How to deal with outrage at P&R stuff... without getting so stressed and upset

Everything else
1

I have a problem.

Whenever I read about greed, selfishness, injustice… things you see in P&R and everyday news, my heart rate literally doubles, I get furious and want to find those people and give them a lecture on how awful they are to society, how precious life is, and how we should all work together to try and make everyone’s short time on this Earth as nice as can logically be. People who would would literally see people languish and die to keep their own power and wealth at an obscene level especially make my blood boil as they have the greatest chance to affect positive change.

So how can I continue to be involved in keeping up-to-date in politics, and devoting time and energy to P&R type causes… without becoming so stressed and upset?

2

medical marijuana might help

3

Wrong question.

Right answer: don’t bother.

Circle of Influence, Circle of Concern

I look forward to hearing what useful works you decide to do with your extra time.

4

The Covey thing is about right. I’m concerned about politics, but my concrete actions to try to have some influence are pretty limited.

I finally figured out a while back that discussing politics online is virtually indistinguishable from a sports talk call-in radio show. It’s interesting, but it’s not going to change anyone’s mind out of the small set of people actively involved in the discussion.

So how can I continue to be involved in keeping up-to-date in politics, and devoting time and energy to P&R type causes… without becoming so stressed and upset?

Provide time, money, expertise, or whatever to the things you can contribute to. It took me a long time to learn to draw a line on “things I can’t do anything about, so I should limit how upset I can get about them.”

5

For what it is worth I read it all, but I keep on being me. The 100+ Bugle episodes I have help too. And, flashlights … muther fuckers

6
  1. Don’t engage Andy Bates.
  2. Don’t post when you are hungry (or whatever else makes you cranky).
  3. Walk away for a while if you have violated rules 1 or 2.

One is obvious, but two is sneaky. Three is difficult. Yes, I realized my last post on P&R I did when I was hungry, so I’m not reading it for a couple of days as either self-inflicted punishment or self-inflicted reward - the answer varying if I’m hungry or not, or got stuck with a bunch of blithering idiots in Warsong Gulch or if I foolishly didn’t turn off the TV before the local news comes on (“The nightly litany of death” as I call it).

7

Caring about all the pain and injustice in the world will leave you angry and exhausted. At some point you have to tune it out. Focus on the things that you can change. Focus on the things that really matter in your world.

8

Read all of my posts carefully. Do the opposite.

9

Me personally I would love if the ‘New Posts’ button on this forum omitted P&R hits. This being a left wing haven, I try to stay out of there but sometimes I can not help myself.

10

‘In a hundred years who is going to give a damn?’

is Step 1.

However, that does not mean you should not give a crap about anything, because it is exactly that attitude that is at the root of much of the ‘evil’ behaviour of people(and business/politics etc) that are doing all the crap you find so despicable.

I think you have to get a philosophical perspective on the human condition. Life in our modern age is the fight to ensure the human race can survive to reach it’s full potential. It’s the good side of the force against the dark etc.

On one side of that fight is the pure selfish, often greed led, non-empathic personality, that often falls fully to the dark side (evil), which leads to all the real nasty stuff we here about all the time, from nations waging illegal wars for company profits to small scale nasty people of ‘Mr Burns’ type.

On the other are those that see this behavior is dragging us to destruction, the environmental changes we are currently going through is one example of that danger, the ramping up of intolerance and violent rhetoric in our media with the aim to create consensus to allow more evil action by our company backed governments another, etc etc.

So as always the ‘fight’ is ongoing. As one of our centuries famous men once said, all it takes for evil to triumph is for the good man to do nothing. Or words to that effect.

One thing i have noticed, is that in the face of the recent strong push of the right within many of our societies (as this is often behind the longer term self-destruction push), i have seen a growing awareness of their ‘gameplan’ amongst normal non political people, often students and young people, so i see the future being more positive than we have had over recent decades.

People are more connected, and growing more aware on a number of the issues around all this due to being able to have discussion like this, so in short don’t worry too much, just do what you can to help the ‘good men’ ensure a brighter future. It’s the same as it has always been through much of history.

11

This is my attitude, too. This really resonated with me when I took the 7 Habits class about a decade ago. If you can internalize this approach, it lets you be involved in discussion about anything without raising your stress levels. (Well, maybe temporarily raise them if you read some of what goes on in QT3 P&R.) But more importantly, it’s motivation for getting involved with things you can change. Simple stuff, like finding ways to be more energy efficient at home, or walking instead of driving when it’s feasible for better exercise; it makes a difference in your outlook on life.

