I recently read a wonderful piece by the New York Times titled “What happened when 7 Trump voters and 6 Biden voters tried to find common ground”. What struck me was how quickly even the most middling of issues quickly diverged along party lines, often with classic party narratives appearing. It is absolutely worth a read.

These folks are living profoundly different American experiences, and yet both feel that the future is bleak. Today, one person can blithely say that an entire political party, or an entire race, or an entire economic group, or even the entire country is to blame for what they believe is the fundamental problem in the country. “Systemic racism”, “Illegal immegrants”, “White people”, “Corporations”, “Billionaires”, “Religion”. At least one participant all but admitted this, saying the country needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

The entire nation, it seems, has embraced a kind of catastrophic negative self-talk.

Why?
At the risk of sounding trite, I think the stories we tell ourselves matter. We force ourselves, or are forced by others, to focus on the negative things happening to our group, especially as perptrated by another group. Our internal narrative tells us the bad people are everywhere, they have no concern for our wellbeing or in fact want to hurt us, they are taking power from us for their own selfish desires. They are unfeeling, uncaring, malicious, and irredeemably so. They are not part of the solution, they are a maniacal distraction from progress towards a better world.

If a person were generating these narratives internally, they would have legitimate reason to seek professional help with their mental health.

The three main narratives of depression can be summarized as: “I’m bad. The world is bad. There’s nothing anyone can do about it” 1 Whatever the troubles of the world, a laser focus on the negative and how it reinforces a fundamentally dire internal narrative is a big part of the definition of clinical depression. Believing that problems are so big that there is nothing one can undertake to change the narrative is another. Words like “systemic” are excellent for this! How does one non-violently dismantle a whole system! All that’s missing is the sense that oneself is somehow fundamentally flawed, and if you don’t think that already, someone outside your political persuasion is happy to tell you this.

And yet, because we allow others to generate this narrative, and reinforce it in us, we don’t wonder at it. We don’t seek help getting rid of it. It’s not unhealthy! I’m awake when everyone else is asleep!

I’m worried we’re letting bad stories, even if they have a kernel of truth, dominate our attention. I’m worried that we’re unaware that obsessive negative self-talk is fundamentally changing the way we see eachother, our institutions, and our country, in a way that blinds us to what is positive and what is possible. I’m worried this causes us to “write off” whole groups of people simply because the story says they are fundamentally bad. I’m concerned that we have personally allowed these stories to become all-consuming, so that even unrelated negative events, even minor unrelated events, are getting vacuumed up in a false causal relationship.

Research into depression and mental illness has identified this pattern repeatedly, and has a worthwhile answer.

The answer is trite, but I believe important. It is something each person can do. We must positively reframe every event, every news story, and every political cycle by default. We have to learn to see the good in day-to-day events. We need to learn to look plainly at societal problems believing that a resolution is possible and those who disagree with you are part of the solution, not the cause of the problem. And we need to mention this positive reframing to others, to set an example about a more healthy way of thinking and problem solving.

There are not concise, key causes to all the worlds evils. Down that road is madness.

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