Well said. Anxiety is sometimes a signal that there's an underlying imbalance in your life. Just like you start tearing up when you feel sad. Crying isn't bad in that scenario.
Anxiety works similarly. You gotta start asking yourself, why am I feeling anxious? Where could my life be out of balance?
What if the anxiety seems to come from a place of the entire human society being out of balance? I pretty much think if you're not feeling anxious, you're not paying attention.
Do you think that society is more out of balance now than it was 30, 50, 70, or 100 years ago?
If so, I’ll be glib and say you haven’t paid enough attention to history :-)
To pick a random anecdote, in the past senators have been physically attacked and maimed by their colleagues on the senate floor, i.e. while at work.
Campaigns were dirtier than they are now. Politicians would accuse each other of being murderers and even cannibals. (e.g. look up the coffin bills and Andrew Jackson.)
The mainstream media printed many things that would be unacceptable today. (Jon Stewart had a good bit about this a long time ago.)
Not to mention the total war involving multiple continents that happened a couple times in the last century...
Not to say we should think that stuff will never happen again. It absolutely could. But depending on your viewpoint we’ve always been on the brink of collapse, or on the brink of greatness, etc.
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Also, I don't believe that reading or watching news counts as "paying attention", especially if you're not in the position to take any action as a result (i.e. you don't work in politics, policy, etc.).
It's generally a very passive activity. The time would be better spent observing what's going on in your town/city rather than "the world". Or even just doing something constructive in your area of expertise, e.g. writing free software, etc.
Standards are higher now. We're more aware of more potential emotional triggers.
I've observed that with the Internet increasing our potential access to information by > 1000x, the adaptive emotional response to any given piece of information needs to be toned down by a factor of 1000x to maintain emotional stability. Wouldn't make me very popular at parties to say that the proper emotional response to kids getting murdered at a festival is to shrug your shoulders and say "By the numbers, your odds of getting killed in a mass shooting are still one in a million, which is less than when we were kids", but that's both a true and a rational statement to make.
Personally, I find it a little grotesque how many people share in these poor parent's horrifying tragedy. So much airtime and public eyes watching the absolute worst day of your life as a parent on national television and all over the internet. It's pretty horrible all around yet uniquely American.
What I think is worse is the contrast of how flippant people are with flu shots. We rightfully scorn anti-vaxxers, yet people aren't lining up to get their flu shot every year. 50000 people died from the flu in the U.S. alone last year. That's sixteen 9/11s, and almost as many U.S. soldiers were killed in action in the entire Vietnam war. In one flu season.
There's nothing political about the flu, nothing to be outraged about (except if you are me), no votes or money to be made by people reading and sharing it's coverage, and therefore it is buried into the footnotes far below the more profitable ad spend. Another statistic, but something that everyone could actually do something about if they walked into a CVS and got their fucking free shot.
You might like the book Lost Connections by Johann Hari. The premise of the book, from what I can remember, is a mix between yours and GP's comment. It's basically that things are being over-prescribed, such as depression if you haven't stopped grieving after a year from the death of a loved one, as well as it happening more because our basic human structures are crumbling (namely, community). I definitely want to do a reread of it and pursue some of his leads more.
I'm glad somebody mentioned this book, I was just about to reply with it myself. I'd summarize the core premise as anxiety and depression, while some people are more naturally predisposed to them, aren't things that "just happen", and it's not your brain suddenly misfiring for no reason.
Our culture has become increasingly individualized and isolated, in contrast to millions of years of evolutionary selection for tribal behavior in the great apes. Anxiety is a natural response to being separated from your tribe, since it increases your risk exposure to many things. It's not enough to just have colleagues or acquaintances, but people who actually know and care about you and will notice if you're missing or if something is wrong.
A fantastic book. I borrowed it from the library, but I think I'm going to buy my own copy.
What are you talking about? There are so many legit people offering legit services there. Yes, many of them are first timers, but their site clearly lets you choose people based on reviews and ratings.
People in US are scared of the police? I am from India and have been in US for a while now and have never been scared of the cops (unlike my time in India).
What is while? I lived in the US for a decade and please say Sir to the cop when he stops you and don't mess with them. Even a small incident can send you to the hospital
Come on, guys, we've seen this kind of headline before about hominid species as well as other types of extinct animals. It may be a bit poorly worded but, if something like that really did happen, you wouldn't hear about it first on Hacker News.
