psychology – One Rabbit Riot

I’m not really sure how long this post is going to be, but I wanted to speak out into the void today because there is far too much darkness hanging around, and it’s honestly eating me up. I’m disappointed in my own feeling of doom, and feeling hopeless when what I am feeling afraid of is shadows on the wall. Like the Cave allegory of Plato. I think C.S. Lewis’ work The Screwtape Letters does a magnificent job of adding a new layer to the allegory of the Cave, in my opinion. (They are not directly connected by anything other than my own musings.)

In my opinion, we are living, staring at the shadows, chained by things of our own choosing. The main one I would say is social media, and the 24-hour news cycle, which in concert is keeping us chained in our own prisons, by keeping us distracted. We are stuck dwelling in the never-ending waterfall of problems, and we don’t stop to think or to choose a problem to tackle; instead, we are thrown over the waterfall, and our peace is dashed against the rocks every day. If we would pause and breathe. Stop and consider, you realize that you can either continue being overwhelmed by the world, or you can take the chains of social media off. This thing that so easily entangles us and shuts down the ever-wailing news and its dribble of despair, to seek ways to fill your cup. Therefore, you can approach the troubles of the world with renewed eyes that have hope because we have hope from within. Not the human spirit but the Holy Spirit. I think we forget that we can do that and still care about the problems in front of us. We are not apathetic but proactive. Seeking more than what seems possible from all these voices shouting hate, doom, and fear. Are things broken? Very much so. But when have they been perfect?

The world is doomed. It has been doomed since the fall of man. Even though Jesus overcame the world, there is still no guarantee of a charmed life for believers. This place of fallen things is temporary, for the world will pass away someday. It doesn’t mean it is happening now. We all went through a collective world trauma in 2020, which compounded the daily things that make the world unfair, and it also opened our eyes to injustice in our midst. Just because we are more aware of the bad doesn’t mean that we can’t fight to fix it. But I think we need to do that offline. It’s a distraction. And I think Screwtape and Wormwood have a very easy job as long as we stay divided, isolated, and helpless online. The algorithm forces us to consume things at its pace, but that pace is a complex math equation, not the inner workings of millions of human minds, each made uniquely, that process, cope, and solve at our own pace.

For my fellow Americans specifically, if the Big Beautiful Bill is going to destroy America, I think we are looking with tunnel vision because of our own privilege. How many of our marginalized neighbors have endured far worse over the history of America, and they still have hope and have fought for a better future? I’m not falling for this propaganda anymore, and I’m also not supporting the workforce blackout either. We need supply lines, and we need to provide for ourselves. Protest with wisdom, not with sabotage in mind, because not having goods trucked in is going to hurt those most vulnerable in society, not the Senate or the Executive branch.

Finally, there are so many resilient cultures around the world that we could look up to right now for a reality check. All the countries deemed “3rd World” or developing nations. They are exploited every day by 1st world nations, and have for centuries been held down for the profit of the few. Do those people give up even though this is their reality every day? No. Against every odd, they provide for their families without help. We have help, and we cry poor and ignore their struggles and worry about our first-world inconveniences. We do this to the most vulnerable in our own country, too. Look at what’s going on in our communities due to ICE, the housing crisis, the cultural genocide of Native peoples, and African peoples through the slave trade. We have always had evil running things; this is not new. If America is ruined by the BBB, our foundation was always sinking sand. So don’t give this junk another moment of worry and focus on the big picture – how can we be the light of the world and the salt of the earth? And every day, let’s focus on the solid foundation freely given to everyone through the sacrifice of God’s son.

Sorry that this is a bit of a rant, I just needed to push back against the heaviness I feel pushing down on this lovely July day. Happy Canada Day! And stay strong. ❤

What is historical bias? As I dove deeper into my historical training, it became the elephant in the room of every class discussion and the turf monster of every thesis. It is where worldview intersects with historical interpretation and constructs an invisible wall between historical accuracy and interpretation in our present.

Even with firsthand accounts or eyewitness testimony of events, personal bias, and interpretation passively or actively weave themselves into the evidence. It is inescapable.

Something that I’ve gleaned, with a better understanding of, has been from listening to Biblical scholars meditate through the Greek and Hebrew translations of the Bible aka primary sources. It is truly an extraordinary work to ponder accounts from the past and sift through the biases we have as moderns to catch a fleeting moment of connection with the past filled with as deep of empathy for their pov as we can.

