.
When I was a little kid, Pollyanna, was one of my favorite books. Pollyanna’s glad-game was my magic too; when everything was going wrong, I could always find something good. I got so good at the glad-game people called me Pollyanna (they still do).
Pollyanna did not spread gladness, by making shit up. Pollyanna listened for the reasons people were bickering, arguing and angry. When Pollyanna spoke those reasons out loud, it melted hearts and changed minds.
The reasons we fight and argue make us feel so small and vulnerable, even stupid, no one has the courage to say their reasons out loud. People can shout and scream, even kill, but they cannot bring themselves to say their reasons out loud.
Let me take the first leap. Instead of telling you all about my fights, arguments, disagreements, negativity and anger, I will tell you the reasons I do all those things. Here goes… I am leaping
My reason is that I want a peaceful life where I can spend my time with the people I love, doing the work I love, in places that I love. That’s it. That’s the reason I do and say most everything I do and say. I want that so much that I will fight global corporations, presidents, politicians, billionaires, cops, soldiers, neighbors, teachers… anyone and everyone who tries to keep me from it.
I just told everyone here, my honest reason, and half of you are laughing, making fun of me, shaking your heads in disbelief at my naivete and stupidity and ready to hit the keyboard and type “Grow the fuck up”. Other readers, just dismissed me and moved on to another comment.
For those who stayed, I wonder can you tell us your reasons. You know what you do NOT want. Do you know what you want? Do you need to write pages of words to express your reasons? Or have you thought about what you want so deeply you can express it in a short and simple sentence? How about you, Steve, will you take the leap?
My point is simple. People who are afraid to say their reasons out loud, blame other people for not getting it – and that’s what causes fights.
We cannot fight FOR something, if we don’t know what that something is. Until people start saying what they want, out loud, we will keep on fighting.
"I just told everyone here, my honest reason, and half of you are laughing, making fun of me, shaking your heads in disbelief at my naivete and stupidity and ready to hit the keyboard and type 'Grow the fuck up'."
Hey Raffey! I'm really surprised you're braced for this reaction! I don't think anybody here, and most people in general, would have this reaction to what you wrote. And, in fact, I think the vast majority of people can completely relate to it. I certainly can.
I also don't really think it's a leap to state one's motivations. I've stated them here on more than one occasion, and in my writing pretty much all the time.
I want to live in a world where we aren't divided by meaningless things like skin colour or sexuality or gender. I want us to be able to work together and communicate honestly and generously when we disagree, and I want us to celebrate our differences instead of hating and fearing each other over them.
I want that so much that I'm willing to face criticism and abuse and attacks on my character. I'm willing to put myself out there and spend hours of my free time trying to understand different perspectives. And I want this because if humanity started pulling in the same direction, for our common benefit, it takes my breath away to imagine how wonderful the world could be.
"Hey Raffey! I'm really surprised you're braced for this reaction! I don't think anybody here, and most people in general, would have this reaction to what you wrote."
Argh. I forgot I was on your page. You're right - accusing the people in your space, of behaving like people outside of it, was wrong. I apologize to you and your readers. In the future, I will try to remember who might be reading what I write.
Again, my apologies.
No problem, no apologies necessary.😁 But yeah, I think you're far less alone in your feelings than you seem to think. Only a very few people would ridicule you for saying that. And many of them, only because they're too scared to admit it themselves.
Steve, our conversation nagged at me. After I thought it over, I decided to return.
Gaging one's audience is important. On your substack page, we pay money to read your work – and it is fair to assume people here are interested in conversations with you and like-minded people. Hence, my assuming on these people was wrong, and you rightly brought that to my attention.
You also write on Medium and I read your work in both places. In the future, I must try to keep these different audiences in mind.
That said, I’ve been saying what I wrote here, in public, for a very, very long time and I was responding to the responses I’ve received in real life – I was not imagining or exaggerating them.
Here in the virtual world, civic activists are safer than those of us who work in full public view. In fact, I do not know one civic activist or organizer working in the real world who has NOT faced real threats and real violence at one time or another.
