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So I know "liberals whining about the election on FB" is SO OVER, and I already did this a couple of days ago, but I'd like to add personal context to last week. Maybe this time with less swearing.
I've had a terrible year. Not as a victim of anything other than my own decisions and malaise, just a bunch of things all in a row. I know I'm not alone and I know I haven't gotten thew worst of it. Spiritually sick is how I'd describe myself. Been that way for a long time.
Part of the problem is, I was trained to function in an Adventist environment and I'm never going back to Adventism. The hypocrisy of adventist actions vs words bothers me yes, but I flat out don't believe I was born into an alien empire as a de-facto lawbreaker and need to condition myself to feel bad every day and seek an authority figure to absolve me just to feel even a little good about myself. I think training children to hate themselves for making mistakes and insisting they grovel to adult authority figures as the only way to feel good is emotionally abusive and I'll have no part of it again. I know adventists hold this idea in cognitive dissonance with "love yourself as god loves you." but they are flatly incompatible frameworks. It's not a holy mystery, ya just gotta pick the one that makes more sense to you. I pick "ya gotta love yourself" because you can't hate yourself and love other people. These are not thoughts I picked up from anyone else, these are the responses that naturally formed after living in an oppressive religion for two decades, paying attention, and coming to my own conclusions. And that's not even starting to get into the issue of being queer and adventist, which is not a picnic.
That said, I have found living in the secular world no picnic either. A lot of the hypocrisy and tribalism that drove me nuts in adventists culture is all over the place out here as well. As of yet I have found no replacement community where I feel like I belong and will never feel like I really belong in adventism either. You know how easy it is to explain to non-adventist people that you don't feel comfortable dancing because your childhood religion was so terrified of sexuality that they couldn't risk letting children learn how to dance? Not very. I am caught between worlds and I do not enjoy it.
So I've been depressed and isolated, this year in particular. The only place I understand is adventism and I'm never going back. And I have yet to find another place in the world that begins to make sense to me. I have no replacement spirituality or philosophy to hold onto either, just the vague remnants of adventist morality and a general "try not to be an asshole" feeling. These are not strong principles to guide one through hard times.
So an election that has been ripping bright division lines through our culture, when I already feel fairly separated from people, has been kind of depressing.
In addition, my job may finally be imploding. Research science always has fluctuations in funding and you never know when or if they're coming back. And as a climate scientist, a political party taking unfettered power that has convinced themselves that climate science is the haven of charletans and liars is not a good omen for future funding. So thanks for that.
Voting in a party traditionally hostile to gay rights isn't helping with the "hey, you don't belong here." feeling either. We'll see what they actually try and do I guess, but I'm not optimistic. People like Mike Pence dont' give me reason to be. So thanks for that too.
On the flip side, I get that I now feel the way conservatives felt under Obama, scared and uncertain. I think your leaders lie to you shamelessly and exploit your fear but I get that this is how you felt. I watched Obama extend a hand in friendship for 8 years and watched Rush Limbaugh scream "he's reaching for your guns!" every time he did and every one ducked and cowered and thought he was a monster without checking with their own two eyes to see what he was doing. The same kind of misinformation exists on the democratic side to a lesser degree, but they're nowhere near as good at is as the fox news/conservative talk radio complex is at convincing their own people up is now down. That said, I do feel the empathy for how conservatives have felt. I'm feeling it now.
Conservatives are crowing and clucking at liberal protests like "we see how you really are now." which is kind of fair, but I see how conservatives are now too: people who delight when liberals are sad and scared and upset. I get that it's a sort of comeuppance, but I'm not seeing a lot of halos on the right now either. Thanks for feeling good when I'm sad.
I think we all trust bad filters to feed us information, FB foremost among them. Facebook's feed algorithm works to isolate us into tribes and, we've just learned, feed us an alarming number of outright fake news articles. I suspect we're all less informed for being on Facebook at all. I worry that we've entered a new era where facts and truth no longer really matter, and we'll believe whatever is most entertaining, or most in line with our fears and prejudices, and that goes for the right AND the left. I don't know how we come back from that without it blowing up in our collective spaces in such a damaging way way that we're forced to take a deep breath and go "Woah, what are we doing?" The longer we delay that moment, the worse it's going to be I think.
That's probably going to be how climate change goes too. It's gonna be a liberal conspiracy and a pack of hysterial lies right until Florida sinks below the waterline and then it will be true believers and bitter recrimiations all around and then hasty, far-too-late damage control.
This election was an awful choice between Democrats holding minority rights hostage at the cost of little change and Republicans voting to blow the whole thing up, not really realizing it was going to blow up in their face too. We were probably going to feel bad any way it turned out. But this feels really bad for so many reasons that don't look to be getting better. I want to be optimistic, but I don't see where that comes from in the near term. But ultimately I was hoping Democrats were going to do what they said, and Clinton was going to be who she said she was and you're hoping Trump was lying about a lot of stuff. I know one of those votes was more nihilistic than the other.
So here's what I've realized. I can't do anything about the Trump administration, nor do I plan on running for office any time soon. So I'm going to try and worry less about that (although things get bad enough to require I join the protests, I will). Instead I'm going to focus on being a better person, because I am far from the person I want to be right now. I'm going to try and find a community I belong to, I'm going to try a philosophy or spiritual practice that makes sense to me and that seems to increase the overall amount of good in the universe and that helps keep me focused on being an agent for the same, and I'm going to try and find a way to be optimistic, hopeful, kind and enduring in the face a world that currently seems to be heading toward a selfish and angry place. Because the theme for the last year has been losing hope for me and this last week has done little to assuage that. But ultimately I am only really the captain of my own ship, so I'm going to spend some time trying to make things shipshape. Hopefully that will mean less time on FB and more time focusing on things that make the world a more bearable place.
I don't write this so anyone worries. Once I figure out this job situation and find a community and some reasonable sense of purpose that makes sense to me I'll feel much better about everything, even Trump's America. This is just me admitting out loud it's finally time to stop feeling bad for myself and actually try and make those things happen. And that probably starts with NOT endlessly scrolling twitter and facebook, hoping for something that's never coming down the feed.
I wish you all well through the holidays and hope that above all else we can keep a level head and good heart in what is likely to be a trying few years.
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