Doomscrolling refers to the act of compulsively consuming negative or distressing news and information online, often for extended periods. It is characterized by:
Excessive scrolling: Spending a significant amount of time scrolling through negative content.Doomscrolling can have detrimental effects on mental health, leading to increased anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness. It can also create a sense of helplessness and reinforce negative beliefs
Negative focus: Seeking out and consuming primarily negative news and stories.
Emotional distress: Experiencing anxiety, depression, or other negative emotions as a result of the content consumed.
Neglecting other activities: Spending so much time doomscrolling that other important activities are neglected.
"Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its' Horizons."
- Václav Havel
It is a sweet thing to draw out
a long, long life in cheerful hopes,
and feed the spirit in the bright
benignity of happiness:
but I shiver when I see you
wasted with ten thousand pains,
all because you did not tremble
at the name of Zeus…
— Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound"Acting with Faith in the Absence of Certain or Scientific Knowledge.
A Life acting with not only 'Certainty'... but also supplemented with Wonder and Mystery and especially a transcendent HOPE to bridge them with Certainty and overcome and prevent submission to what otherwise might result in the numbness of a fear induced apathy! Especially when there is no post-apocalyptal Rescue Mission coming to save you and/ or us... and you need a Holy Spirit to help bridge and transcend the Father and the Son A 'surplus value' of Spirit to draw upon and use to face your fears and near despair... and persevere...
...or better, overcome our circumstances past, present, and future.
6 comments:
I think HOPE is more important at my age than it's ever been to me....It's something I wish more of us had, particularly when we see the tug of war in America and how close we are to losing our country (and I mean this). Odd that you did this on HOPE and it's been really on my mind the last two weeks or so...BIG time!
That's Z at GeeeZ...not sure why it didn't pick that up!
Hope is a sign of the Holy Spirit, Z. And I sincerely wish that we could stop all the media doomscrolling and be open to more of it, open up our Salience Frames to encompass more things that might lead to a greater faith in our individual and collective better natures.
We spend way too much time online in Pavlovian withdrawal curating our profile pages, and far too little time critically examining our lives and looking for ways to overcome, rather than indulge, our limitations and recognized vices.
In other words, create hope to help overcome the increasingly evident negative circumstances surrounding us... as with the techno-hope that accompanies Elon Musk.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Jalaluddin Rumi, "The Guest House"
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