• I generally like to know what’s going on in the world, it’s just this particular topic where I struggle with how it’s portrayed in media. It’s also not been on my mind a lot recently but with today’s news I just thought I would seek out some other perspective to put these new events into context. I’ve also gotten a lot better over time at not letting it get to me, but I guess in your mind I have to be completely unfazed by everything before I can come back online.

    I will not stop occasionally checking the news as I do now, because I do not want to completely isolate myself and become politically apathetic. Nevermind that you are in no place to tell me how often I do and should read them.

    I’m not sure why you immediately jumped to calling me a “junkie”, but I suspect that if that is how you feel the need to respond to my message, you aren’t in a very good place either. Maybe you should take your own advice and step away from the internet for a while.

    • I understand your desire to stay informed but also grounded. I have actually fantasized about a newspaper exactly like that - tells the world as it is, but also helps the readers cope. My biggest thing is climate change and climate despair. I ended up googling how to deal with climate despair and came across a number of articles that were really helpful.

      Hooe you find something similar for Russia/Ukraine.

      • to stay informed but also grounded

        Yes thank you! That’s exactly what I mean.

        I think even just a more grounded comment section would be enough for me. I only really look at comments to get different perspectives on what’s happening, but I rarely find actual contextualized discussion, instead usually there’s just highly upvoted fearmongering and making jokes about the world ending. It would be nice if there was a place where the top response is more like “here’s what this means / here’s what this doesn’t mean”.

        • I don’t know if this will be helpful, but I wrestled a lot with dealing with despair/fear from upheaval as well. Mostly climate like I said, but I used to cry for days thinking about kids starving in Venezuela, for example (that’s a crisis from many many years back).

          Studying history actually helped me cope. Just learning about the past like 5000 years of human history and how much upheavals and famine and war and civilization collapses there have been.

          I kind of realized that feeling like the world is ending (as we know it) is the NORM rather than the exception for most of human existence.

          We’ve been exceptionally lucky in Western countries for the past 300ish years. But that caused us to believe that’s what’s to be expected. It’s not.

          It just helped me understand that humans have survived through lots of things. And the turmoil comes with being alive.