I'm curious how people on here stay politically engaged and aware while maintaining mental health?
the Israel-Palestine war has not been good to my mental health and the coverage and the treatment of the campus protests oddly is what did me in.
Now one approach could be to just not watch the coverage but I have come around to the point of view that not watching meaning not knowing what's happening and you need to know what is happening if only for the hope to be more informed about the politics of the government you live in.
So I guess I am trying to understand what is a responsible way to digest news about something that enrages you? Or is there no such thing? Cause I don't do social media (aside from occasional reddit and just the frontpage when I do that once in a while) and I refuse to watch any 24/7 news networks. I only do an hour of CBC and like 1-3 daily news podcasts which each do like 10-20 min daily updates.
Cause the Israel-Palestine war doubled with the terrible way the campus protests are being treated has really shaken my faith and trust in institutions and I won't go into how cause I don't want to invite infighting on tildes and potential Islamophobia and antisemitism after what happened in that macklemore thread.
Politics will eat you alive if you let it, especially if you engage with politics on any platform with an algorithmic feed (Twitter, TikTok, etc.) which you are rightly avoiding.
You’re not going to save the world by ruining your mental health or consuming more awful news. Your brain’s bias for negativity is being hijacked and you need to protect yourself. Life is far more than politics.
2 hours a day spent on consuming political news is a ton of time that doesn’t meaningfully help anyone. If you spent half or even a quarter of that time volunteering locally or engaging in your community you would have far more meaningful impact for good rather than feeling depressed hearing about things half a world away that you have basically no impact or control over.
There are billions of people in the world, everyday someone, somewhere will be doing something horrific to someone else that will fill the headlines. But there will also be millions and millions of good people just going about their lives that are invisible to the world of politics and news. “Guy went to work, came home and had a lovely evening with his family” isn’t a news story, but it’s a far more common occurrence than the horrors of the news.
I get a couple of email newsletters a day and that’s more than enough to stay an informed citizen. Appreciate that you’re just one person in a massive world that you cannot control and you don’t need to hold the weight of every awful thing on your shoulders.
Where I am, we're removed from those issues you mentioned. They are reports from a distant land with no impact in your communities. In essence, we're irrelevant to these conflicts. The cultural and geopolitical connection is thin.
There are very few Jews in my country, and Muslims are so rare that they essentially become an attraction. It's like "remember that one Muslim girl we saw one day in 1995? That year was wild!".
On the issues that do reach me, I'm very much a hermit. I don't watch the news. It is not difficult for me to disengage emotionally, physically, socially. There is no place where I belong, I'm just passing through. I barely feel human a lot of the time.
I'm not saying that's healthy. It's just the true.
EDIT: if I was in the US, I would simply never talk about those things ever. Looking from afar, it doesn't seem like anyone have anything to gain from those conversations. I don't discuss our local politics either. People do it like a sport, there is no goal. It's a waste of time.
You probably don't need the constant trickle of news. If keeping up to date with the world is important to you, I'd recommend scanning a few news sites or this once a month.
Agreed wholeheartedly, but I think the level of détail is so low that you don't really need to consume a whole lot of media to get there.
What I mean is this - if you're, say, German, you need to know that the Russia-ukraine war is happening and, generally, why and how your country is reacting. But do you really need to know tactical détails? If I say "yesterday the Russians tried to push through harkov oblast but were repulsed; the lines didn't change but a bunch of people died," does that change anything about how you conceive of the war from a political-strategic viewpoint?
An hour of cable news and 30-60 minutes of news podcasts every day is a LOT of news, my friend. I really don't think you'll be substantially less informed if you reduce that to like, one of those podcasts, every other day.
Was gonna say that, glad someone else beat me to it. There is nothing "only" about a full hour of news and 3 separate podcasts! That probably puts you in at least the 90th percentile in terms of news consumption, it is a lot
I agree with this. I get one vote every few years. All I need to know is how best to cast that vote to maximise positive outcomes. In most elections, which in my country are First Past The Post, I find out who is most likely to ensure we don't get a Conservative and I vote for them. That's the only rational way to behave in a FPTP system. Occasionally I get to vote with my conscience in a more proportional election but it's pretty rare.
