It's Getting Harder All the Time to Find Laughter

I spontaneously shared the thought about laughter above on Facebook yesterday morning. Circumstances have me weary, in a quiet, subtle way. One of my strategies for dealing with negative situations is to find the humor in them. I'm known at work for that, getting others to laugh as a way to keep heavy moments moving in positive directions. Yet those jokes in the moment aren't coming to mind lately the way they normally do, and things that would usually give me a happy chuckle aren't. The ever-present, underlying sense of impending doom is constantly looming larger, and it's wearing me down.

DOOM

The thing about feeling hopeless is that it's hard to recall secrets to happiness, even if you've had hundreds of them memorized for years like multiplication facts.

― Laura Resau, Tree of Dreams

I need to find a way to break myself out of it and rediscover my smile.

I need to remember how to feel wonder.

I also need to join some of my friends in taking more breaks from social media.

Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health

Checking your phone for an extra two hours every night won’t stop the apocalypse—but it could stop you from being psychologically prepared for it. . . .

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic left a great many people locked down in their homes in early March, the evening ritual has been codifying: Each night ends the way the day began, with an endless scroll through social media in a desperate search for clarity. . . .

As protests over racial injustice and police brutality following the death of George Floyd have joined the Covid-19 crisis in the news cycle, it’s only gotten more intense. The constant stream of news and social media never ends. . . .

Now, the only thing to binge-watch is the world's collapse into crisis. Coronavirus deaths (473,000 worldwide and counting), unemployment rates (around 13 percent in the US), protesters in the street on any given day marching for racial justice (countless thousands)—the faucet of data runs nonstop. There are unlimited seasons, and the promise of some answer, or perhaps even some good news, always feels one click away.

But it’s not. Right now, people are living at a time with no easy solutions, a moment with a lot of conflicting “facts” in a rapidly changing landscape. According to Nicole Ellison, who studies communication and social media at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, that means there's a “lot of demand on cognitive processing to make sense of this. There’s no overarching narrative that helps us.” That, she adds, only compounds the stress and anxiety they're already feeling. . . .

Doomscrolling will never actually stop the doom itself. Feeling informed can be a salve, but being overwhelmed by tragedy serves no purpose. The current year is nothing if not a marathon; trying to sprint to the end of one’s feed will only cause burnout and a decline in mental health among the people whose level-headedness is needed most.

I'm not ready to go cold turkey, but certainly deemphasize. Less time scrolling, more time reading books.

My kids help me find wonder. My library has a blog for local writers to share short pieces as a way to build community. Last month the prompt was, What makes you wonder? I'm not alone in my current state; only one person submitted. In an attempt to be encouraging, I shared my son's Taco Cat story.

Last night, the six-year-old informed us that grasshoppers have the following lifecycle:

Dirthopper --> Grasshopper --> Woodhopper --> Alienhopper

(He knew he was being silly.)

I've coined a new name for my kids and their peers, as I think there's a chance they'll eventually be known as either "The Masked Generation" or "Generation Mask."

I've been making a mild attempt to chronicle present circumstances with my posts lately--more than I normally do, at least. I've shared my fear (shared by many) in recent posts that we are reopening from our stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders too soon. I've shared that my library is open again with limited services. And I've shared that there has always been resistance to taking safety measures, with public opinion gradually turning against them. There are signs things might be turning back the other way, as predictions of the reopening causing a surge in the spread of infections are coming true. The numbers are grim. The orders to avoid each other have been replaced by mask mandates, as scientists have concluded airborne spread is the biggest worry. So now we get to be out and about, we just have to wear masks everywhere. Though there's a strong backlash against it by a segment of the population, including the president.

To share a few of the doomscrolling results:

US Is Still 'Knee-Deep' in the First Wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci Says

In the span of a week and a half, the number of coronavirus cases in the United States has doubled, yet officials are saying this is still the first wave of the pandemic.

"We are still knee-deep in the first wave of this," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Facebook and Twitter livestream Monday. "I would say, this would not be considered a wave. It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline ... that really never got down to where we wanted to go." . . .

Almost 3 million Americans have been infected with Covid-19, including a growing number of young adults. More than 130,000 Americans have died from the disease, and some survivors are grappling with long-term complications. A possible factor in the rapid spread is silent transmission through asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday.

"Let's remember there are 300 million people in this country who remain susceptible and have been uninfected so far, and this virus is far from running out of people to infect," Walensky said.

"And until we change our behavior to prevent these infections, the infections are going to continue to soar."

What COVID & Racism have in common:

People don't believe they exist if they haven't been affected personally.

Watching Roddy Piper and Keith David beat the shit out of each other for 6 minutes in "They Live" because Keith won't put glasses on really puts the mask debate in perspective.

"I don't know how to explain to you that you should care for other people"

Dr. Fauci

Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing?

American leadership has politicized the pandemic instead of trying to fight it. I see no preparedness, no coordinated top-down leadership of the sort we’ve enjoyed in Europe. I see only empty posturing, the sad spectacle of the president refusing to wear a mask, just to own the libs. What an astonishing self-inflicted wound.

