This feels quite bad

How are things awful? Let us count the ways.

We’ve got a full blown conflict in the Middle East, the US is deploying Marines to the streets of LA to deal with largely peaceful protests, there’s increasing warnings of China attacking Taiwan, and the far right is rising across Europe. 

That’s just the headline emergencies. We haven’t even got to things like climate change, the nefarious potential of AI, or widening inequality cracking societal structures.

But chances are, when you’ve finished reading, closed this email, and perhaps considered moving Friday drinks up by a few hours, all of this will fade to the back of your mind.

This is by design. An excellent piece on the collapse of America (add it to the list) explains how “the human mind employs powerful mechanisms to protect itself from overwhelming distress. When reality becomes too threatening…we unconsciously deploy defenses to maintain psychological equilibrium.”

It’s part of the reason why, when Donald Trump left the G7 to deal with the 21st century’s version of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, the Australian media focused on Albo missing his  meeting with the US president. 

Communicating in this environment can seem impossible. Not only do we have the natural human inclination to block out the true horror of our reality, but things have seemingly been so bad (and so widely reported) for so long, that basically every person with access to the news is now suffering from disaster fatigue.

The answer is not to trivialise anything that fails to clear the bar of existential or historic crisis. It’s to acknowledge the human experience that occurs despite and because of it all, and accept that a piece of news that feels normal could engender a response we’re all pretending to feel anyway. 

Even if that leads to the terrifying possibility the latest Labubu news might actually be good for us.