I was feeling a little out of it yesterday--gaining a serious allergic reaction to Jingoism, methinks. All the people wavering between "let's goooo!" and "that's it?!" had me sick to my stomach, but I know the armchair-warrior eagerness for war is just another form of trauma.
Here was Tough Times Tuesday: a reflection on how much we need to adjust to life under climate change.
Today's piece will come later. It's a tough one, on how we've abused the memories of the dead.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-myth-of-climate-havens-is-bursting
@MLClark I'm not sure that armchair eagerness is necessarily from trauma. It looks a lot more like excitement most of the time.
There are many people who treat war like a video game, that's true.
But there's also a human stress response to threats that processes them by leaning into them - so when there's anger and violence in the air, it whips up anger and violence (however gleefully) among others.
The more we normalize gamified discussion of war, the more likely we're going to see people "triggered" in this way. Our media environment makes it so easy to dehumanize and gamify.
@MLClark I believe you're right about that.
I think a lot of what has traumatized people is not big, sudden trauma. It's the stress of living for years in a world they've been told is inimical and falling apart.
It's like how people slowly get dozens of small head trauma from concussion in jobs like football and being near explosives.
That's a good analogy for it!
Added to which, many folks think they still have to stump for bad systems, so they're in this weird defensive mode where they're both supposed to acknowledge how awful things are *and* "hold the line"... but for what? Extraction-based cultures killing us all faster? Glorified tribalism relying on ancient texts to justify dehumanizing others? State projects that barely help their own while harming others a world away?
It's enough to make anyone nuts.
@MLClark It's certainly made me nuts.
And I think it's given us an insane society.