Ruth Whippman on the Complexity of Happiness

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf h thanks for joining us. Our guest on

this episode is Ruth Whipman. Ruth is a regular contributor to radio shows, television, and podcasts, having made appearances on shows including NPRS, Brian Lair Show, To the Point, CBS News, and Morning Edition, amongst many others. Her book is America The Anxious, How our pursuit of happiness is creating a nation of nervous rex. Hi, Ruth, Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Yeah,

I'm so excited to have you on. We're going to discuss your book, America the Anxious, why our search for happiness is driving us crazy, and how to find it for real. But before we do that, let's start, like we always do, with a parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she said, as in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So

it's really interesting. Ever since you first got in touch a couple of months ago and said, you know, it was I interested in being on the show, um, and you told me about this parable, and I've never heard it before, and it's been kind of playing in my mind for the last couple of months, you know, I've been thinking about it and trying to sort of apply it to different situations. And there's something about it that's always made me feel a little uneasy, and I was

trying to work out what it was. And I think what I got to is that this parable makes me feel insecure, that I'm not always clear which wolf is which, and I'm I think that this is the problem with the modern world. I think all of our most interesting dilemmas in life, all of our most complex philosophical questions or ethical questions, spiritual questions, personal questions, are not generally questions of good versus evil. I mean, I think we know what evil is, and most of us don't believe

we're evil and are not trying to be. I think that accounts with the vast majority of the population. I think our most interesting and most complex questions are between good versus good, you know, competing goods, and so this is, you know, and I'm not always sure which wolf I'm looking at you know, in any given situation, I will think that a certain thing is the right way to go, obviously clearly this, and then you know, a day later,

I'll change my mind. I think I maybe too neurotic for these wolves, you know, I think all my wolves are kind of mashed up into some more terrible like uber wolf. That it's like a horrible hybrid mutant wolf inside me that is a bit of both. And I guess, um, I mean, maybe that's what has strut me. I've spent, you know, in writing my book America the Anxious, I spent a lot of time looking at the happiness industry, you know, the ways that you know, commercial entities try

to sell us happiness. And I think, you know, as the self help industry perhaps, And I think this is something that's quite specific to the self help industry, that everybody is trying to sell easy answers. Everybody is trying to sell their thing, their idea, as the key to happiness,

the key to righteousness, the key to good. And I think what I realized is that what we need to do when we look at all these things is sort of maintain a quite a questioning attitude and really to be quite I mean, cynical is probably the wrong word, but skeptical to employ a bit of skepticism and not jump in and think, right, this is the good world.

Here we go, you know, you know, I think we're all quite prone in the modern era, you know, to to to jump on the next good wolf each time, right, right, And we do. We all want easy answers because life is incredibly complex, and it's very difficult, and it is hard to to know and figure out, and so we want easy answers. And I'm struck by how convincing the easy answer is. Even and I I found this in

in your book too. With you you would say I don't believe this, A, B, and C. And then you would find yourself going, but boy, the allure of it is really strong, and so I'm being pulled towards it. And and so I am deeply mistrustful of easy answers. And yet when I find myself in a certain amount of struggle, I start looking at things that I previously went, that's too pad of an answer, and going did I overlook that? And usually the answers no, I didn't write.

Life is complex, But but we do have this desire for things to be simple and easy, you know, to to use, you know, an example from your book, right, we all want to to be as simple as I will be happy if I just write down three things I'm grateful for every day and that's it. I'm done. I mean, that's that. That was a classic example, the glassitude journal. I mean, we've all heard about this gratitude

journal that we're all supposed to be keeping. You know, at the end of the day, write down three things you're grateful for, or you know, write yourself a gratitude letter, or you know, there's different versions of it, and then you'll be happy. I mean, if that were the case, then we could set save absolutely billions worldwide and antidepressant

use in medical bills, in human heartache. I mean, we know that it's not that simple, and yet people make a lot of money from selling us these easy answers, and it is an impulse. And I think the more vulnerable we feel, and the self help industry does tend to prey on people who are quite vulnerable, often not always, but often, you know, the more unhappy and uncertain we feel,

the clearer we want our answers to be. And I think being able to sit with a certain amount of complexity and be able to sit with the idea that you know, actually things aren't simple and that's okay, is really helpful. Yeah. It's one of the things that most deeply drew me to Buddhist teaching early on was this idea where the Buddhas said, like, don't just take what I'm saying on my authority, try these things in your

