Author Topic: Western civilization is a health hazard  (Read 9446 times)

Zea_mays

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 563
    • View Profile
Re: Western civilization is a health hazard
« Reply #150 on: January 16, 2022, 08:44:45 pm »
Democracy is bad for our health:
Quote
It wasn't just Trump: Four years later, politics still make people sick

2020 surveys show huge numbers of Americans perceive that politics exact a chronic negative toll on their health

Scrolling social media, reading websites, listening to podcasts, watching news. With so many options, it’s never been easier to follow American politics, but at what cost?

According to research from University of Nebraska–Lincoln political scientist Kevin Smith, all the political jockeying is harmful to our health, has been for some time, and even a change in party power didn’t help.

In a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2017 survey study where he first measured the effects of the political climate on Americans’ physical, social, mental and emotional health, Smith has published a new article in PLOS ONE. Smith repeated the same 32-question survey twice in 2020 — two weeks prior to the election, and two weeks after. The 2020 findings mirrored the 2017 results, and again found that a large proportion of American adults blame politics for causing them stress, loss of sleep, fractured relationships and more.

Similar to the 2017 findings, the 2020 surveys found that an estimated 40% of Americans identified politics as a significant source of stress. Additionally, between a fifth and a third of adults (50 to 85 million people) blamed politics for causing fatigue, feelings of anger, loss of temper and triggering compulsive behaviors. About a quarter of adults reported they’d given serious consideration to moving because of politics.

That the results remained mostly stable after nearly four years is cause for alarm, Smith said.
[...]
Besides pointing to a possible health crisis, Smith warned the findings could be a bad recipe for democracy.

“There’s potential for a demobilization effect here,” Smith said. “If people view politics as so conflictual, and potentially a threat to their own well-being, they’ll say ‘heck with it, I don’t want to get involved.’ And democracies depend on participation. We need civically-engaged citizens.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940003

(It's not "politics". One party states with no elections don't have this kind of stress which is unique to democracy...)

Quote
So, how can these effects be mitigated? Smith said that’s a question he plans to explore further in future research, though his team has identified one possible tool: becoming more politically knowledgeable. 

“People who were more politically knowledgeable were less likely to report these negative outcomes,” Smith said. “Something I’d really like to look at would be if you took somebody who’s politically interested, but not particularly politically knowledgeable, and they were given information about the political system, would that reduce these negative costs of politics? That could be a positive outcome of civic education that’s never been considered before.”

Excuse me? Wtf? Politically knowledgeable people are burnt-out, miserable husks. Politically knowledgeable people watched a coup unfold in real time and have spent over a year watching literally nothing be done about it, while the coup organizers organize future coups in public... For every single person I've seen, the longer they've followed politics and the more knowledgeable they are about it, the more miserable they are.

In fact, one can find a plethora of news article blog things suggesting turning off the news and ignoring everything to be the cure for democratically-induced stress.