It is fleeting because the easier and more common way we interact with history is through quick and heavily biased source material.

A thesis-first and evidence-second approach, instead of first studying the evidence and letting it reveal the thesis is how we as humans prefer to communicate. But what we will gain if we let the text talk to us. Letting the text speak is similar to the Socratic method except instead of a conversation with people, you let the sources speak.

This does not translate well to our current pace of consuming information. It is slow and requires patience to study and understand the matter at hand from many angles. Therefore the “pop press” way of disseminating information, like the History Channel so often uses, rises from the ashes once again to the far reaches of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

This is not to say that only bad history or bad thesis drafting is a product of social media. I’ve learned wonderful details about a vast array of histories, fashion, language, and culture through these social platforms that I couldn’t have had access to at college, because the experts didn’t exist. Dress History wasn’t even a widely accepted specialty during my time in college. Social Media has provided a platform for niche history lovers to share their passion with a new audience. Social Media also provides a salon of discussion to debunk myths or provide deeper context to a subject that was given the “pop press” treatment.

So why am I writing about this today? I was watching a video from a creator who used to be a fantastic source of fashion and film content, a 2000s historian of girlhood with insightful and researched evidence that let the text speak. The original work was so high caliber that this current slump into heavily biased “historical” fashion videos and content that is just politics loosely veiled as film or fashion-focused, has been a great disappointment to me. The creator is so talented, and to see them be swayed by forces that are in our culture is sad.

Not only a disappointment, but it has shown me how important it is to stay committed to awareness of historical biases and the humble acknowledgment that we can’t talk in absolutes when it comes to interpretation. We have to be open to exploring the sources from many points of view and not let ourselves be mouthpieces of modernity, with the clever out of “victors write history” so what is the point of going deeper.

Victors certainly change history and can try to control its narrative, but history is the story of humanity and is bigger than one group’s manipulation.

For example, in my wheelhouse, I am the descendant of Irish immigrants who were potato farmers in Cork. The Potato Famine was discussed historically as just a blight. Bad luck. Not a big deal. Oh well. The crisis was met with such apathy that Irish clergyman Jonathan Swift, wrote “A Modest Proposal” to draw attention to the British attitude towards the Irish was not unlike the absurdity of his proposal.

But now, we know that this event can be classified as a genocide because the British colonized Ireland for centuries. There was enough food in Ireland until the British stole it and imported it out of their colony of Ireland. The “victors” affect history but their version is not the guaranteed final version forever. They inflict death and destruction but this will not stay in the shadows forever, the light is greater than the dark.

My point is that this summation, “The victors write history” is paltry.

So what started this ramble of historical bias?

A video essay about the history of the Goth aesthetic which had random political bias inserted as fact and a lack of nuance to the conclusions based on a clearly preconceived thesis where evidence was cherry-picked to fill out a video that wasn’t really about Goth style. It was about our Nov 5, 2024 election and unnecessarily put a lot of negativity out into the world instead of talking about the Goth aesthetic.

I believe it’s time that we as a society stop stirring up dissension and casual hate in the name of the political savior. These candidates never save anything. They try their best but they are just humans. Is it worth hating an entire group of people because they hold different views? Never.

No human is perfect, so how can human government create a perfect society? It’s a straw man.

I hope in time, the strong political biases I see swaying storytelling in my culture will sour. Instead, I hope an appetite for deep discussion to understand each side of the coin will spring forth. For truth, for the sake of truth, warts and all. For deeper connection. To understand what people believe and why they believe, with mutual respect, and respect for the biases we hold so that we don’t let our biases keep us from true understanding and continue to fertilize this culture of casual hate I am seeing in 2024.

I hope this post is not too convoluted. I wanted to discuss this without saying what creator I am referring to because it is not them I want to critique but the fallacy they have fallen under and the way they are approaching history, politics, and interpretation of these things without the awareness of their personal bias. It’s creating foolish and unuseful content that reads more as pop press propaganda than well-researched discussion, which is what I think they excel at doing. I believe they are amazing and I want to see their talent shine once again!

Bias is such a difficult thing to wrestle with and I acknowledge that no matter how I tried to check mine at the door, it still persists. I try to hold it loosely and pursue the truth, but I am an imperfect human.

Thank you, reader, for being here and I hope this was an interesting ramble if nothing else. If I have offended you, I humbly ask for your grace and willingness to love others – enemy or friend, because that is how we will make this world a better place.

Tag: psychology

I’m Sick of the Doom Spiral