own life and see what happens. And I find that to be such a deeply profound teaching because we are all so different, our life circumstances are so different, our genetics are so different, how we were ray. I mean, there are so many factors that that what we think. You know, even when we read a study, and we can talk about how flawed so many of them are, but even when we read a study that says this is a good thing, I think it's like, well, try

and see what works. It's interesting, absolutely right. And I think the thing about studies is interesting in and of itself. I mean, we rely very, very heavily on studies. And I'm certainly somebody who believes in the in science and in research and all the rest of it, in evidence based things, but at the same time, what is a study. It's two hundred college students who have been told to

do A or B and what happens to them. I mean, this is a very specific population that take part in these studies, and usually it's you know, a difference of two or three people. You know, if you get a hundred don's you can get statistical significance with just a handful of them doing something slightly differently on one side

of the other. And then we take this thing that you know, a couple hundred college students did a few years back in a room on a certain day, and we use this as some kind of sense of destiny for our own life. You know, I think we need to have a little bit of skepticism about what all

these things are for. I agree. I mean doing this show has been a journey for me, right, and I have been on it, and I think earlier in the process I really was like, oh, all these scientific studies and and you know it must be true and and again I think some of them point in interesting and

useful directions. But to your point, they are usually very small, they are done on a very specific population and people in that in those fields that are honest we'll also talk about what they call the reproducibility crisis, which is absolutely none of these the same thing doesn't seem to work when we run the study again and so so again.

I think, and I think with this some as complex as people's psychology, a study is only going to be so useful anyway, because it works for me, could be wildly different from you, even if you control for a few things, because you can't control for the huge complexity of people's psychological and spiritual lives. Absolutely, And the other thing about study. There have been published, probably over sixty four thousand research studies into what makes human beings happy.

And I started, you know, when I was researching my book, I started reading all this stuff, which you know is fundamentally quite a joyless thing to do, you know, really academic happiness studies. It's not a fun way to spend your weekend. But what I found pretty quickly was the studies are incredibly contradictory. I mean, you can find a study to say pretty much anything and also the exact

opposite of that thing. So you can find a study that says that money makes no difference to happiness, But you can also find a study saying that it makes a huge difference to happiness. You know, you can find a study that says that feminism has made women unhappy, but also that feminism is women's saving grace. You know that mindfulness is great and mindfulness does nothing, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So often the studies end up revealing more about the agendas of the people funding the studies than they do very much about actual human beings and how they live. So caution with studies. That that was what I learned.

Having said all that, I'm going to be very hypocritical hire for a moment, which is that you know, as I was writing my book at one point, which I got into quite a dark place in the middle of writing it because I found so much inconsistency in the studies and so many hucksters and so many people selling false messages and all the rest of it, that I started to get to the point where I thought, oh God, you know, this book is going to the conclusion of this book is going to be nobody can be happy,

don't even bother trying. There's nothing you can do. It's all a disaster. And I was like, no one's going to buy this apart from anything else. And you know, and it was kind of slightly it was a slightly

depressing message. But then I started to realize that there was one thing that was very consistent across all the research and across people's experiences that I spoke to, And it was the sort of one factor that really seemed to be pretty rock solid no matter who was conducting the studies, who was funding them, almost to the point where it was so solid that, um, if researchers were studying anything else, they had to control this one thing out of the studies. And that is the importance of

human relationships. Social relationships and connection really is a huge, huge factor in our happiness. And you know, when I started to identify that, I saw it was such a pattern that social support and community really is so key to our well being. So I guess if there is a good wolf to feed, you know, that's the one community and relationships. Listeners have heard me say this before, but when I started the show, I really thought what I was going to hear and learn was more of

just go within. Happiness is inside, you know, you do that right, And and I am a believer that there is a role for that and of course there is a lot on this show that we talked about that. But the part that's been surprising to me and to your point, just comes up over and over like a hammer to my head. Is the role of our connection

to other people. How critical that is. And and I actually would say even more than just connection to other people, connection to all sorts of different things, but other people is one that is so clearly, like you said, in in all the science over and over, and I think in our own experience and we look at who people are happy, right, all that all of it sort of confirms that good relationships help. And it's interesting because you talk about how our pursuit of happiness in the US