I don't need to torture myself with The News for years and years in-between votes. Because me knowing all that stuff doesn't change anything, all it does it make me more sad. The more I don't do Big News, the more masochistically masturbatory it seems as a pursuit. There's nothing wrong with masturbation, of course. But at least do it for pleasure.
I spend far more time on hyperlocal news - for things that actually affect me, and things I can exert some (albeit still fairly small) influence on - than I do on national/international. I don't even actively seek out the latter and I still get way more of it than I'd like.
I was going to say this. I stumbled upon some sad, person-specific news about someone in Gaza. It didn't change my feelings on the situation at hand. It made me sad, and then overwhelmed as it was not the first I'd seen, and I knew there were more such stories than I could comprehend.
I would say if you already know your feelings going in and it's not a situation where new facts would change your understanding (e.g. following a very public legal trial, for instance), then I think not consuming such news is fair.
Engage as much as you can comfortably. If anybody gives you guff for it, ignore/block them. People are the center of politics, and everybody who wants to be politically engaged needs to be at their best when they do so.
Being politically engaged and interested is only good as far as you can meaningfully comprehend and contribute safely to whatever cause you support, whatever that looks like for you. Destroying your mental health because "I have to be tuned in all the time" is the surefire way to put yourself into an intellectual and emotional pit, which will throw off how you see the world and yourself, and affect how you engage in politics.
Point is, find a balance, prioritize emotional health and try to engage as is comfortable. Even if that's just quietly pushing the needle your way in your daily life or whatever with no new outside information, that can be enough.
I'm curious. Why do you feel enraged by it?
Do you feel equally enraged by Ukraine and Russia?
How do you have the energy for all that?
I think you've gotten a few good perspectives here, but a few things jump out at me.
First, what are your news sources? Are you really consuming news, or outrage bait? Good news sources, especially to cover a broad array of world events, like the NYT, NPRs Up First podcast, the NYT daily podcast, etc. will expose you to everything from Israel to Ukraine to the Darien gap, domestic issues, economics, cultural trends, and trade tensions.
So reexamine your news sources.
Second, it sounds like you need to focus on your life and how you are grounded in it. For me I consume vast amounts of news, much of it negative. But I'm rooted in my own life and perspectives, what I do to contribute good to the world, and I know enough about how all these issues are intertwined that I don't have these feelings of why is this one person, like Biden, not just fixing this outrage of the moment.
So make sure you know what good you are doing, what your limits are, and the complex nature of the world overall.
Lastly I would say that developing the toolkit to know that while it is normal and human to experience emotions when hearing about news, and I have been moved to tears at times hearing of personal accounts, it isn't healthy to let it determine your mood or mindset, and there is a skill in keeping news at an intellectual rather than emotional level.
I don't have the patience for watching/listening to news unless it's experts going in depth with analysis etc., something that only happens maybe once or twice a week in one single news program.
What I do is skim the headlines for the day to stay informed. Most of it is pointless, meaningless, or unimportant - and if someone does grab my attention, I'll check it out, mostly if it's about stuff that I'm already interested in. I follow more or less everything this way, but I really don't have the capacity to keep up with all the news of suffering in our world. Zeroing in on I/P is understandable as it's a big deal on especially social media, but examine why you feel guilty for not following it. Do you also feel guilty for not keeping up with the fighting in Myanmar? The starvation in Sudan? The natural disaster in Brazil? Probably not - and you shouldn't. Too much shit happens all the time around the world for me to keep up with, like it's literally impossible to not go insane if you always empathise with every human that is currently suffering.
I have to say though that I would highly recommend taking a break, cold turkey. Once you remove yourself from consuming so much news (1 hour + 3 podcasts is a lot), you'll realize that most of it really doesn't matter. It is very rare that there are actual breaking news, even though everything gets called it these days. I am willing to bet that 99% of the updates on for example I/P on your podcasts and CBC are likely to be very small in the bigger context, and more or less insignificant.
If you think back to just a couple of years ago, what news do you remember? Probably not every single detail of everything that was on the news. Honestly, a 5 minute overview per day ought to be enough to stay sufficiently informed - very few people need to actually know every movement of every day of everything. "Israel dropped more bombs today" or "Hamas did this and said that" really doesn't have any value to know. Think of it like a historical event where there will be a couple of important days, but most days are by themselves entirely unimportant in the grand scheme.
