Coping with tragedy

i humbly reach out today to ask how each of you are dealing with the tragedy facing our world.
in particular, i’m overwhelmed by the Paris attacks, shootings in the U.S., plane bombings, my wife’s mother’s sever depression, Jake’s passing, and the lunacy of Presidential candidates. not to mention the suffering i see and hear in friends and acquaintances on a daily basis.
i’ve lived without a TV and haven't visited News websites for 7 years. recently, i’ve been visiting people with TVs and now i sit in a coffee shop in Upstate NY that’s non-stop “Breaking News” with video of people being carted away on stretchers. i’m getting nauseous and physically overwhelmed by what seems to me a concentration of suffering. is it because i’ve been sensitized by not tuning in everyday? or are others feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly incessant tragedies? are we under attack by fear? how do i cope?
one personal response bubbled up: find a deserted island and move there, build a small compound, and a large wall. y’all can come.
if that’s not probable, what mindsets, practices, inspiration — or lack thereof — do you use daily to grow resilience in this seemingly tragic world?
with love,A

Hi A, Thanks for sharing how you feel and mustering strength to seek support--the key items that really opened my mind and confidence in what people can do despite oppressive or overwhelming circumstances emphasize putting events in the world and what we can do about them into perspective.

Here's a compilation of what I use/developed for myself and often share with others over the years and now up to current events ranging from personal to a broader systems thinking approach:

[personal] 
(1) Embrace an experience/event with a mindful approach to gratitude 

1. Receive and accept what’s given from reality—choose to embrace some aspect of it or the experience as a gift in your own reality (the parts of life you have domain/agency over)
2. Consider what the gift does for you
3. Consider what the gift says about the giver and situation
4. express heartful thanks
   [emotionally sincere to the giver/situation--if the situation is very ambiguous, try to make it very tangible, rationale will follow below in #4]

[existential](2) "You always have choices, even at the moment before death" -my mom supposedly quoting from a marine

Resolve to broader or principled commitments in life, and that we have opportunities to live moments that are a culmination of our choices. I ask/answer three questions to myself:

1) what are 3 choices you can make right now?
2) what is the courageous choice?
3) what are you willing to die for?

It might be counterintuitive and you don't have to share those answers, but it makes a wildly emotional and complex mystery a bit easier to relate to when you frame it in the strategic positive.

[paradigmatic](3) Clarify your relationship to the problem on a systemic level & vice versa
How you can make meaningful impact or intervention with the overarching issue from where you are.

From there, try to collaborate with others (teammates is a great place to start) since I guarantee someone else in the world is also thinking about the same thing from another angle.

[systemic](4) I'll also point you to systems thinking, the notion of "Structure & Agency", and risk governance for navigating complex challenges--no need to get too caught up in the details, it its heart, the two feed into one another:

Structure (environment, institutions ,etc.) influence individual behavior.
Agency (you! your community & capacity to leverage/mobilize it) can influence Structure (the environment).


If music and stories make it easier to remember, there's also the phrase "emotive mechanics":
https://medium.com/hocma-the-science-of-the-heart/emotive-mechanics-in-east-detroit-23a9272d85a1#.ef6kkaq73

It's easier to explain rather than read but here's a guide--also the rationale behind tangible acts for gratitude:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

On recent events, I've mixed feelings about sharing super widely or among acquaintances as it's an early-stage mix of exercise for myself & outreach experiment. Here's how I thought about gun violence with intent to intervene on a systems level--having ways to look at or even frame something as a problem implicates that solutions exist for resolving it: https://iandtran.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/stakes-is-higher-with-cake/

I'd be glad to chat or do a hangout if you'd like to talk. Be well, we're here for you, and take care of yourself in any case.
Ian D. Tran

Desperation, "American Beauty"

I saw American Beauty for the first time this weekend at a house screening as a friend's guest. The person who chose the film explained it was "a classic", and another mentioned it was a "dramedy"--humor to be found in the absurdity of emotional extremes.

Desperation was a key theme to a lot of the behaviors that drew most of the snickers and laughter. If willing, conscientious choice is fundamental to dignity desperation then serves as its converse.

Example: an insecure suburban WASP mom archetype forces a smile and recites capitalistic mantras for success as her work in real estate continues to fail.

For those who rely on one belief or another as a way for finding self-worth and meaning in life, ridiculing desperation quickly skirts the line toward becoming a demeaning and disempowering act. It's mean-spirited if not cynical humor shrouded in the laurels of being an iconic film for mainstream U.S. Cinema.

It's also a negative feedback loop [here's a place better suited for diagrams than text]:
A desperate individual's chosen actions for self-preservation are demeaned when subject to ridicule (bullying). If it's vicious enough, giving up on the practice out of fear becomes a probable outcome, further reducing their choices for a willing existence.

Also, what happens when the topics and subjects of laughter are current and real for members of the audience?

For the sake of self-preservation, the characters are constructed to have little to no choice--they operate from a default stance of desperation--and as a result, little room for realizing dignity. The few who embody a glimpse of dignity are killed or kicked out from families unable to cope with the way their perception of the world unfolds around them.

It's not far from me either: what difference does it make if someone like me ascribes to outdated religious and moral codes like Bushido, or draw from Buddhism's principles, or Christianity's in the hopes that ancestors and family knew what how to cope with their reality in resilient grace?

The answer comes from asking another question I've overheard Cesar Gonzalez emphatically ask: What is the courageous choice?

The courageous choice doesn't involve choosing a particular religion for the sake of having to believe in--unless you have to. If one recognizes holes in any of the religious and spiritual frameworks above, it is courageous to forgo holding onto an ineffective and rigid belief for the sake of faith in oneself and one's capacity to engage the future by embracing the present.

As easy it is to write, that's a tall task for one, myself included, to instantaneously take to heart and keep.

Similarly, is it better to leave a familiar source of suffering for peace of mind or choose to endure it for the sake of seeking meaningful actions out of repetitious exposure?

Side note:
Circa 2011/2012 I adapted Hamilton's Rule from evolutionary biology:
(Relatedness * Benefits)-Costs >1 for altruistic behavior to be likely
as a way to roughly rank experiences with a film:
(Relevance x Benefits) - Costs > or = to 1 for a good film

If it's really relevant, and it benefits you in some way which outweighs the costs of cognitive/emotional/time/physical load, it's a good film.

Definition: good? I'll reference Aldo Leopold's characterization of good:
A thing tends to be good when it preserves the integrity and beauty of the human and biotic community.

American Beauty, at least on first impression, does almost the exact opposite. We find glimmers of hope in one or two individuals, not the community.

Originally I adopted the rule out of anger at Pan's Labyrinth--which takes viewers through a fantastical and terribly oppressive world, and the end reward for the audience is a glimpse of the protaganist entering eternal life as she leaves the rest of the real world behind to carry on in dystopic chaos. It was a disproportionate benefit and the movie left a bad taste...

Just as Pan's Labyrinth, American Beauty was a relatively disempowering film. Yes, grace in American Beauty could be found in the protagonist's moment of transcendent acceptance (to paraphrase: "there's so much beauty in the world, you just have to let it flow through you"), and two teenagers deciding to leave abusive households. However, the overwhelming chain of events in the film lead to negative and destructive fragmentation of many relationships and some resulting in killing. The reality depicted in the film echoes much of what we already see in the world or grow up with. The emotional impact calculus burdens the viewer with more vivid problems than they can engage or resolve, and the "one to many" nature of communicating content in film and television to large audiences more often than not makes it an isolating endeavor.

Honesty without humanity is brutality, to paraphrase...