@nu And honestly, most of those things, US residents can't take action on either. Something shitty happening in a different county or state from where you live? Tough shit.
rambling, kind of politics
@artcollisions @nu this is something i've been thinking a lot about. like global thinking is clearly important and necessary but i know for me it tends to erode at my mental health fairly quickly. i see most of the issues in politics being discussed are global issues and should be treated as such. however its really really hard to deal with that type of thinking when it feels so large. i guess i dont have a good method of personally balancing between thinking of issues as global interconnected issues or as hyperlocal issues that should be addressed at a community level. that middle ground trips me up
re: rambling, kind of politics
@loren @artcollisions @nu I feel like this is the same sort of thing as the "news" vs. "journalism" distinction.
News: reporting of a thing that is currently or has recently happened. Not contextualized, not actionable. Basically useless, just sensationalist and anxiety-inducing. It sells newspapers, pretty much.
Journalism: investigating and explaining some sort of long-term trend or phenomenon, drawing from many different events and contextualizing them into a bigger narrative. Often actionable, low on sensationalism, and not necessarily related to any very recent event.
I kind of apply this same principle to 'global thinking' around activism; there is not really any value in me being aware of every little thing that has happened anywhere around the world, because it is not actionable.
It *is* useful, however, to understand the shared problems and long-term patterns that exist in many places, and how they come into existence and can be fought. That is much less anxiety-inducing, and provides a concrete starting point for understanding how to apply it locally, even if the events don't look the exact same.
I guess this is probably where the phrase "think global, act local" comes from, too.
(In the same vein, I would love for people to toot less about the crisis-of-the-day, and more about their ideas and/or projects for addressing long-term concerns...)
