Here are 3 science-backed strategies to rein in election anxiety

A clinical psychologist offers guidance on how to deal with ramping stress.

See full article...

 

[Sadre]

Read some Epictetus, or at least who he was. Stoicism. It's good stuff.

Being rational is good. I define rationality as the ability to cognize parts and wholes -- proportions, ratios. "Don't cry over spilt milk" is textbook rationality in this sense.

My own personal favorite formulation of being rational these days, is as follows.

A rational person has the ability to adjust their expectations to what is likely.

One of my biggest lessons in life has been that humans are a bit dark-minded when it comes to the second bit. Verging on cynicism and high anxiety! That is probably wise in total, but I think it is literally "an excess of caution" sometimes.

My Mom always says, "Count your blessings." That helps in making sure I'm not being dark-minded about what is likely about us.

Good luck everyone.

 

[Sadre]

Spiralling in an echo chamber about how bad things can be if your preferred candidate doesn't win, and creating divisions from your fellow humans where there were formally reasonable disagreements, will do more damage to society than the actual president can do. People are allowed to have different priorities and opinions, and dismissing others for whatever you think their stereotypical beliefs may be won't ever allow progress.

Jesus, I must be taking crazy pills. We've been hurtling by "reasonable disagreements" for decades and now one of the two possible candidates for president is talking about immigrants "poisoning the blood of our nation" and using the military on the "enemy within". That is neither hyperbole, nor exaggeration, nor straw man.

I consider myself fairly well-informed, and no amount of coping mechanisms can change material reality. When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

As far as our votes go, I am standing on this day shoulder-to-shoulder with Dick Cheney.

To those being obdurate: interpret that as you will.

 

[Sadre]

The various US shitshows of the last 25 years make me think learning Mandarin is a better bet than an inaccurate pithy quote that is derivative of an equally inaccurate statement about a British passport.

A sardonic twinge to one's joke is so hard to communicate on message boards, no?

Do you really think the Chinese outlook is good? There aren't special rules. They have yet to really entire a broad-based consumer society. The real estate gambit -- start with a house -- is not all roses. How could it be? It takes many decades to build a consumer society.

I am always curious why people fear the economy is going to collapse. Hard times, recessions, even Great Recessions, but if you mean fall down and not bounce back, I am wondering how that happens short of an asteroid re: the US.

 

[Sadre]

If our society was truly "hardened" against such a threat, the figurehead and organization that tried to commit a literal coup last time around wouldn't be openly running and in a position to do it all again. Hell, we're literally behind Weimar in terms actually jailing people and enforcing the law.

My bet: the "flighti-ness" of the voting public is a form of hardening. And there are other failsafes.

If your point is, "Yes, but we should not actually be testing these things!" I agree and feel a bit embarrassed for my fellow citizens. Democracy will out. This I believe. Serious people are not into cosplaying Mussolini. Never underestimate serious people.

 

[Sadre]

EDIT: On reflection it's best I don't engage.

There is no shame in being on edge 11/4/24. Good luck.

I can only speak for myself. I did not spend my life trying to be a knowledgeable person and a decent person, to stop now. Nothing will change in my principles nor my ideals for society.

I highly doubt I am unique.

 

[Sadre]

The US still has a booming economy. And the same flaws as before (eg. crappy health care system).

Maybe those people just don't need money as badly.

A friend of mine works in crisis analysis global-scale. Informal and ad hoc real time surveillance of stressors and/or full-bore crisis. I add anthropogenic climate change to this mix we got today, and I'm Jack Lemmon noticing the coffee mug is trembling.

A lot of the right-wing populism is anti-immigrant driven. The Syrian War diaspora alone overstressed several countries.

The world is changing fast. That people say they are vexed at the price of Jif is pretty awesome. I think they see the coffee mug too.

 

[Sadre]

I am giving a stress reliever today for the science crowd.

A great deal of human behavior, perception, and even inner feeling, functions like a gestalt. AKA, figure-ground. Both are equally real but we of course focus on the figure but can, focus on the ground. It's a simply cognitive operation.

It is identical to the function found in a Necker cube. There is one way to focus on it, and then the other. Schoolkids have doodled Necker cubes in margins for untold years, striving to find something more engaging that the lecture.

This thread is a perfect example. Find the way to flip this (eminently democratic) gestalt in this thread.

I am fairly sure even the mightiest of fascists cannot eliminate this fundamental and saving nature of human consciousness.

[edit: Newton's laws can be seen as gestalt structure. For every action... ? You can't beat it. You can't defeat it.]

 

[Sadre]

TBH, I don't think many of the self procliaimed liberals on this thread are far off demanding different types of Republican are forced to wear symbols on their clothing for ease of identification. Leaving aside your rhetorical question. My first recommendation is that you recognise 74m of your fellow Americans voted Trump in 2020.

It is the right of every citizen to choose association. The law partitions the criminal from the law-abiding citizen. Civilization then partitions further, but now via various modes of social shunning. "Cancel culture" as it is alliteratively called, as if it is new.

Conservatives fail to realize this isn't a conspiratorial Maoist purge as much as a predictable reaction of a democratic people to a neo-royalist political movement. Some didn't vote for Bush Jr and Hillary Clinton because of the royalist whiff to it all.

Some people read Edmund Burke too literally! (Burke was against democratic revolutions, see, but that is diff from being a monarchist. Today we got a strong monarchial thing going. Russia will transition as a way of escaping war crimes.)

 

[Sadre]

I am sorry but this is nonsense. The idea that life would be better if liberals cared more... Seriously? People are getting whipsawed here between conservatives who mock liberals for caring about everyone too much and supposed aloof centrists complaining that liberals don't care enough.

Last I checked the only side that was publicly calling for the other side to be arrested, forced into combat, beaten up, etc., were the other side. I wouldn't tell a victim of domestic abuse "Maybe you should just try talking to him more, I'm sure he'll come around. Have you tried not being so angry with him?"

Except for a handful of particularly angry people I doubt anyone on this thread or anywhere else actually thinks conservatives aren't human or that you can't talk to them. This isn't about whether you can have a casual friendly conversation at a personal level. It is about the political level.

No. It is about proportion or magnitude. We partition ourselves, but then there is absolute exclusion, absolute partition.

We keep absolute partition for the worst criminals. The air outside is too free to make it likely. Yay historical precedent.

 

[Sadre]

My fave def of practical rationality is still holding strong. Calibrate your expectations to what is likely.

Good luck everyone. I still have my ideals and my reason. May the same always be true of you as well.

 

[Sadre]

The "price of Jif" is not ominous. Inflation was caused by supply shocks form COVID and by our monetary policy during the recovery. We knew it was happening when we pulled the lever, but decided we'd rather have inflation than risk a recession. Which worked out, by the way, the US maintained full employment, lots of growth, and wages have risen to match prices. Then we went back to prioritizing inflation, and things are back to normal. And will stay that way until the next pandemic/war/recession/jubilee/whatever.

The other stuff I agree is ominous. Global warming and Mass Immigration are both issues that will haunt our children for decades.

I feel refreshed at people who keep rational track of the picture, or at least try to, as many here do and I do too.

Your mentioning of "jubilee" made my day. I'm on board! Sign me up!