On June 26, a day when the U.S. notched some 45,000 new cases—how’s that for “American carnage”?—the European Union announced that it would loosen some travel restrictions but extend its ban on visitors from the United States and other hot-spot nations. On Tuesday, it confirmed that remarkable and deeply humiliating decision, a clear message that in pandemic management, the EU believes that the United States is no better than Russia and Brazil—autocrat-run public-health disasters—and that American tourists would pose a dire threat to the hard-won stability our lockdown has earned us. So much for the myth that the American political system and way of life are a model for the world.

The first of the three memes above mentions racism, and that, of course, is an ongoing big theme in the news--as it is on this blog. The topic of the moment has been the removal of statues glorifying Confederate leaders and the flying of the Confederate battle flag. Accompanied in the background by continued protests and and calls for stamina for a long, slow fight as the height of recent fervor fades. Struggles like defunding the police. I was recently reminded by that struggle of something Kurt Vonnegut wrote almost 50 years ago in Breakfast of Champions (1973):

Reindeer was their code word for the black maid, who was far away in the kitchen at the time. It was their code word for black people in general. It allowed them to speak of the black problem in the city, which was a big one, without giving offense to any black person who might overhear. . . .

The reindeer problem was essentially this: Nobody white had much use for black people anymore—except for the gangsters who sold the black people used cars and dope and furniture. Still, the reindeer went on reproducing. There were these useless, big black animals everywhere, and a lot of them had very bad dispositions. They were given small amounts of money every month, so they wouldn’t have to steal. There was talk of giving them very cheap dope, too—to keep them listless and cheerful, and uninterested in reproduction.

The Midland City Police Department, and the Midland County Sheriff’s Department, were composed mainly of white men. They had racks and racks of sub-machine guns and twelve-gauge automatic shotguns for an open season on reindeer, which was bound to come.

It sure feels that time has come, and now it is time for change.

Another topical product of the doomscrolling:

Chrome-Plated Pistols and Pink Polos: The Face of Elite Panic in the USA

Since George Floyd’s extrajudicial execution prompted an uprising, one of the rifts running through American society has become more obvious, the one between those who think a society should rest on a foundation of liberty and justice for all and those who think it should rest on orderly property relations. We’ve seen the latter view often, in this uprising, in which a sector of the population downplayed the violence of the police against human flesh and life and played up the property destruction as the real chaos and crime (or preached that violence against life and limb should be imposed to protect lifeless property). . . .

What the lawyers with the midwestern palazzo seem to think is what a lot of elite people and police seem to think: society is basically unfair, and they are willing to go to extremes to preserve that unfairness, since they’re on the winning side of it. They seem to believe the underclass is only held back from sowing chaos and destruction by the state’s threat of violence, and in the absence of that threat all hell will break loose (or you’ll have to walk out in your socks and pink polo shirt yourself and threaten your own violence). That is, to air one of their favorite cliches, that society is a thin veneer beneath which seethe all sorts of Hobbesian nastiness, and the veneer must be kept clamped on by any means necessary. It’s an assertion that other people are ruthless and dangerous, but as a justification for elites being themselves ruthless and dangerous.

As Adam Weinstein wrote in the New Republic, “But the entire appeal of the Trump presidency, like Stand Your Ground, has been to flatter the id-impulses of excitable whites when they construct nonwhite people—their existence, their persistent presence, and their agency—as inherent threats to public safety.” This is where the protests began; with the assumption by white supremacy and the police that Black and Brown people are inherently threatening and therefore violence against them, including lethal violence, is inherently justified. . . .

Here are elites willing to see others die to preserve orderly property relations—we saw another version of it a few months ago when wealthy and conservative businesspeople started suggesting it would be fine for people, people other than themselves, to die in order for the economy to come roaring back. Those elites project onto the masses their own ruthlessness and savagery; they fear others on the basis that they may be like themselves. I’m sure you want to kill me so I will kill you first.

To repeat:

Society is basically unfair, and they are willing to go to extremes to preserve that unfairness, since they’re on the winning side of it.
It’s an assertion that other people are ruthless and dangerous, but as a justification for elites being themselves ruthless and dangerous.
I’m sure you want to kill me so I will kill you first.

This is not my photo (doomscrolling), but it seems appropriate to the current moment:

The accusation of projecting ourselves onto others feels so, so accurate to me. I absolutely see it in the extreme right Facebook activity of one of those I feel obligated to stay connected to. It also makes me think of one of my older posts, The Difference Between the Pursuit of Meaning and the Pursuit of Happiness in Life.