It’s an extra step, but you can go into P&R, hit the “mark forum as read”, then do New Posts to see everything else. I do that myself with both P&R and the Movies forum sometimes.

12

I would suggest examining your own beliefs with regards to why it bothers you what someone else thinks. This not the belief about the issue itself, but why someone else’s opinion bothers you.

For example, Lets say you support gay marriage and Bob thinks it should be between a man and a woman and this pisses you off. What you want to find out about yourself is “Why does Bob holding this opinion piss me off?” At this point, any consideration of gay marriage is a distraction. Your question for yourself is about discovering why his opinion causes you anger.

I am quite certain that if you trace your beliefs down to their root and really understand yourself, that suddenly Bob can hold his opinion and it will not piss you off anymore. You may still disagree with him, but you will no longer get angry about it.

13

Generally speaking, it is useless to try to change other person’s mind on any topic concerning P&R. At best you can make them look foolish, at worst you get chain-trolled.

And always remember, this is the internet and if you can’t spot a person being trolled - it is you.

14

One thing to remember is that we are getting stuff from the entire world now…

15

jpinard, to do this you must attain a higher mental/emotional/spiritual perspective on forum participation. Because I am generous, as well as wise and clever, I will now show you the steps you must follow to reach this height.

  1. You must understand the nature of your own outrage. Why are you outraged instead of sorrowful or gently regretful at bad news? It is because others have behaved or spoken badly; you are outraged at their behavior or their words.

  2. You must understand the bad actors and speakers who have outraged you. Why have they acted or spoken as they have? It is because a) they are not getting laid; b) they can’t achieve or maintain erections; c) they are jealous that people different from themselves can get laid and achieve erections; d) they know they are very unattractive to others; and/or e) they wish to pretend that they enjoy or deserve a higher status than they actually do. This may be a financial, spiritual, educational, elite, egalitarian, or other status.

  3. You must destroy the bad acts and words of the bad actors and speakers, at least rhetorically. You can do this by a) mocking their flaccid, unattractive penises and/or buttocks; b) flaunting your own superior penis and/or buttocks or those of people the bad actors feel threatened by, such as Communists or Spanish speakers; c) point out the falseness of the pretenses that the bad actors and speakers are attempting to foist on others.

If, for instance, a bad speaker is insisting that his or her fantasy of being persecuted by ethnic minorities or the government is real and will be met with a comic-book firearms showdown, you might consider pointing out that he owns nothing worth stealing, has no girlfriend to ravish and never will, has little income to tax, lives in a hick town at the ass-end of nowhere, tucks in his polo shirt to hide his gut, and has a stupid haircut.

  1. If a bad actor or speaker is so obtuse as to not be destroyed by the observation of these simple truths — which is quite likely — you must live by this rule: AS LONG AS YOU ARE HAVING FUN, YOU ARE WINNING.

  2. Shit, bonerz!

16

Arguing with people who have no power is the same as arguing with the TV. If the world is falling apart but there are weeds in your yard, who is at fault? The unsatisfactory illusion of consumer choice is the majority of what people can control. Just remember to make the world better in your own little way. Cutting off relations with crazy gun-toting Uncle Cleitus because you don’t like his politics is the kind of social micro quake that paralyzes and polarizes society in innumerable but invisible ways.

17

I have my best success in P&R, at least related to my blood pressure, when I view it as a means to get exposure to alternative viewpoints and perhaps get some links to useful studies, articles and such. I know I’m not going to convince anyone, and they’re unlikely to convince me. I may, however, get a better understanding of where folks “not like me” are coming from. That’s something I find useful and interesting.

That and I caved a while back and started using the “ignore” feature a while back for folks who constantly post content-free junk. I still have to watch threads get derailed by them, but it helps a bit, anyway.

18

Our views are always shifting, but they shift so slowly it’s hard to tell in the moment. I’ll admit that it feels strange to read my old P&R posts from 2003. I was very different then.

19

That’s very fair. I’m sure that’s true for me as well. I know I’m much better informed than I was back then, at minimum.

20

I know i’m very popular in P&R and most people deep down agree with me on everything, they are just forced sometimes to put up the appearance of a fight due to the nature of what i’m awakening them too, that is just part of the process ;)

I get ‘loved’(laid is so…not the perfect term, anyone can pay for it etc) often, my butt is pert, my muscles strong and i have no financial worries (yet have done no evil in the world to get that).