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The brain was not designed for this much bad news

sciencedaily.com

351–360 of 376 posts

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#351
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Even more generally: the argument "I voted and it didn't change anything" has always seemed to me incredibly self-absorbed. Of course your individual vote didn't change anything. After all, it was worth no more than a hundred million other votes, and some of those voters (deep breath!) did not share your personal values and priorities.

> After all, it was worth no more than a hundred million other votes Not strictly true for presidential elections. My vote cast in CT literally matters more than someone else's vote cast in CA. Yay electoral college!

But that’s because CA matters more than CT. Thank God for the electoral college!

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#352
News is a business. The mainstream media has made tons of money fabricating conflict or drama (see increase in use of “white supremacy” or “racism” in news). This has created mental angst in Democrats.

Thankfully the recent soccer World Cup is showing the world that America is the greatest country on earth. At least the foreigners will learn the truth (the democrats? That’s another story of perpetual self depression).

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently massively downvoted on Reddit because I mentioned I didn’t really care about candidates stances either way on Israel/Palestine as it regards to a city-level election. I certainly have opinions and understand why folks have principles either way, but we can’t make every issue the issue we spend our energy on, and this doesn’t meet the bar for me for a city official. Sometimes online and election media d…

Israel Palestine single-voterism is particularly frustrating to me because of the weird way it has to infect completely irrelevant topics. As a particularly crazy example, I remember people arguing about Israel Palestine in the context of the Australian Aboriginal Voice to Parliament debate, a debate about an internal representation mechanism for Australian Aboriginal people, incredibly few of which have any ties to…

Given the shift in attitudes among the public and especially the Democratic voter base, a candidate’s willingness to go against Israel is a superb proxy for whether they will prioritize voters over donor interests.

It’s also effectively a referendum on the current Iran mess, gas prices, assaults on free speech by the administration, and the Democratic establishment in general (AIPAC is the #1 single-issue lobby by far).

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#354
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I plan to be informed about causality and effect - and im voting accordingly to put an end to causes that affect me negatively. So understanding something, not mythologizing or idealizing anything, is a absolutly necessary pre-requisit to voting.

There has never been a vote with any impact on the CIA whatsoever.

Ah, that mighty CIA- that couldnt even stop Trump from tanking the sales of the MIC. Its not real- never was. Its some drunken station-chiefs, rainmaking Langley from hotel bars abroad.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harris was a known to be bad with respect to the war issue, became very obviously bad when she started campaigning with Liz Cheney. Trump was less known bad, so that difference should certainly have swayed your decision.

Trump had already tried to overthrow the previous election. He could only have been thought less bad if you weren't paying attention.

If you define paying attention as funneling MSNBC straight into your brain 24/7, then sure.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#356

Things are worse than ever. And these types of opinions are just Ostrich strategies. This worked fine 20 years ago, and would be a wildly inappropriate and irresponsible way to live today. Yes, a lot of the news is sensationalized and blown out of proportion. But also YES, things are absolutely trending in the wrong direction and you should both be aware of that and be loudly screaming about it. Going to protests, bo…

>these CEOs leading us into >the people benefitting >them What an awful lot of "them". This populist rhetoric is way too easy, not to mention dangerous. The problems are real and as human beings we are all implicated in them. Not just the faceless "them" but also you, me, us .

Sorry. This is addressed at the 99.9%. the them is the 0.1% of people that are responsible for the 99% of the bad news the article mentioned.

Didn't think that was needed to be pointed out.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> voters who accept policies being put in place based on something going wrong one time without accepting that things go wrong and we have to tolerate problems to some extent I think this is almost the correct diagnosis, but the real problem is adjacent to that: it’s very easy for opponents to capitalize on political decisions that accept risk. It’s not that people love “do something, anything” policy making—rather,…

...except for guns. That topic is off-limits at all levels of government. The problem is never guns, it is mental health, or drugs, or poverty, and the only solution is more police and more people in prisons.

..and democracy. The problem is never democracy itself, it's the autocrats, or extremists, or social media, and solution is more regulations on private life and more mentions of the paradox of intolerance.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism is a way overused term. Personally I tend to avoid it unless we're seeing paramilitary forces shooting civilians in the face. Other people may have lower thresholds.

What about shooting them in the chest while they drive their car? Or shooting them in the back after they’ve been detained?

No further explanations should be necessary.

Re: The brain was not designed for this much bad news

#360
post #11

The other option is to be more realistic - people often have wildly unrealistic expectations of how the world should work and seem to get a bit stressed when they are confronted with reality. The more pressing problem is the voters who accept policies being put in place based on something going wrong one time without accepting that things go wrong and we have to tolerate problems to some extent. If policies were made…

This option is what Indians in India largely use, and it is no exaggeration to say it has spelled disaster to the society. Don't believe me? Come to India, and walk through how people live in any random place.

Tolerance is just another word for complacency. I would much rather prefer a brutally progressive system like that of China or Singapore than a society suspended in perpetual lethargy.

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