Surprisingly enough, the behaviour we’ve all been seeing at school board meetings this year, over CRT, library books, the 1619 project, and history classes has been going on in rural communities for 20+ years. Since the media does not cover rural communities, most Americans never knew this was happening until it had moved into the suburbs.
I liken it to the canary in the cage miners take down into mines. People in rural communities have been coping with on-line violence spilling over into real life for a very long time. I first encountered it fifteen years ago.
In 2007, our small-town, rural newspaper had just started an on-line comment section, when some serious problems emerged in our school district. By the time anonymous people in our little town newspaper’s virtual world were done with me, my home had been torched (arson), my car had thousands of dollars in damage, and my children, my employees and I had coped with dozens of filthy, disgusting, vile, threatening letters and packages containing realistic toy guns, knives and bombs mailed to my home and business. And I had spent 18 months under police protection.
If you wonder what I did to attract this kind of attention, here is the answer. Racism and the corruption it cultivates in rural institutions, such as schools, hospitals, policing, economic development, and housing is rampant. I’d taken a firm stand against racism and corruption in our school district for a very long time. Suddenly, when our school district was faced with state receivership, 64% of local voters put me on our school board.
Cleaning house wasn’t easy, and opposition to my efforts led to a recall election. Following a two year long, expensive and heated recall campaign, 61% of local voters kept me in office.
At the time, no one could figure out why the opposition (aka recall proponents) spent more than $50,000. to recall me – when the next regular election for my seat would be just 3 months after a recall election could possibly be held. We could not figure out why the Republican party (I mean that literally) paid for large 4 color glossy postcards and mailing costs in a small school district in the middle of dumb-f—k nowhere. We could not figure out why a Washington DC lobbyist (I mean that literally too) organized and ran the recall campaign against me. Harder still, in the midst of the 2008/2009 global economic crisis, and housing market crash, that recall election cost our school district over $100,000.
Steve, can you figure any of that out? Does any of that make sense to you?
Well, we finally figured it out. I had been used as an example. After seeing what happened to people who fought racism and corruption, people refused to risk their families and businesses by serving in local office. As a result, ultra-conservative candidates ran un-opposed in local elections and ended up controlling every local government agency in our community. Using me as an example turned out to be a dirt-cheap way for the Republican Party to assume control of rural communities. And they did it all across America.
I am not whining or asking for sympathy. I am simply saying that activists working in the real world confront very different experiences than activists in the virtual world.
Obviously, I had tons of support, but I have never felt as alone as I did, when I was a target in the real world. While that did not happen here, in your space, I thought explaining it might help inform discussion. :)
"I’ve been saying what I wrote here, in public, for a very, very long time and I was responding to the responses I’ve received in real life – I was not imagining or exaggerating them."
I feel like there's a layer to this conversation that I'm missing. In fact, I kind of had that feeling from your first post. You spoke about the importance of saying what you're *for*. Even though I think I've done so many times before. In fact, you asked me to do so directly. And as part of that request, you explained your reasons:
"My reason is that I want a peaceful life where I can spend my time with the people I love, doing the work I love, in places that I love. That’s it."
Now, I don't know you. I don't know where you live or who you spend time with. I don't know about your personal experiences. All I can respond to is the words you write on the screen. And the quote above is just so perfectly reasonable and universal that I can't see how 99% of people would have any problem with it.
I'm not accusing you of imagining anything, I'm not saying you're exaggerating, I'm saying that If you're expecting people to laugh, or make fun of you, or tell you to "grow the f*ck up," for saying *this* I don't think the people you're talking about are representative of most people.
The abuse you describe above sounds absolutely awful. I know a thing or two about abuse myself, both online and in real life, though nothing on this level. Any body would feel alone if they were treated like this. But I didn't say that activists in real life don't face different challenges to those online. Nor did anybody in the conversation.
I really hope it doesn't feel like I'm trying to dismiss what you're saying. I'm not. I just don't understand where this is coming from.