There is a tremendous amount of anger out there and I think that we are well served to look at ourselves and simply try to be more kind in our everyday interactions in person and online.

At the same time, I think we are about to have an assault on our democracy and civil liberties, and we need to support the institutions who would help protect us from that.  Subscribe to digital newspapers so they can shine a light on what is happening, support the ACLU.  Also, get your financial house in order because there will be a very rocky road ahead.  A lot of pain is coming for a lot of people. Not just them, but us too.

But I remind myself that This Too Shall Pass.  Trump will die in a few years and we can persevere for that long.  This is life, and it's a gift, so look for the day to day enjoyment even during the difficult time to come.  Build connections. Work on friendships.

Social media is a useful tool.  If you find quality content creators, they help cut through the 99% garbage that's out there,  I think TikTok is the best of them.  The algorithm is happy to send you junk, but you can also force its hand so you get more good recommendations.  I'd be happy to share who I'm following.

This guy, is someone who makes a lot of sense and I've been watching him for the last year or so.  He's moving to YouTube in light of the imminent TikTok ban (that the next president might suspend.)

20 minute video from a few days ago.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8ToGh5lSw
 

If a person learns a little about the inner workings of cars, it goes a long way towards keeping one from getting duped when taking the car in for servicing. If that learning occurred a long time ago, it’s a matter of keeping up with automotive advancements.

That’s where I am on this subject. I took the Reserve Officers Psychological Operations Course back in the 1970s and learned propaganda techniques, information analysis, source assessment…etc. Now it’s more a matter of keeping up with the technologies available so as to recognize them when they’re being employed. Underlying techniques remain largely the same; so, it’s not worrisome to me. It can be tedious though.
 

I do think quite a lot of our current problems are, at their core, a side effect of our brains not being able to cope with scale.

You've probably heard of Dunbar's number, or at least the concept if not the name. Our neocortex is evolutionarily able to cope with about 150 stable relationships, and I think that, in an attempt to surpass this number (which modern life pretty much insists that we do,) we have fragmented those 150 "people" into swappable categories from one thought to the next.

Take attractiveness, for example. If I go to my local grocery store and compare myself to everyone inside the store, I'm doing okay. If I instead watch a few hours of TV, I have inevitably been exposed to 150 people who are all far more attractive than average, and since I can't hold more people than that in my head at a time, I now feel, for awhile at least, like the ugliest person in my "tribe." If I want to be a painter, and I follow at least 150 painters on social media who are all objectively better than me, I no longer feel capable of succeeding as I scroll my feed. (If, on the other hand, I follow 150 artists who all work in different media, I maybe don't feel as bad, because I can fragment my consideration into just "painting" and thus have fewer than 150 superior people right in front of me at that exact moment.)

The same applies to politics. If I see 150 really outrageous political takes in a comment section, my brain tells me, in that moment, that I am alone, and should despair. If I go back to my preferred website and cleanse my brain with 150 takes I agree with, I no longer feel alone, but now I feel invincible, because everyone in the world (i.e., my tribe, which I have forced to have flexible membership, but which is still my entire world at any given moment) agrees with me.

Small communities--the kind where, most importantly, you get to know more than one facet of an individual--are a useful countermeasure to all this. Because maybe I still really am the ugliest person on the Cellar, but I can also look at this same set and say that I'm smarter than some of the 150, or more creative. A person that you actually get to know takes up a whole person-slot, rather than just holding a fragment of a slot for a fleeting moment.

footfootfoot wrote:

Desiring to be in power should be an automatic DQ in the first place.
 

This.