is so individualistic. Yes, absolutely mean I think, um, you know, the US and the UK to a certain extent, but that the worst. But you know, the US particularly is a very very individualistic society, and we believe in, you know, pursuing our own goals and doing our own thing. And I think the self help industry really pushes this message,

which is happiness is a personal journey. You know, find yourself, be yourself, self help, self care, self knowledge, focus on the self, you know self self self self self and actually, when you look at what the research actually says about what happiness is, it really is completely back to front. I mean it's really the self help industry is really pushing us in this very individualistic direction when actually happiness

does absolutely come from social connection. You know, it's quite misleading that the the agenda that they're they're pushing in a way. Well, I think it's interesting too because I might be wrong about this, but I think that one of the earlier uses of the self help movement actually was alcoholics and that is one of the early uses of oh it's a self help because it's not professionals, but but a A is so fundamentally social and so fundamentally about other people. So I think even the term

over time has gotten a little bit perverted. Just to add to your point, I mean, the a A thing is a great example. I think one of the reasons why historically self help has been so incredibly popular in the US is because there's much less of a social safety net. You know, there's less help from anywhere else, so you know, you kind of got to help yourself

because there's no one helping you in a way. You know, you get very little support in terms of support with maternity leave or childcare or you know, welfare or subsidized services or you know, these sorts of things which you know smoothed the passage of life for people in Europe, Scandinavia, wherever. Um that, I think you know that there's a real American tradition of self reliance which is great in many ways.

So the other point that you bring up in your book, which is a very interesting one that I think is worth talking about because I um, I feel very similar, is the whole idea in the self help space that we are kind of completely responsible for how we feel,

We are completely responsible. And while I find it's of that message to be incredibly valuable and incredibly important, and a lot of my background comes from people, uh comes from the recovery movement, where personal accountability and responsibility is so crucial, like actually going like I'm the problem here, Yeah that's me, Yeah, it's on me. Yet I also agree with you that I find so much of what is really appalling to me in parts of the self help or the law of attraction world or all of

that to be this fundamental sort of victim blaming. Yes, I think it absolutely is, because you know, I think you've probably seen the memes which you know happiness is a choice, which kind of implies that if you're not making that choice, then you know, it's just a simple method of you know, you're not choosing, you're not working hard at it. You know that, and you see it in the positive thinking movement, you know it's just because

you're being negative. For even in the mindfulness movement, you know, the problem is you because you're not being mindful enough for positive enough, or grateful enough, or you're not doing enough um you know, meditation or self help workshops, all the rest of it, and it does become a kind of victim blaming, and it's sort of this inability to acknowledge that there are systemic reasons why people are unhappy, you know, which are everything from your genes to your

circumstances to your environments. I mean, one of the strong messages in positive psychology. I don't know if you've seen this very famous pie chart. I have. I've referenced it before too, So please this is this is good because it is something that has come up on the show before, and so I would I would love to have you

discussed it. So there is a academic positive psychologist, a professor called Sonia Lubamerski, and she has done this kind of graphic, which is a pie chart, which sort attempts to break up you know what the different components of

our happiness are. And so in the pie chart she attributes about fift to your genes and your genetics, and then about ten so this tiny little sliver to your circumstances, and that includes everything from you know, your your demographic information, your race, your gender, your social class, your income, to everything that happens in your life that's beyond your control. So you know, whether you lose your job, or you have a miscarriage, or you break up with your partner

or those sorts of things. So that's your circumstances ten only. And then for she attributes to your personal effort. You know that the fort is under your controls. So in her theory, it's four times as important to to make a big effort than it is you know what actually happens to you in your life. So you know this narrative. So I went back and had a look at where this data actually came from, and I found this thing

was just absolutely riddled with errors and nonsense. And you know it's just basically not true in any meaningful sense at all for a start, but also it's really quite a damaging narrative, you know if you say that, just you know, just this tiny part of your experience and how happy you are as you knows your circumstances and

everything else is your own fault. Basically, you know, you're choosing how happy to be, so kind of mask gaslighting really of people's actual circumstances, and it really kind of

encourages this lack of compassion for people. I think, Yeah, I found the pie chart idea to be helpful for me, um, and it's I'm glad to hear you go back and sort of unpack the data that says, you know, you based on what the original studies, where you could have really drawn that pie chart lots of different ways exactly. I initially found when I first saw fifty it was kind of what is called the happiness set point. Right. I originally was both depressed by that and relieved by that. Right.

