I’ve made it a point to build up a set of phrases that allow me to express sympathy, and which have the advantage of being clearly visible expressions, rather than hollow tokens.
For example: “Your mom got cancer? That’s a bad deal. Make it a point to spend as much time with her as you can. What can I do to help?”
Thank you for asking this question!
I live in Japan. What’s the brand?
“Flooding the Zone” appears to be to be deliberate, and rampant across the whole of journalism.
I doubt it has anything to with “trying to satisfy a market generated by anxiety”; rather, it’s a case of “our ends are noble and good, justifying victory by any means necessary”.
Looking at the above-linked publication on The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model, we see the following characteristics:
High-Volume and Multichannel. Text, video, audio, and still imagery propagated via the Internet, social media, satellite television, and traditional radio and television broadcasting.
Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive. Propagandists do not need to wait to check facts or verify claims; they just disseminate an interpretation of emergent events that appears to best favor their themes and objectives.
Makes No Commitment to Objective Reality. False statements are more likely to be accepted if backed by evidence, even if that evidence is false.
Not Committed to Consistency. Potential losses in credibility due to inconsistency are potentially offset by synergies with other characteristics of contemporary propaganda.
Pretty sure Vox ticks every one of those boxes just as thoroughly as Breitbart does.
As a small case-in-point: consider the Mass Shooting Tracker, which Vox cites regularly in articles, videos, and infographics.
Feel free to click around for yourself, read the linked articles, and estimate what percentage of those you would consider to be a “mass shooting”.
To give some idea of the statistical bankruptcy, according to the above site, there have been 120 “mass shootings” in the United States so far in 2020, with a median fatality rate of… zero.
High-volume fake evidence for multi-channel fake news.
Sadly, I don’t see a way to fix this, either.
For what it’s worth, I had a similar journey. Not as much with strong emotions being triggered by trivial things, but I would routinely blame others for my negative feelings.
Coming to understand that I, and only I, was responsible for both my situation and my emotional responses was a difficult journey, but it also helped me address those negative feelings in a useful way.
I wonder if there’s a correlation between the American emphasis on comfort and loss of utility for suffering as a social signal?
At least within notable chunks of American culture that I currently have a lens on—don’t live in the US at present, so do take this with a massive salt-boulder—it seems that visibly suffering quickly earns the sufferer a large amount of sympathy/compassion/support/etc.
This begets more visible suffering—to the point of harmful neuroticism—in order to garner more support from the community, and I doubt this is in any way a conscious effort on behalf of any of the involved parties. Similar to an unruly child that keeps throwing temper-tantrums because her parents quickly give in and reward the unwanted behavior—neither the child nor parents are really aware of the feedback loop in which they are trapped.
Moreover, in my observation, cultures where publicly visible suffering is ignored (or even punished!) don’t seem to suffer from the same levels of neurotic behavior that I regularly see in specific American subcultures—although increased suicide rates do seem to be an issue for when those cultures have yet to evolve mechanisms whereby suffering can be alleviated.
Glide floss. My teeth absolutely shred every other brand, but Glide is coated with Teflon. Made regular flossing possible.
I stopped watching news years ago. Improved my mental state massively.
Stretching every day, right after work, has been a win as well. It’s a good end to the day, I’m way more flexible, and overall feel happier.
Whenever I feel angry or frustrated, I ask myself what outcome I want from the situation, and focus on how to make that happen. Helps me avoid acting counterproductively on emotion.
As being publicly accused of rape or sexual assault carries severe penalties for the accused, how do you intend to deal with false accusations?
I have a question in a similar vein—how would one go about finding resources that don’t have immediately available reviews—videos, blogs, etc?
This sounds like a topic worth digging into. Don’t suppose you have a curated list of books (or other resources) to share?
My understanding of the present state of Taiwan is that they are unprepared for war in any real sense. Sure, they’ve bought a decent amount of American military technology, but that seems to be it.
Total war requires the preparation of the entire populace. Taiwan has not done this, and I doubt the present government intends to do so. Not only do you basically have to train your populace in terrorism, you also need to equip them with caches of a variety of weapons, entirely outside of government control.
Azerbaijan and Armenia’s recent war shows just how the game has changed. Armenia had a much more capable and better-trained infantry. Azerbaijan had the latest in drone technology. “Guerrillas hiding in the mountains” don’t fare well against combined-arms forces with FLIR-equipped drones.
The defensive proposition of total war is that you force any would-be invader to kill most, if not all, of the local population to achieve victory. Both during the initial invasion, as well as during at least a full generation of occupation.
In essence, you leave only two options on the table: “Leave us in peace” or “In exchange for us inflicting massive casualties upon your forces, you will receive what remans of a barren rock full of refugees, along with at least one full generation of terrorism levied against your people by ours. As a bonus, we are both native speakers of the same language and lack any visual ethnic distinction. Isn’t that fun?”