If you call Jordan Peterson videos or Joe Rogan clips extremist videos, then I think this is clearly a step in the wrong direction. Their videos thrive on YouTube not because they hold extreme views, it's because their videos are very engaging, fun and you learn something from it.
If this is a ploy to push more mainstream narratives through YouTube that is akin to watching CNN/CBS or ABC, then I'll be looking for other platforms.
However, JRE hosted Alex Jones (conspiracy theorist "mass shooting victoms are crisis actors"), Gavin McInnes (white supremacist), and Milo yiannopolous (conservative provocateur who among other things supports pedophilia in the gay community.
Joe himself I can't comment on. He chooses to promote controversial and actively extreme people though. Sometimes he disagrees with those people, sometimes he doesn't.
So why keep saying that, when you aren't claiming it's extremist? If I said "a person who plays with their socks every evening, pretending it's the royal family, might also make such an argument", that would also be technically correct, but I doubt I could get away with "just making an observation, not saying that's describing anyone here, just that it might".
One is about extremist content. Extremist content can be interesting. Calling content interesting does not excuse its extremist nature.
There is a parallel conversation specifically about whether JRE is "extremist". The show is certainly interesting. It may also be extremist, but it being interesting doesn't make it not extremist. Because, as I previously stated, calling content interesting does not excuse its extremist nature.
I am not making any conclusions about JRE. I'm only saying that his show being interesting doesn't make it "not extremist". If you're trying to prove that he's not, you've got to do something else.
I also provided some things he has had on his show that probably are extremist content.
>Joe Rogan went on Infowars today, the same day a man who lost his child in the Sandy Hook shooting committed suicide. The grieving father was among the plaintiffs suing Alex Jones for defamation after smearing the murdered children and their parents as part of a hoax.
>In the same Infowars episode that Joe Rogan appeared on, Alex Jones pushed a conspiracy theory that the father of a child killed at Sandy Hook didn't kill himself, but may have been murdered to silence Jones and end the first amendment.
That Twitter thread is interesting, because it contains a link to a 'This American Life' program that gives a platform to Alex Jones to explain himself. I doubt anyone would call 'This American Life' a platform for spreading conspiracy theories or hate.
In this light, is Joe Rogan, who also allows people like Jones to explain themselves, a moderate or an extremist?
You have to look at what both Joe Rogan and This American Life do in a larger context, which should clarify the differences. I do think that TAL should not have given airtime to Alex Jones because it really is that dangerous to give him (and people like him) a platform.
Vic made two factual statements, with the disingenuous implication that they are connected or causally related.
Alex Jones is a wacko. Talking to Alex Jones does not necessarily mean you are also a wacko. This new concept of moral badness transitively propagating through conversation is nonsensical and counterproductive.
thx for letting me know, know what I'm doing this evening. Time to kick back, pop some Super Male Vitality pills, and watch everyone's favorite water filter salesman :+1:
> Editor’s note (March 28th 2019): This article has been changed. A previous version mistakenly described Mr Shapiro as an “alt-right sage” and “a pop idol of the alt right”. In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement. We apologise.
I'm not in ideological lockstep with them on many topics, but that sort of journalistic integrity is one of the things that distinguishes them from plenty of rags that are purely motivated by partisan ideology.
I'm not the one being disingenous here. And that's not journalistic integrity. They initially stood by their false slander and only changed it after significant backlash.
Journalist integrity would be the economist not lying and smearing someone who they disagree with in the first place. To call an orthodox jew an "alt-right sage" means the people working at the economist are lazy and incompetent or they are liars smearing a jewish individual for ideological reasons. You could follow the thread. You could probably also find the deleted tweets by the economist and their editor too if you want.
To label a pathetic smear campaign by the economist as "journalistic integrity" just shows the terrible state of journalism today. And the only reason the spineless cowards at the economist apologized is because Ben Shapiro has a big enough following to fight back. Otherwise, they would have stuck to their lies and slander. And I have to disagree with your last statement. The economist is most definitely one of the "rags that are purely motivated by partisan ideology.". But we are all entitled to our own opinions.
The economist is far left? Have you seriously ever picked up that magazine?
The economist is socially moderate-left (mostly socially progressive, but less so on certain issues such as Palestine, and generally not devoting time to fringe opinions at all) but very, very free-market oriented. The closest political orientation to them is "classically liberal", or in US terms, "libertarian", or "moderate Republican".
The idea that The Economist is far leftist extremist is outrageously ridiculous. They do not hide their bias and it's not far left in any sense. It's why free-marketeers like me like them.