I was depressed because I come from a history of depressive people, right, And so I was like, oh, well that explains and so so in that way. But on the other hand, I was like, oh, well, maybe I can stop feeling like this is my fault that I'm this way and so then so fifty percent of it is that, right, which again you can take that messages

is um depressed or positive? You can say, oh, well, I can control fift of it, and I'll use the word control there in quotes, right, and then there then the rest of it breaks down into this narrative of only a little bit of it is your circumstances, and the rest of it is the effort you put in two volitional activities. Now, the way I have heard that talked about before, though, is that things volitional activities would be things like spending more time with other people, which

we know to be a predictor of happiness. And so I think all those percentages can be debated. And I'm a big fan of another Buddhist teaching that listeners are surely here is tired of hearing me bring up which is the middle way, which says that any extreme I am wary of. So people who say, like, your happiness has nothing to do with your circumstances, right, you can be happy in any circumstances, Well, that's nonsense, right, And people who say it's only about your circumstances, because that's

where a lot of us focus all our effort. If I just change this circumstance and that circumstance, yeah, and if you're just you're a prisoner of what happens to you. Yeah, and then and then you know, yeah, if you get the right job, the great person, all that you'll be happy to which I also recognized to be a mistruth. Right, I've had good things happen in my life, and I very quickly adjust to them and can go back to my usual sad sack self if I know, if I don't watch it right. And so so I find I

find either of those narratives to be very limiting. Like, of course, our circumstances matter, and of course, you know, people who have really difficult life circumstances suffer more than other people. Whether those circumstances are um, social or economic, or the way you were raised or the trauma you suffered. I mean, of course those things matter. And of course the efforts, the things that we do to try and

live a good life also matter. Yes, absolutely, And I think you're right, And I think part of what kind of riled me up about this particular pyechat was what was in that that they were advocating, So you know that what was in the part that you can do

for yourself? Because I think it was all these things like, you know, right, your your gratitude journal, your three good things that happened today, and you know, do some optimism maximus as exercises and do your mindfulness practice and you know, and I thought, really, are you really saying that it's four times more important to you know, write down three good things that happened that day then that you know, your marriage broke up, that you're living in poverty, that

you you know, these huge things. And I think part of the problem is it's this quite right wing narrative essentially, you know, it's this very um I think there's always been this tension in politics between you know, whether people are constrained by their circumstances or whether this kind of meritocratic idea, which is, you know, anybody can make anything of themselves, the American dream, just work harder and you put yourself up by your bootstraps, which doesn't acknowledge that

we're not all starting from the same place. And I think this is this kind of narrative. You know that bootstraps idea applied to the emotions, which I think is often not that helpful. But yes, as you said, of course there is something very liberating about the idea that we can rise about, a rise above our circumstances, and still be happy in adversity for sure. Yeah, well I

found it fascinating. This I did not know right um about the positive psychology movement is that how much of it has been funded by the Templeton Foundation, which I also knew almost nothing about except that they seemed to fund what to me were interesting things about happiness, and so that was my extent of it. But but tell us about the Templeton Foundation, because I think that will tie together your statement just a second ago about some of these ideas can be very right wing. I think

we need to make that connection. So I mean, Barbara Arnwright, who wrote a book called Smile Orde, started looking at this a while back, and then, you know, I also looked at it in my book America the Actors, which is that the vast majority of the academic positive psychology movement in the United States is funded by one organization

called the Templeton Fan Nation. Now the Templetum Foundation was set up by a man named John Templeton Jr. And he was a very right wing man and a massive donor to the Republican Party, to anti gay marriage causes, to the Christian right to all. I mean, he was a huge donor to right wing political causes. And he also had the Temperatu Pup Foundation, which is on the face of it and a political group. It's not a you know, it's not party political in on the face

of it. But everything that they have chosen to fund, you know, they are looking at the causes of happiness, and everything they have chosen to fund us is studies about how we can just try harder at being happy. So there are a lot of studies which are all about, you know, getting people who are poor or in bad circumstances and just making them try a little bit harder at being happy to change their attitudes rather than their circumstances.

