I think I’m having a bit of an autistic burnout moment over politics. I’m moving a lot more left over the years but just don’t feel like I can do anything. I have 2 years left on a work contract and it would be killer to lose that job, but also I want to help people in ways where quitting might be the best option. I want to learn about politics and history more, but I also don’t want to stress about it because I don’t feel like it changes things that much. Id like a community that talks about these feelings and I feel like this should be that community for me. Let’s just chat about it.
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Interconnected points about time and scale:
1 We don’t realize our impact. Over time we can change lives and never know. I could tell many stories about this, but you can inspire people and never know - or change their lives and they’ll never have a chance to thank you. After working in customer service, an important truth of life is easily recognized: people complain more than they say thank you. Besides, people who do good often do it behind the scenes and can’t always see the fruits of their labor.
This can be true of one time meetings or by being a constant light in their lives.
2 The amount of news we intake is literally incomprehensible. I mean this without intending to sound uncaring, but the human mind was not meant to care about billions of people (or me, who has been cursed by caring about all the fucking animals too). We’re animals that evolved in small tribes and then small communities. Caring about all the hurt in my city of a couple million is wild in and of itself, but my state? The country… the world? Are you kidding?? It’s literally impossible. Every being that exists suffers so much - from the roadkill gasping for life on the side of the road to the family trapped underneath rubble in an earthquake across the globe. You’re not responsible for taking on that mental load. It’s an unbearable weight that you were not programmed for. You’re not mad that your calculator can’t drive you to work.
3 Shit spreads in water better than more clean water. Put a little shit in water, it’s fucked. People freak and it gets attention. Add more good to good, nobody gives a shit. This metaphor brings me a lot of clarity.
4 We are too close. Over time things are, in fact, getting better. Many times, many well-meaning (mostly white) liberals push back against me here by trying to downplay historical progress. (Even with overturning Roe - support for a women’s right to choose has never been higher - we’ve just been overrun by Originalist Christofascists.) But to my point, even with how shit everything is now it’s materially better to be a person of color today, for the most part. Schools aren’t segregated (they are, of course still segregated in many cases - GOP has dismantled public education pretty well here), you can get a loan from the bank, run for office, etc. This is NOT trying to say everything is even approaching good or acceptable… but we have to take stock sometimes and recognize things aren’t totally doom and gloom. To make sure I wasn’t being a stupid man, I asked my fiancée if she thought being a woman of color now was better than at most points in history and she laughed, saying “of course, that’s undoubtably undeniable.”
So there ya go. A bunch of anecdotal bs from a sleepy dude.
The amount of news we intake is literally incomprehensible. I mean this without intending to sound uncaring, but the human mind was not meant to care about billions of people…
This is very helpful! Sometimes I get stressed out about not keeping up “enough” with all the local, regional, national, international news…and it’s good to remember that we have access to way more news than our brains can handle sometimes.
3 Shit spreads in water better than more clean water. Put a little shit in water, it’s fucked. People freak and it gets attention. Add more good to good, nobody gives a shit. This metaphor brings me a lot of clarity.
oh yeah. this is a defining feature of the world which goes unremarked: there is a general asymmetry in how often people vocalize good things versus bad things, and in how much attention the former gets over the latter. this is true of the news, of social media, of interpersonal relations, and more. in some ways it just sort of follows from how most of us orient things—if something is good, in how many circumstances would you really need to remark on it? but if something’s bad obviously you would! we should confront bad things!
Makes me think this phenomenon has something to do with how humans have evolved. We are tribal in nature so we tend to perk up in response to negative stimuli, while we tend to relax and become irresponsive in comparison to the opposite.
It seems like a lot of the bad we’re seeing in the world is a result of the human condition butting heads with the conditions we have created as a result of this human condition.
I feel this. When I start looking at the whole political climate I get very distressed, angry, and hopeless but I’ve found focusing on the small and my own local community has really helped. I can’t change what policies are happening in other regions but I can try to make positive changes in mine. I can see what gaps our community has and try to fill them. When you set your eyes too high you can miss some important steps you need to take to get where you’re trying to go.
With the alt-right push to get involved in school boards and local councils, now is THE time to get involved and push back. Real changes start small. Get involved in the established community groups that interest you, start your own if you have something particular your community needs, and learn local politics as its will be much more applicable and just much less to learn than remembering everything happening all at once on a national level.
Burnout is real. When I’m feeling good, i organise the things i want to do into checklists with big and small projects so when the burnout comes for me i can find a few boxes I have the energy to tick. (Things like picking up rubbish at the park, side of the road, baking something for a neighbour) Ticking them off and feeling like I’ve done something positive really helps light the fire again.
You can only do what you can do. Starting really small and building up your involvement is the best way to starve off burnout.
I’ve found focusing on the small and my own local community has really helped
Exactly this. As an anarchist, I’m all about small communities and local involvement. Look for the ways in which you can meaningfully contribute something. Even something as simple as a conversation with a single person to help educate them in a skill you have - that’s an actual, tangible good you did for the world. The more you plug yourself in, and look for opportunities to give back, the more you’ll find yourself involved and affecting change.
For example, a few years back my employer decided to launch a bunch of employee resource groups (ERGs). Of the list of ERGs, I saw that they were making both a pride (lgbtq+) and an emerging professionals ERG, so I signed up to be a leader of both. Once we formed, I started interfacing right away on the things that I had personal grievances with - issues like the policy having non-inclusive language or needing improvement, opportunity to expand healthcare to be more lgbtq+ friendly and cover more health conditions, opportunity to expand fertility, legal, adoption, mental health and other available services, improving mentorship opportunities, improving employee education, etc. Many of these I had no idea how to do or what to do, so I solicited feedback, got into meetings with people in charge of these aspects, and in general just voiced my opinion. Along the way I was able to expand our transgender healthcare offerings, rewrote a bunch of policy, launched a gigantic t-shirt design contest for pride (20k+ t-shirts each year), expanded fertility/adoption policy, started work on mentorship, hosted a bunch of educational talks (including talking in some of them), set up a number of social groups for people to interface with each other, started talks on degendering bathrooms, and a bunch more. Very little of what I was able to accomplish in this scope was planned at the beginning and I owe most of it to simply deciding I wanted to make the world better and trying to get involved/engaged.
I’ve also been very burnt out lately and at a loss of how I can combat the alt right infiltration of everything local. This comment might be one of the most inspiring things I’ve read in a long time, thank you for sharing.
One small tip i found helps out. Look at local NPR or radio stations in your area. They often have a lot of reporting on local and state issues!
Take a break from the news. You can ease back into it later.
It’s not selfish to put your own mental health first. Even when your work contract is up, you won’t be able to do much if you’re a burned-out wreck.
