Talk Tuesday on a Wednesday

This week we're talking depression, and the startling connection between depression and civilization. Yesterday (note that I intended to post this on Tuesday) we talked about why our jobs make us depressed. Today I want to talk about current events.

How could current events be contributing  to a person's depression or anxiety? The doomsday clock is once again at its closest ever position to the zero at 2 minutes to midnight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

Nuclear Armageddon is once again being seriously discussed the media. The damage caused by climate change is climbing even as the deniers keep trying to stone wall all hopes at change.

There have been five major wars in past year with more than ten thousand deaths in thepast year each. There have been fourteen conflicts with at least a thousand casualties in the past year. And a further twenty three conflicts with at least one hundred casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

Now most of us probably can't name those conflicts, at least not all of them. But I bet those numbers didn't surprise most of you. We are aware of the state of world, and I suspect that this weighs upon our psyche.

Environmental damage and degradation is becoming horrifying common place and even unremarkable on the evening news. And yet estimates place the total number of environmental refugees at between ten million and twenty five million. As deforestation and changing rainfall patterns cause droughts and famines, old settlement locations cease to be habitable. And then people are pressed into action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_migrant

Now obviously, these things will cause stress to those directly impacted. But even if you affected directly, you can't escape the impact entirely. We live in an age of constant information overload, an outrage economy fueled by the twenty four hour news cycle and the might of the internet. And so the strife and struggle of a thousand miles away is still sitting in our living rooms and back of mind.

Open tasks are stressors on the mind, like open tabs on a browser window. And things which feel like threats, but which we cannot address, will sit like psychic tumors in our brains. Open tabs with malicious software sitting in the back of our browser window.

And so, where once our awareness extended to our village and perhaps to a larger tribe and clan affiliation, now it extends to the ends of the earth and encompasses celebrities, world leaders, and workers halfway round the world. We carry the psychic weight of the world upon our shoulders. When I was born there were four and a half billion people and that number is seven and a half billion. The human mind evolved to hold the connections to roughly one hundred people. That does seem a bit of a mismatch.

No wonder we're depressed.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.