And there are no studies funded by the Templeton Organization about whether social justice would make a different, whether about materially improving the lives of these people, about listening to people's concerns and and acting on them. You know, these studies do not exist. Or they're not they're not being funded by this movement. And I think it's set the terms of the debate before we've even get out got

out of the gate. It's set up a whole academic discipline, and it's framed the terms of how we look at this question, you know, from a very right wing perspective before even starting. Yeah, so interesting. I never really connected those dots in my mind, and as a show, we

generally stay away from getting too political. But I think it's a very interesting connection that all those studies are funded by an ideological perspective that says, yes, your happiness is your own responsibility, your life is your own responsibility.

We can all just pull ourselves up and points away from something that you say very very well at one point in the book, and you say we need to think of well being as a shared resp answer ability rather than individual quest, and to develop a discourse of happiness that engages with people's problems rather than dismisses them. And I think that is such a I think it's a great summary for the entire book, and and so

well said. And that's a way to frame up what we were just talking about with the Templeton foundation, right, I think so, because, yeah, this isn't a party political issue. There are people of all political persuasions who are generous

and compassionate and all the rest of it. But I think this is just a way of framing the question, which, you know, it's really important to realize where these ideas come from, you know, And I think when we're you know, I think if you go too far down there, it's your fault, it's your responsibility, it's your fault narrative, then it's very easy to lose compassion. You know. A big theme in the in the self help movement is the

law of attraction. Yes, oh god, it's one of those things like if I again, if I take the middle of the road, you know, the middle road approach, I go, there's a lot of there's a lot of ideas there that are true. Like I don't know, I don't I don't necessarily think there's a mystical um component happening. But if we focus on what's important to us, and we put our time and energy towards it, and we keep it in the front of our mind, we're going to

get more of that thing. Like I think there's some truth in there, but the implications of you take that theory very far are horrific. That the children being abused right now, they somehow attracted that to themselves. I think it's a it's a profoundly horrible idea, right. And you know, so that book The Secret where the Laura attraction came from. I went back and look, because she was promoted what's her name, Rohnda Byrne. I think she was promoted very

heavily by Oprah at the time. And I went back and searched on YouTube and found the old episodes of Oprah where they were talking about that book and some of the stuff that they were coming out with. I was thinking, you really wouldn't be able to get away

with that now. You know. There was stuff where you know, you know, there was this one word and she'd been fired from her job and um, you know, she had her boss had been really unfair and I can't remember the exact circumstances of it, and she had a young child who was a single mom, and you know, Oprah's advice on the sort of you know, as part of this whole secret thing was for her to go and write a gratitude letter to her boss for firing her, you know, not any sense that there should be kind

of a you know, any kind of employment protection for her job, or that you know, perhaps she'd been unfairly treated or anything, you know, was that she should go and be grateful to her boss for firing her, without

looking at any of the circumstances of the case. And I was thinking, you know, this really is or another woman who her husband had left her, you know, had been gambling, I think, or had got into all this debt and had left her, you know, with all this debt for the wife was not her fault at all. And they were kind of pretty much blaming this woman for this whole situation and telling her that she ought to write a gratitude letter to her husband for all

of this happening. And I was thinking, you know, this is just absolutely nuts. This is some kind of emotional basis, you know, and I think that our ideas on it have moved on over time. But yeah, it's as you said, balance is important, But um, I think we've gone too far to to that side of things in this country, and I think we need to kind of pull back and look at more collective solutions. That is an unequivocal

uh statement that I can agree with it. We do need to look at things more collectively, and it needs to be more of of a wee thing. I mean, I I look, you know, my sort of quote unquote self help journey, you know, started with my recovery from heroin addiction, which was profoundly shaped by the people that were around me and by the support that was available to me. And you know, all that stuff was made possible by a social support system as well as then

all the people that I found that were there. And I do think that that's such an important piece. The thing about that idea of like write a gratitude list of the person who fired you sounds completely nuts, right. It makes me think back to an idea though that I used to hear in in twelve step recovery, which was pray for the person that you have a lot

of resentment towards. And part of me is like, well, part of my reaction was well that is crazy, and then the other part of it to me was well, if I continue to hate this person, I'm the one who's ultimately probably suffering from that, and learning to let

go of that somehow is probably a good idea. But I think going as far as I'm going to write gratitude gratitude to somebody who has fired me in a in a cruel and unfair way, stretches that, Uh, that concept a little bit beyond its usefulness, right, absolutely, And I think you also have to look at the power structures our pricing behind all that, because I think it's

one thing. You know, if you're in a pretty equal relationship with somebody and you know there's a breakdown of trust or you resent them for something, that's one thing and to let go of that resentment, I think is healthy and it's going to do a big favor if you do that, And to forgiveness is just such an important piece of social connection. I often think about this idea of responsibility and blame, yes, right in our own lives, like where am I taking responsibility in a useful way?