I maintain awareness, but also realize that it's mostly out of my hands. There is little I can do to influence politics, and I refuse to get involved in arguments that further divide people. I stay informed and vote accordingly.
The most active thing that I do is "volunteer" to work polls during elections. I play a small part in ensuring that people can vote as painlessly and easily as possible. It's a long day but very rewarding.
You can check out some suggestions in this thread:
https://tildes.net/~talk/1fzu/what_would_you_recommend_for_a_single_minimal_overview_of_the_world_news_source
hmmm, interesting. the one worry I have is whether the recommendations in that thread cater towards news that is more pressing to America than other countries but will check it out.
I've found futures markets to be unbearably cynical, nihilistic, and devoid of necessary human compassion. I started out of curiosity about predictive value, and caught myself literally betting on body counts. Then I deleted my accounts because it was distressing and harmful to the point where even as an atheist, I felt like I was committing an unpardonable sin and waste of precious time.
The long, detached view can be helpful, but not as a juvenile, hostile game.
I look at the news and the headlines daily.
I stay away from comment sections of any kind on some issues.
When I feel like the news is dragging me down, I take a break for a few days.
Like you, I've struggled with my mental health over this conflict. As an American Jew ethnically, I've got friends and family who are trying to engage me in various unhealthy ways, above and beyond toxic media and commentary online.
I encourage you to disengage from shallow, reductive, manipulative "headline" media content. Cable news encourages people to emotive partisanship without providing context, history, or human compassion. In daily life, we know intuitively that misunderstanding leads to wrong beliefs and wrong action. We allow ourselves to be led, often to our own detriment, when the causes are far away and we can't judge based on our own perceptions and empathy. If you seek to understand, read deep history, first-person interviews, and broad foreign policy commentary. Interrogate the biases of sources, and think about underlying drivers of conflict or conciliation on all sides.
Having suggested understanding, I appreciate that it's exhausting and draining to strain for nuance in the midst of horror and brutality. Personally, there are elements of Buddhist philosophy and practice that work for me to avoid the exhaustion of compassion. It helps to recognize that there are long cycles of human history where violence driven by fear, rage, deprivation, and grasping is the norm. We do nothing for others by spending our limited energies on things that harm rather than heal.
Harm includes foregoing self-care. Pay attention to the feelings of despair and anger when you've been engaging too much with news. Living in those feelings can be fatal. Help heal yourself first, because you can't help anyone else effectively when you're consumed with pain. Short-term, go for a walk in nature, practice any of multiple mindfulness meditation strategies, do something with your hands - cooking, mending, building, etc. Longer term, engage with friends, family, and people in your immediate community. Remind yourself of human connection, and work on strengthening your ability to provide love and support.
It's hard to cope with the whole world delivered to your doorstep via modern media. We are insignificant in world events individually, and that realization can lead to despair. Yet together we move mountains. If you're losing your faith in institutions, consider participating in the ones in your community. That work is necessary and hard enough to demand your full attention. Community work strengthens your bonds to other people, heals what needs healing in your immediate area, and allows you to participate in broader networks of action. Then, donate what money and effort you can to faraway causes, but don't let the apparent ineffectiveness of those actions deceive or frustrate you. Change happens on much longer timespans than our culture of immediate satisfaction provides perspective to see.
I know this all sounds like impractical generalities and old fart advice. Sometimes you have to live it to know it, though.
I have a lot of stress in my life, so I don't add to it anymore by doomscrolling or regularly checking the news. Instead of checking the news myself, I developed a simple system that has worked so far.
These are enough for me as it is. I don't think human mind evolved to handle this much bad news this frequently. This is especially true for people who are living a stressed out life. I don't see the point in further stressing myself out by following emotionally exhausting news or social media sites. The news cycle focuses so much on the anxiety, because it garners more attention, and this reflects on the social media discussions too. I think even without those most brains can't handle so much news every day, but adding that emotional baggage makes it so much worse.
On a related topic, I don't think for most people following the news in the traditional anxiety-inducing way does much good for the world. Of course, one should be informed to a degree. But torturing yourself does not do anyone good, and in fact does the opposite. I think a better way of engaging politics is being active in some way, helping people out or contributing to a cause in your own way. It doesn't have to be something big, and it doesn't require doomscrolling.