keeping sanity/serenity with politics?

It's very tough.
1. Most of us, of all leanings, believe these are important times.
2. Most media, of most stripes, includes making you very upset in their business model.
3. Each of us, alone, feels somewhat powerless.
4. We are splitting into bubbles that don't communicate well w one another.

My take, even though I struggle clearly to practice it: less time consuming news every day; more time conversing locally; getting involved in local orgs and local (city, county) politics.

 

It's easy to abstain. You can dismiss it as "sticking head in sand" but what is the alternative? Watch news, participate in debates, and get enraged and stressed all the while the same **** keeps happening and there's nothing you can do about it? That sounds miserable and incredibly time consuming.

I say avoid all the political noise and work on yourself; that's all you can control. Always look to improve yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, professionally, etc etc and that will be the way you end up making the most positive change. Getting outraged at the nightly news or at some dude on Twitter won't help anything.

(This post came off far more preachy than it should have. Apologies for that; I don't mean to make it sound like I got it all figured out.)

 

Excellent post Bob. I agree wholeheartedly. Both sides have echo chambers and they get people worked up. I do not watch near as much of the news that I used to and when I do I typically watch the other sides opinions even if I do not always agree with them. I find that gets me less worked up. I found my blood pressure was actually going up which is when I pulled myself out of the echo chamber.

 

My suggestion to you is to start drinking heavily.

 

I really want to know what's going on in the world, but the news media sucks. It's hard to believe what's true, what's fake, and what's there to just rile me up

Lately I've just been turning off the news on TV and internet. When I see something on Facebook / Twitter / etc, I scroll right past it. It sucks because I really want to know what's going on but it's so hard to filter

I blame everything on the Media

 

All I know is that it is so easy to be uncivil on the Internet. It's bled over into real life. Not that people didn't have a propensity to be uncivil before........it's just that conversing from behind a keyboard really exacerbates things. And lots of loud voices can normalize the previously unthinkable.

 

#1. Don't go into the D&D.
#2. See #1

 

Long story short, I finally went in to see my doctor for a physical last week, and I asked him a similar question. The doctor gave me a relaxation cassette. When my blood pressure gets too high, the man on the tape tells me to say "serenity now!" So, you could give that a shot. The man on the tape wasn't specific about whether you should yell it or not.

 

For me it's best not to fully engage...I then vent on my personal political shithole™, the d&d.

There's different personality types so there isn't a perfect answer. Some just want to know what team you're on so you can both rage away at the other.

Others want to goad you into fighting, in the name of "honest debate", in order to win the overall argument and save the world (which incidentally isn't too off from the taking points they see on the media)

It takes both sides to be direct and responsible with their opinions, but this is a question with family and you wouldn't ask this question of both sides were civil with the other.

There's no real high road to take unless you want to feel picked upon, but at the very least stay genuine to your actions so that you're not an eyesore to "your side" and your relatives can point to you as that one guy they respect but don't agree with

 

There is a strand of what might be termed "engaged disengagement" originating with the Stoics and finding more recent expression in someone like Thoreau. Almost an Aristotelian mean between the extremes of apathy and zealotry. It's up to the individual to figure out where to draw lines on things like watching television news, but I find that not having tv and relying on print media is a good place to start.

Here's an essay about Thoreau that has some good insights:

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thoreau's+case+for+political+disengagement.-a0230060548

How then does Thoreau propose to create a better society if he rejects the tool of government? He makes no such proposal. In an important but rarely cited passage of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau observes, "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live but to live in it, be it good or bad." His refusal to pay the poll tax does not come from any moral compulsion to right the wrongs of the world, but from the ethical desire to avoid doing wrong himself. Unlike many of those who have drawn selective inspiration from his essay, Thoreau does not argue for disobedience as a strategy of political engagement, but as an act of moral disengagement from politics.

The disengagement is not escapism or a denial of the world and its problems. Thoreau rejects political action, but he seeks to replace it with personal action. When the conscientious person meets the agent of the state, in the form of the tax collector, that person can refuse to be a party to wrong-doing by refusing to pay taxes. Further, the objector should recommend that the tax collector resign his official position and also refuse allegiance to the state. If the government imprisons the objector or confiscates his property as a response, then that government, which is engaged in immoral actions, simply reaffirms the moral position of the objector outside the state. In fact, according to Thoreau, since money itself is issued by the state, a truly virtuous person will be likely to have little money or property and therefore will show little concern over its confiscation. Each act of refusal undermines governmental power, since this power only exists in obedience.

* * *

For Thoreau, disengagement is a way the individual can serve the polity conscientiously, but it is also a manifestation of the individual's independent value apart from the polity. Individuals are prior to any particular form of civil society and have the right to exist for themselves. This right to live for oneself and for one's own purposes is not a repudiation of responsibility toward others, but the foundation of this responsibility. To the extent that people live for the sake of their governments or communities, they give up the power to think independently and to make moral decisions. The fully engaged person's moral decisions do not come from conscience, but from the external directives of community standards, laws, or business policies. The individual's detachment from the web of commitment is precisely what makes conscientious reasoning possible.​

 

You just have to realize some things about conservative talking points. They're largely based on slogans, false equivalencies, cherry picked data, and just flat out nonsense like racism, xenophobia, and bigotry. Educate yourself on the facts and respond with them. An old quote that is useful, you can have your own opinions just not your own facts. Conservative arguments often thrive on the ignorance of both conservatives and liberals.

 

you're doing the Hangout wrong

 

What happens later?

 

Disable all news notifications on your phone. This includes all politics, entertainment, general news and even sports. I've done this for some time and haven't really missed anything important. Plus you can focus more on deep work and actually achieve something rather than reading about others who are achieving things.