Anxiety and the Pre-post Election Blues

After the umpteenth political attack ad interrupted the World Series I decided to take a long walk. The air was cool and still, the night sky bright with a waxing moon. And I thought about anxiety. 

Family systems theory tells us that a system of relationships can be overwhelmed by free-floating anxiety. Such anxiety almost always arises out of unpredicted and unwanted change in the system. But because such change is complex, it is difficult if not impossible to pinpoint why it is happening. Thus the anxiety floats freely through the consciousness of those who are part of the system. 

The way in which those who are part of the system deal with this free floating anxiety is to try and pin it down. Specifically we anxious people, say the American people, try to place the blame for our anxiety on someone or something. The its not free-floating and we think we can deal with it. So we blame the markets, the immigrants, the terrorists, the Muslims, the Christians, or the Jews. But best of all, or at least most useful in the quest for power, is to blame our anxiety on a political party or leader. That is where the power of manipulating anxiety really lies. 

Which gets us to attack ads. Do you think the PR firms in charge of these loathsome creature don't know psychology? The purpose of a political attack ad is to both increase our anxiety and persuade us that a political party, or a person running for office, is the cause of our anxiety. This will make us think that if we can just get rid of that party or person, pushing them out of office, then we won't be anxious any more.

The problem is that no political party, or candidate, or policy (or any of the groups listed above) is actually the source of our anxiety. The source is inexorable change across every aspect of our personal and social lives; change that cannot be stopped. The problem, as Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and others from that tradition would say, is that we live in samsara, the ceaseless flux of cause and effect. Christian, Muslims and Jews might not use this term, but are similarly aware that the world is like an ever rolling stream in which one can never step twice (to mix my metaphors.) 

In short, anxiety arising from change is an endemic human condition. 

It can be manipulated to gain power and wealth, or just to create harm and destruction, but it cannot be done away with entirely.

What this means for us is that next Wednesday, no matter who wins and who loses, we will still be anxious. Because that other party, that other person, wasn't really the cause of our anxiety. Political victory is just another form of valium; it doesn't change reality, it just distracts the mind for a time. Then it becomes clear again that change is unchanging, and everything that made us anxious is still there. 

Change will not stop happening. Anxiety will return. The world will be different tomorrow than it was today, and different again the day after. We will wake each morning to find ourselves strangers in a strange land. (the title of a 1961 novel by Robert Heinlein that proves how timeless science fiction can really be.)

Is there relief from anxiety? Possibly. But not by attaching it to political parties and then running off to vote against them. It won't stick, and they might lose, and then where will you be? 

The answer to anxiety is to embrace the reality of change. We can then decide how to respond to that change in positive ways. Instead of attaching our anxiety to false demons and praying for relief to false gods, we can take control of what is ours to control. We can do something positive, whether in a responsible (rather than fear-filled) vote, embracing the friendless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, creating good and useful things, caring for children and the elderly. These are the foundations of social life and strengthening them is the best protection against the storms of change.

 

We can take time to meditate, exercise, read, study, enjoy the company of friends, and generally bend our changing selves in a direction we determine. These are the foundations of a stable personal life and the greatest assurance that it will maintain balance in an eternity of change.

We could turn off the TV and Internet, whose sole goal is the transfer of wealth and power from us to someone else, and thus escape the endless anxiety evoking attack ads. 

In short there is much we can do that simultaneously make us masters of change rather than its anxious servants. 

And if we wish to take a deeper dive, then an old hymn offers this: "Be still, my soul; your God will undertake, to guide the future as he has the past; your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake; all now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know his voice who ruled them while he lived below."