Some thoughts on anxiety, its sources and solutions.
I've been consuming global news from various sources on a daily basis since I was twelve.
Nothing quite like these exploding pagers and other devices has ever come up as a news story. The horrors of the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs, land mines, white phosphorous, yes -- and there are many similarities in terms of the injuries. The completely random, everywhere-at-once nature of these terrible events is different though.
Ever since Israel's Stuxnet virus attack on the Iranian nuclear industry, I've been anticipating something like this, as have others. What's been happening in Lebanon over the past few days is a slight variation from a plot line I still intend to write about, part of a big-picture, near-future kind of novel, partially inspired by the recent hit, Ministry for the Future. The fact that reality is playing out much like my fictionalized version of it had things going makes me want to write that novel even more.
Perhaps it won't just be the Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, or Iranians who can look forward to a future of never knowing whether your phone is going to blow up in your face, or you're going to be assassinated by a small drone which announced its presence with about as much fanfare as a large mosquito.
It's certainly not just them that can wonder whether their town is going to be swept away in a giant flood, or burned up in a fire. Certainly not just them that can wonder when World War 3 between Russia and NATO may be coming to wipe out life as we knew it, or when the climate catastrophe is past its tipping point, and we're unstoppably on our way towards Venus.
When I visited Lebanon way back in 2005, one of the many things that made an impression on me was how most of the people I got to know there were on anti-anxiety medication, and talked about it.
Israel's horrific bombing campaign of 2006 had not yet happened, but Prime Minister Rafic Hariri had recently been assassinated in a massive bombing, and a lot of the more middle class elements of Beirut society who had in recent years started returning, after the end of the civil war, were now leaving again. The rest were on anti-anxiety medication.
Another thing that made an impression on me in Lebanon and in Palestine -- in Nablus and Jenin, specifically -- was the sense of calm and clarity emanating from the men with guns, of whichever faction.
I wouldn't want in any way to minimize the PTSD and associated ills you can find within the ranks of soldiers worldwide, including soldiers of guerrilla armies. But it's also easy to observe among the ranks of those who have committed their lives to a struggle like that that participants can find a sort of solace in their commitment, and there is a certain relief to be found in giving up your life like that. All of them are expecting to die violent deaths.
I don't know if reliable statistics exist, but my impression is there are a lot of people in the US on anti-anxiety medications of all sorts as well, but maybe more in Beirut.
I was listening to a program yesterday, I think it was on NPR, though it could have been BBC or Al-Jazeera. (As different as they can be from each other in various ways, they all tend to blend together in my head after the fact.)
When they got to the part where the psychologist was being interviewed about what people, maybe particularly young people, might do about anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc., related to the climate crisis, I almost turned it off. I expected some kind of nonsense about how we all need to help each other look at the bright side, while recycling our garbage more enthusiastically.
Instead, the expert, whose name now escapes me, talked about how the efforts of people to "look at the bright side" just tend to make things worse. It's a lot like telling someone who is facing off with a growling bear to calm down because probably the bear will end up walking the other way eventually. The climate crisis is as real as the bear, and looking at the bright side isn't going to make it go away, or calm anxieties.
The expert explained further that what does tend to demonstrably alleviate anxiety and other such ills for people concerned with the climate crisis, and the future of life on Earth and such, is solidarity and mutual understanding. The ones who are part of a community that is trying to change things in one way or another are the ones best able to cope with the anxiety.
I'm paraphrasing, but her conclusions were something like that, and I think they were based on broader studies, not just her own clients. It was one of those many moments when I hear about a scientific study and feel a bit smug, because of the way they so often tend to prove things that people involved with activism or the arts have known for a long time.
I long ago began to notice that it was so often the case that people I knew who were involved with healing themselves from past trauma by doing lots of therapy, reading books about self-improvement, trying to live low-stress lives, etc., often just got worse and worse over time, the more they "did the work." If anyone has ever wanted to know my recommendation for overcoming trauma, anxiety (existential or otherwise), depression, and other related ills, I have long said that joining a group or network or community involved with solidarity and building a social movement may actually do you far more emotional good than withdrawing from all that and "working on yourself."
There was another scientific study that demonstrated that people process words very differently, depending on whether they are spoken or sung. Words, when sung, go right to the emotional centers of the brain. All the musicians intuitively knew that already.
There is also lots of evidence to support the notion that communities of people that make music together tend to be much closer and happier than those that don't.
For me, personally, it all very much falls into place, when I hear about these studies, because of my ongoing life experience. I could be a good case study, probably, with regards to the impact of climate anxiety, and other anxieties, and how they vary depending on circumstances.
It's been many years since I've felt like I was plugged in to some kind of active social movement in my home country, the US. There were many years when I was continually immersed in one or several concurrent social movements in the US, but that was a long time ago now.
In recent years, I spend eight months out of the year in the US, mostly at home, doing very few gigs, experiencing pretty much constant anxiety about the state of the world and the state of the left, coping with the anxiety by various means, none of them particularly effective.
The other four months of the year I'm on tour, mainly in other countries, where there are still social movements that I'm plugged into, that I can participate in musically and otherwise while I'm in the various places I regularly return to.
While I'm on these tours, the state of near-constant anxiety is replaced by a state that is nearly ecstatic by comparison. The feelings of mutual understanding and solidarity can be overwhelming, in all the best ways, when you're surrounded by a large group of other people who have the same concerns, the same desires, and who are together, literally singing the same song.
Speaking on a purely emotional level, having an experience like that on a daily basis induces a near-constant state of bliss. Even every other day will do the trick, and this despite the fact that I miss my small children terribly whenever we're apart for more than a few hours.
I imagine most of the people the climate anxiety psychologist has studied either have an isolated, depressed life full of anxiety, or they've found some kind of community of resistance to be part of. I'm guessing folks like me, who jaggedly go back and forth from one reality to the other, are less common.
In any case, there's no question either in the studies or in my own experience that when it comes to existential anxiety, being part of a vibrant community of resistance is extremely therapeutic, and the absence of one is extremely anxiety-producing.
I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were Palestinian or Lebanese, though. In those cases I'd likely just prefer whichever option is the least fatal.
