“If protesters destroy a police car, and police destroy a protester’s eye, both will be called ‘violence,’ and it won’t be made clear that what the police did caused far more human harm and is more brutal and inexcusable. Police cars are replaceable. A journalist’s sight is not. Destroying property is not in and of itself a violent act.” -Current Affairs (finally stepping it up)
I heard an interview, can’t remember the psychologist, but he was explaining this idea and encouraging people to stop and take a deep breath and literally drink in small moments like you’re a dryass plant when something is ever satisfactory, positive, mildly successful, randomly joyful so your brain can code and integrate that experience because our natural lizard brain will quickly tape over it with mostly unnecessary negative survival shit. Sounds dumb and dorky but sometimes I remember this when I’m feeling good about a moment because our cave brains are still catching up with modern life without sabertooths. I like that it’s not just a pollyanna gosh just be more positive thing but more of a legit brain wiring phenomenon can be gradually hacked through small behavioral changes.
Another super important one: Take the time to tell yourself, when something you did or bought or decided works out “That was a good decision and I’m glad I made it! Go me!”
Seriously, it can have a huge impact. suddenly you go from remembering nothing but bad decisions to adding in a series of Excellent Choices You Feel Good About, and it makes things so much better.
It is true. This is one of the fundamental tenets of learning theory. That’s why it takes many more positive experiences to outweigh a negative.
It’s also why a common piece of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to keep a physical log of good things that happen to you. Either on your phone/computer/tablet or in a physical journal/diary. Because your brain is unfortunately wired to forget these things much easier than the bad things. That way when all you can remember is awful things you can pull out your handy “nice things” log and tell your brain “excuse me, you negative little bitch, last Tuesday we pet a cute dog with curly hair. A week ago we decided to make cookies for our dad out of the blue and he was so happy, which made us happy. Yesterday we ate an extremely tasty pizza. Good things happened, it’s okay to remember them! 😤”
We have both a negative attention bias (we pay more attention to negative things) and an easier time recalling negative memories. But good news is that it tends to decrease as we get older, to the point that elderly people become more like the “I do not see it” meme and spend less time looking at negative info. So if it feels difficult now, it will probably get easier to linger on the good as you get older!
man ive been watching videos of sheep getting shorn all night. makes me wanna be a sheep, getting man handled by a farmer who loves me, emerging from my cocoon of wool a totally new being. prancing around the barnyard so free, no longer weighed down by winter. i have clinical depression
it’s posta like these that so encapsulate the spirit of tumblr while making it impossible to explain tumblr to my mom
Undercover filming from inside Amazon’s Dunfermline warehouse reveals the sheer scale of the waste: Smart TVs, laptops, drones, hairdryers, top of the range headphones, computer drives, books galore, thousands of sealed face masks – all sorted into boxes marked “destroy”.
Products that were never sold, or returned by a customer. Almost all could have been redistributed to charities or those in need. Instead, they are thrown into vast bins, carried away by lorries (which we tracked), and dumped at either recycling centres or, worse, a landfill site.
An ex-employee, who asked for anonymity, told us: “From a Friday to a Friday our target was to generally destroy 130,000 items a week.”
I used to gasp. There’s no rhyme or reason to what gets destroyed: Dyson fans, Hoovers, the occasional MacBook and iPad; the other day, 20,000 Covid (face) masks still in their wrappers.
Toddler accidentally cursed himself into an identity crisis today.
He’s been crossing stuff out with chalk. He asked me to write his name for him, crossed it out, and had a panicked meltdown because he thought it meant he didn’t exist any more.
Every hour or so he asks me “am I [his name?]” and wants reassuring hugs.
I’m enjoying the implication that he was perfectly delighted with arbitrarily erasing things from existence until it affected him personally
