Bias, Anger, and Depression, Oh My

 

Where to start…

Let’s just get to the point.  I have tended throughout my life to get depressed.  After a lifetime of doing that and analyzing it, I’ve concluded I don’t suffer from “depression” in the clinical sense.  It’s just a tendency of mine. It’s not debilitating. I can go about my daily work (which in fact can easily snap me out of a depressed mood.)

My getting depressed is directly linked to my view of the world around me, whether it be my immediate world, or the world in general.

To be completely honest, I think my being depressed is simply a response to things not going my way.

Things aren’t going my way on the National Front.

It’s depressing.

Other people deal with things not going their way in a different way.  One of those ways is to become angry.  I see a lot of that. It’s not that I never get angry, but I tend to try to stamp down my anger because it doesn’t feel productive. I could be wrong.  Maybe I should be a more angry person, and that would make me better.

When I say anger isn’t productive for me, I mean that anger tends to steal the whole stage when it presents itself.  When anger comes, it’s like a movie scene with Clint Eastwood standing in a dusty street in the hot sun, squinting his eyes with a cigar in his mouth.

After pushing Clint out of the scene, I often try to view what is happening in an objective way. This is where the problems start.

I can’t be very objective. There, I said it.

Too much has happened already that has probably caused physical wires to connect in my brain which lead me to see things in an nonobjective way.

This phenomenon is not unique.  YOU can’t be objective either.  Just, please, admit it.

We see what we want.  We see what those we align ourselves with tell us we are seeing.

It’s frightening.  I’ve never been this frightened about the potential issues that could emerge from this place we find ourselves in.

I remember thinking a few years ago about this situation.  I spoke of it as something coming in the future. I couldn’t picture exactly how it would play out.  It’s playing out.

Tire of me if you must.  I have always known my intensity is off-putting to many. I accepted that years ago. I’d rather you unfollow me here than hate me.

Is there any hope at all? I suppose it depends on your definition of hope. 

Are we going to learn to view situations with less bias?  The short answer is probably, for the most part, absolutely not. 

What about our national anger issue?  Can we do anything about that? I suppose that depends on whether we want to or not.  Anger has become a righteous thing. The more, the better. With that thinking, there IS no hope for a dampening of the anger.

So here we are, a nation of biased people, full of righteous anger.

What could possibly go wrong?