Sometimes I am writing away on some post about something cheery and, hopefully, interesting. Maybe even useful.
But then, I start drifting into a feeling of unreality.
Take, for example, my last post. It was about where in Christianity you could find natural religion. In the post, I gave gentle tips about dealing with the parts of Christianity that might give you pause. While writing it, I was thinking, ‘does anyone live like this anymore?’. By that, I mean calmly and actually putting up with the weird ways of some grand old tradition like Christianity. Or are we just programmed to give the old girl the finger and move on to nihilism?
I am writing this because it is the end of the mid-term elections. The president warns us that we should vote because ‘democracy is at stake.’ The Republican candidates in many states are pushing ‘the big lie,’ designed to scare and demonize those who run our elections. Both sides are trying to scare us out of our minds.
They are trying to scare us into voting for their sides.
Fear and anxiety are not spiritual emotions. Even science agrees with me on this. Fear and anxiety raise cortisol in the blood. They get you revved up for action and narrow your field of vision. They prime you to defend your buddies, people, and pack. The world becomes black and white with good guys and bad guys.
Some of you will be saying yeah! But they are worse than we are on this. I tend to agree with you. However, it's beside the point – Fear is NOT a spiritual emotion!
Back in the day, and I mean really back in the day (before the Axial Age–the 8th through the 3rd century BCE ) – religion and spirituality hadn’t made up its mind about fear, anger, or war. People started forming cities and farming, and it changed religion. Civilization meant large-scale violence and more powerful hierarchies. New religious currents grew up to counter the violence and to cultivate behaviors that gave new meaning to more complicated lives. The new religious thought focused on peace and compassion.
The golden rule came out of the Axial age. Confucius said it first in a strangely negative formulation, “What you do not wish for yourself, do not do unto others.” Others took it up and made less of a tongue-twister out of it, i.e., ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ The Bible was all over the golden rule centuries before Jesus championed it.
The golden rule, in a media-saturated world, is a killjoy. There is something delicious about hating your enemy. There is so much to savor: moral superiority, steaming hatred, demonization (those people are SO dumb), and my favorite, humor that puts down the other side (HA, HA, those people are SO dumb). But fellow Natural Religious, resist this yummy sugar and butter treat.
It feels good in the moment because you get an adrenaline hit when you go there. However, if the other side's existence really frightens you, it also makes you anxious. You start feeling rattled, perhaps even under siege, and finally, depressed or overwhelmed. Living on a diet of hate and fear is like being force-fed chocolate cake. This is not going to end well.
What can you do about it? My favorite way to prevent all this is to avoid the constant drip of media. In the aftermath of 9/11, I was a continuous devourer of media, and I felt horrible. I finally just turned it off and immediately felt better. I made up some rules about listening to and reading the news. Mostly they were about being mindful of what you are doing.
Here are my rules of thumb about media:
Listen enough to know what is going on. Listen to new facts, not the regurgitation of the same old actions or the minute parsing of minor new points. Once a day usually does it.
Don’t spend much time on stories and tragedies you can’t do much about. (There is a fine line here between hardheartedness and solidarity, sometimes your heart takes you there. It’s a judgment call.)
If what you are reading or listening to is designed to scare you into one camp or another, set it aside or turn it off.
I am medium good at following my rules. I read the newspaper in the morning and then try and stay away from the news the rest of the day. My Achilles heel is Steven Colbert. I can’t give him up, yet I find myself wincing more and more at the daily Eric Trump jokes. Watching Colbert during the Trump presidency felt different than it does now. Then, I got some strength from the laughter. Now, it honestly feels more like a bad habit.
The midterms are over now (I wrote this over several days, beginning about a week before the midterms). For the most part, I followed all my media rules. I did look up the Nevada Senate race once. However, it was evident that whatever was going to happen would happen in its own time. By checking on Nevada, it would not happen faster.
Next time I write about this topic, it will be about the second way we can act which actually works against hate and fear. It’s called ‘complexifying the narrative.’ There is too much to say, and it’s too interesting to be just a paragraph at the end of this post. I will give it its own post—stay tuned.
Very nicely stated Katie. I was trying to convey this very concept to my wife the other day but did not get my point across nearly as well as you have articulated it here. We can't hate, fear or make fun of half the country (who didn't vote the way we did) and call ourselves Christians or say we are on the path of seeking enlightenment. There is no good end that can come of it and it only deepens the divide further.
I have also drastically reduced my dose of daily news. One quick glance of objective, non sensational, non-divisive news per day is enough to know what is going on. Having said that I've had a hard time not watching Bill Maher.
Thanks, Katie, this is great!