And where my taking blame for something? So I just think it's an interesting idea to be curious your thoughts. Yeah, it's it's a really good distinction, I think, um, And I think absolutely. I mean, personal responsibility in our relationships is so key to having healthy relationships. You know, to admit when you've been wrong to to accept your own part in things, to not blame the other person or

the rest of it. So I think that is a great way to be um to be in a relationship, as long as that relationship is basically one of equals. I think when that, when you are looking at something where there is this you know, complicated dynamic of of of power and you know, somebody having a whole own bed, then I think that that becomes quite a different equation.

And it's interesting. I have these conversations with my son a little bit who is in college and very studying sociology, the sociology of race um a lot of environmental stuff, and and we talk a little bit about, you know how he sort of staring down these really big problems all the time and the moment, yeah, and and so it what, you know, what is the what is the proper relationship to all right, there are these fundamental structural problems with the world that I want to change, and

what is the relationship then with my own mental health around those things? And it gets back to this idea a little bit of responsibility and you know, recognizing how much responsibility we have, what we can actually change, what we actually can't change is such a such a big thing. It makes me think of what you said very early when we talked about the two wolves, and you said, well,

I think part of the problem is I can't. The wolves look pretty close right, like I can sort I can sort out, like, yeah, I can sort out the wolf that tells me to go stab my downstairs name because they're making too much noise. I can. I can clearly dismiss that wolf. I think it's sort of like the serenity prayer, which I think is one of the wisest things ever, and yet it's the reason why. It's like we're praying for the wisdom, because my God, it's

hard to find. It's so hard to know where should I push, where should I change, where should I accept? And it's so gray. Yes, it's so great. And I find that especially. You know, I'm a parent of three children, and mine are younger, but I find that all the time with parenting. I find that's like the absolute source of all of my biggest philosophical, moral, emotional conundrums. You know, I don't know which one is the good wolf. I can read something which says, you know, be stricter, and

I think Okay, that's the way to go. And then I'll read something which says be you know, be less strict, be kind of you know, more understanding, and I think, okay, well that's the way to go, you know. And all of these can make a very very good case for being the right way to go, and all of them come from a good place. I mean, we all want to raise healthy, happy kids. But it's just, you know, how do you do that? That's that that's the question.

You know. It's not, as you say, no one's you know, no one's really advocating that you beat your kids or you starve them whatever. It's just, you know, between these these good wolves, you know, people presenting themselves as the

good wolves, which one is the way to go? And as you said about you know this this question with your son about how do we deal with these terrible things that happened in the world and these huge issues to deal with, and especially now, I think we're at the kind of peak anxiety at the moment politically and socially, Um, how do we deal with that and still preserving our own mental health? And I think that is a huge question.

And I think are the the younger generation the generation of college students now I really admire because I think they are willing to tackle the big questions in a way that my generation was too busy getting drunk and ignoring it, you know, and letting the world kind of burn. And you know, so I think it's a tricky one because I think the easy thing would be to say, I will just switch off from it, but you know, to preserve your own mental health. But that's not going

to help. You know, we have to be informed citizens, you know, and we have to find a way to stay engaged and to you know, to make changes and to fight for what's right and at the same time take care of ourselves. Yeah, and I think not only are college students wrestling with this. I mean I hear this from listeners all of the time. Like I'm watching this political train wreck and I can't turn away from it. And yet this staring at it all day long is

just making me sicker and sicker and sicker. And you know, where what is the what is the right amount of engagement with that that is actually useful? And you know, I think we're all trying to figure this out. In my own life, I've hit a point where I'm like, if what I learned is going to cause me to do something, then I think it's worth continuing to engage

and learn and and and listen. And if, on the other hand, it's just going to reinforce the same things that I already know, that I already feel, then it may not be a useful thing for me. That the constant outrage about something that I'm not planning to do anything about feels to me like very corrosive, very corrosive for no good, right, It just corrodes me and the