[In 2006, I wrote . . . ] they seem to miss the point that conservatives always miss--of course it's easy to be happy if you only have your own happiness to worry about. If you care only about yourself and pursue only your own gain, you have a decent chance of succeeding. The thing that distinguishes liberals is that they actually care about others and, in fact, tie their own sense of happiness into the happiness of the rest of the world. I know, no matter how individually successful I am, I can never really feel this world is a good place as long as there is poverty and war and unnecessary suffering. My privileges shouldn't come at the expense of anyone else, and I can't be self-satisfied if there's something I can do the make life better for others. So, sure, I'm less likely to be happy, but only because I care.

I don't believe the [conservative-liberal] dichotomy I establish necessarily has to be based on political leanings, but there is a definite insight in noting that happiness is based on an inward, individual focus on self while meaning comes from caring for others and the world around us. From the article:

Researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver.". . .

Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. . . . Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior . . . If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. . . .

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others." . . . In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers write. . . .

The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. . . . People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents . . .

And, at the end of it, I quoted myself from the post My Philosophy:

What you choose to see in others is what you project for others to see in you.

If you assume others have selfish motives and bad intentions you will treat them as such, and that's what they'll assume about you. If you see them as greedy hoarders out to take from you, then you'll preemptively hoard from them before they can. If you see the world as a threat and a danger to you, then you'll build your defenses to ward the world off and become a danger to others. If you see others as competition, then you'll always compete with everyone and do your best to put yourself at the top at everyone else's expense. If you find others ugly, stupid, incapable, or otherwise lacking, they'll see it in your eyes and know you are someone who holds them in disdain.

If, on the other hand, you can find the positive motives and good intentions behind others' actions, you'll treat them with understanding and respect. If you see them as generous, then you'll be freer with your generosity toward them and become a more giving person. If you assume others are interested in working with you and finding ways to mutually succeed, you'll find yourself practicing teamwork and working to create cohesive wholes of all your various groups. If you see the beauty, wisdom, and talents of others, you'll treat them with a warmth and kindness that brings out your own beauty.

If you want to be a good person, you must learn to find the goodness in others.

To repeat:

What you choose to see in others is what you project for others to see in you.
If you want to be a good person, you must learn to find the goodness in others.

I need to work harder on seeing the goodness in others.

“Keep your eyes open, dear. Magic is around us all the time, but if we're not looking, we miss it." . . .

"But, Gali, what if you're looking for magic, but you still can't find any?"

"Why, then, you make your own magic, Coco.”

― Laura Resau, Tree of Dreams

Human minds are meaning machines. They don't function well when they don't know the answer to the question 'why?' Therefore, when there are no answers, we invent them. When something good happens, we demand to know why. When something bad happens, we also demand to know why. The better or worse the thing that happened, the more powerful the instinct to imagine a cause.

I need to remember how to feel wonder.

Why Good Teachers Allow a Child’s Mind to Wander and Wonder

While it is certainly not inevitable that children lose their sense of wonder as they grow up, and while adults are in principle as capable of experiencing wonder as children, it is to be expected that, as the world becomes more and more familiar to children as they age, they will experience wonder less readily. It increasingly requires effort to see how extraordinary the world and everything in it is. Familiarity – even if it implies no real understanding at all – can dull the sense of mystery. Educators who wish to cultivate the sense of wonder therefore face the challenge, as the education philosopher Kieran Egan noted, of defamiliarising the familiar. . . .

The educator’s hope and aim is that the teaching materials become transparent to the world, that the world comes alive through them, that students make contact with the world beyond the words, numbers and pictures in the textbook – and that as a result they better understand the world in which they live. They can then ask more incisive and interesting questions about it, while also being silently appreciative of the beauty and mystery in the world. . . .

It is unfortunate that wonder is so often identified either with curiosity or with awe. Curiosity’s value lies in motivating enquiry, whereas awe is capable of heightening interest to the point of an admiration that actually halts enquiry.

If you ask yourself what it is like to experience wonder, or curiosity, or awe, I hope you’ll agree that the answers differ. Wonder is a mode of consciousness, a way of being aware of the world, both in perception and feeling, that differs from our ordinary perception of things in a unique way. We perceive the object of our wonder as in some way strange or puzzling, even mysterious, beyond our understanding, yet worthy of our attention for its own sake. It might be accompanied by a drive to enquire and seek explanations, but even then it is primarily a receptive state, in which the object takes centre-stage. Wonder is other-oriented, open to what reveals itself to us. It often leaves us lost for words, but it doesn’t pronounce awe’s definite judgment that its object is great – we are confronted first and foremost by mystery, not power or greatness.

These characteristics of the experience of wonder help us understand why wonder is so important to education. It makes us vividly aware of what we don’t know, don’t understand, and perhaps can never understand. It sustains or revives our interest in the ‘familiar’ world. And by defamiliarising that world – by piercing the veil of our preconceptions and our taken-for-granted constructions of the world – wonder creates room to consider alternative possibilities: different ways to think about ‘the’ world, and different ways to organise ‘our’ world – this fragile home we have made for ourselves in this extraordinary corner of the Universe, warmed by our own star.

Wonder is a mode of consciousness, a way of being aware of the world . . .

Wonder is other-oriented, open to what reveals itself to us.