[anon9001]

That's funny, because as an atheist, I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk.

So I find satisfaction in that nothing matters anyways, and the best we can do is try to live a good life while we're here, and not take any of it too seriously. Because it's all random and largely out of my control, there's no rational basis for worry.

It's nice to see a Christian that reached the same conclusion with a totally different process :)

[david-gpu]

> I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk

Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?

[Spooky23]

Significant trauma will shake any belief or philosophy.

[yters]

To an extent I agree. But, a counter point, I've experienced significant depression (very first world problem), and reasoning about my situation objectively has actually helped me. I try to distance myself from my feelings and acknowledge what my real state in life is, and make choices accordingly. That has kept me out of some trouble, and also helps turn my feelings around.

The very act of choosing based on reason instead of feeling gives me a feeling of power, and depression tends to be accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. This seems to be the mechanism of how reason helps me with depression.

Of course, it is not a complete cure, and it would be trite to say so, but reasoning does help.

[anon9001]

Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me? And if the kid never comes back, what's an appropriate "normal human" duration of restlessness?

People go to therapy for years to get over that restless stuff and replace it with some version of accepting that the world is not under your control.

No doubt that upsetting things are upsetting, but the guiding principle is that you have to accept the things you can't control, and do the best with the things you can control.

[coldtea]

>Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me?

People don't respond to things just because it "gets them somewhere", and even less for such events.

One doesn't do a calculation "I'll grieve for X amount of time, because this has the best effects", except if they are a sociopath.

At best they can say after some time "I feel like I've grieved enough now, I should try to get back with life" -- and even that is not a decision, it's a gradual process with regressions, etc.

[anon9001]

We're in agreement. I'm just saying the goal is to process events, grieve, and find a path back to "normal". Where, ideally, "normal" isn't constant anxiety and existential crises. Eventually, you have to learn to let even the most traumatic stuff go, or it'll haunt you forever.

[yters]

Yes, that is the flaw in my reasoning. If someone used my reasoning to just check out and not be concerned about their children being abducted, then we'd rightly believe there is something wrong with that person.

And if the parent became manic and left no stone unturned in their search for their child, like Taken, we'd be understanding.

Yet, our world is not the world of Taken, and we are not ex-CIA agents capable of destroying anyone in our path. There are truly evil people in this world capable of harming us, whom we have no power to thwart. Think of people living in the land of a drug lord, who can swoop in and take their children if he feels like it. Or the Uighurs and Falun Gong of China, who are regularly captured and organ harvested, and there's nothing they can do about it. There is great evil in our world, and little we can do about it but do our best to fight it and never give up, and even then there is no hope of truly eradicating evil from our world. What is the appropriate response?

[yters]

I believe I say the exact same thing in the second half of my comment.