people around me. Um. Whereas you know, I think if it's if it's something I'm going to that I'm going to engage in and do something about, then you know, I think it's really important. And so that's kind of where I have been sitting with it lately. Yeah, that's an interesting way, because I think there's two trends which are going on. One is that the objectively is just a lot of very anxiety producing stuff that's going on in the news right now. I think that's just kind

of a given. And the other thing is that we just have access to far more information than we ever have, you know, we have just you know, with our phones and just devices, and you know, social media and just constant trip trip rip drip drip access to the news. I think we're absorbing information in a very different way than we already have. So these two trends together, I think is just completely and utterly overwhelming. I mean, I

think what you said is really interesting for me. I think I've probably set the bar slightly differently because I think I accept that there will be many things that I will want to know about and be informed about that I probably won't be taking any very direct action on. I think I just because of where I am in my life. I think, you know, I've got three very

young children, I have a job. So I think, you know, I can't quite set the bar at that the point that you've set it, which is, you know, if I'm not going to take action on something, I'm not going to know about it, because there are only so many things I can take action on. You know. I do call my senator, I do, you know, sign my petitions, and I do make political donations, and I do do things,

but you know that there are limits on it. And so I do think being informed in and of itself is doing something you know, I don't think it's nothing. But you know, I, like everybody else, really struggles to find the right balance. And you know, I do find myself getting overwhelmed and feeling very anxious and toxic. And I have tried to sort of compartmentalized by time and say, Okay, I'm not going to look at my phone or look at the news until such and such a time. And

you know, I've tried different ways. I don't think I've hit on the right thing for sure. Yeah, I don't think there is any any right answer. And I'm I'm not quite as uninformed as that just sounded. But sorry, I probably made it sound worse than it yet. Yeah, no, but no, I think it is. It is that balance of like how much time do I need to hear

sort of the same the same. The other thing that I think is happening, which I think is a really interesting phenomenon, is that on one hand, we are very anxious and things look really grim, and you know, climate change is really bad, and on the other hand, by all sorts of different measures, the world is becoming a much better place. That is true in some sort of in some semi staggering ways, And so I think that

that that is another narrative that we mostly miss. We we might get fed schmaltzy feel good stories that sometimes are helpful, But I don't know that we hear enough about, you know, how much better life is for the average human than it was a hundred years ago. Yes, I think that's such an important point, and it's such an important thing to remember. And you know, just as you're talking, I'm just kind of wondering, you know, something like climate change.

This is fun that I go back and forth on myself, because on the one hand, you know, if you hear, if you read one thing about climate change, you know, you know it's coming, then you're an informed citizen. And you know, do you need to read it fifty times a day in fifty different ways? And I don't know, is there something about the drip drip, drip, drip drip that actually is the only thing that will get us to actually do anything about it? Or is it is it the kind of thing you can know once and

and forget about. I don't know. I think part of the anxiety does help me do lots of little things to kind of, you know, in my daily life. It does sort of serve as a reminder. But yes, it is definitely in competition with my mental health. Yeah, yeah,

back to what we talked about earlier. Everybody is different, right, like, you know, because the far extreme for a lot of people of too much of this is then becomes complete disengagement, right like now I'm done, Yes, in your life, I can't fix anything, and I just fall into a state of depression and apathy. And so everybody's going to engage with these things differently, and sort of back to an earlier thing that we talked about also, you know, with

studies and like what works for me? You know, what, what is it for me? That is the balance that seems to work that allows me to move forward? And I was thinking about social media. You certainly have some chapters in the book. And by the way, I've not said this in the interview, I'm gonna say it now for list is your book is wonderful. It is hilarious. I highly recommend it. Um and I can't I can't cover even one percent of of how much UM good

stuff and how much I laughed during the book. But you talk all about the challenges of social media, and there's all sorts of studies that show that night. So I'll get listeners like should I give up social media altogether? As social media bad? And I'll go, well, I don't know what is it for you, like like what's your relationship to like what's doing in your life? Because I don't know that there's an answer for every yes and also not. You know, there's different answers at different times.

You know, at some points in my life social media has been really helpful and other points it's just been a complete ship show. Sorry, can I say that? Yeah? You can? You know, so, I think it's sort of it really depends where you are in your life and you know what's going on for you as to how you respond to all that stuff. Well, Ruth, this has been a wonderful conversation. I feel like I could do it for a whole lot longer, but we are at

the end of our time here. So I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with me. Oh it's been such a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome, Bye bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support the One You feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.