To calm us, turning our attention to the familiar is good ––– only if what's familiar is good.
This year's Presidential election has been fraught with voters' anxiety and confusion about how and to what extent an older candidate's age affects that person's ability to govern effectively. Should old people run for political office? Moreover, should old people already in office give up their seats to younger ones? I've been frustrated by the media's preference to rely on political punditry and speculation for answers rather than on consulting geriatricians and gerontologists for scientific explanations.
Given the opportunity, these experts could clarify the actual lack of causal relationship between age and competence. Instead, we've become dependent on using ageist memes to settle the question. We just want to feel less worried, and the way we've chosen to do it is to see the issue in a simplistic way.
Strangely enough, I've found a parallel between this cultural solace-seeking and something I personally experienced during a different Presidential election, one that occurred eight years ago.
For many people, including me, that November 2016 national reckoning was a psychic earthquake that shook us to our core. In utter shock and disbelief, we found ourselves foundering as we tried to reconcile ourselves to a new reality in which a totally suspect and unqualified person was now to be our head of state for at least the next four years.
I cried on and off during that Election Day week with the same intensity I felt at the deaths of the closest people in my life. I was in mourning for a country I thought I had lost forever. I tried to find a way to regain my bearings, to latch on to some bit of comfort as I considered how I could possibly go on functioning daily in this brave new world.
My reaction took the form of binge-watching reruns of "The West Wing," writer Aaron Sorkin's groundbreaking seven-season, 26 Emmy Award–winning series that aired from 1999 to 2006, which focused on the challenges of a liberal White House administration headed by a compassionate, competent President. I got lost in a reassuring world of moral discernment and patriotic commitment. To satisfy my thirst for centeredness, I turned to drinking lustily from a wellspring of decency.
Over the course of that week, I watched the show's more than 150 episodes. And from then until the 2020 Presidential election, I binged watched smaller segments of the series several times. I was like a chronically anemic patient requiring periodic blood transfusions to keep me going.
As it turns out, there's a psychological justification for binging on familiar shows: It's an effective way to reduce your anxiety. According to mental health counselor Lina Mafi, doing so can rekindle the good emotions you felt when first watching those episodes. Rewatching can also support your ability to identify with the characters or story line, which can help you feel less alone. And already knowing the plot can provide you with a sense of predictability and stability, which are essential to feeling in control.
Added to these benefits is what psychology professor Jennifer Fayard refers to as the reduction of the brain's cognitive load from constantly trying to figure out how to adapt to stressful changes. It allows your mind to go on a vacation of sorts, which can refresh, relax, and recharge your internal batteries.
These reactions are normal and healthy. They are life-affirming efforts to establish and maintain mental equilibrium.
But there's a danger in choosing the wrong kind of "rerun binging" to stabilize our mood. To calm us, turning our attention to the familiar is good –– only if what's familiar is good. In this election year, when many of us are willing to accept chronological age as the cause of what we perceive to be a candidate's incompetence or other shortcoming, we opt to find comfort in gorging in familiar, deeply entrenched anti-age beliefs that are all too widespread in our culture. Such impulses should make us reconsider the sources we rely on to calm us down.
We shouldn’t find comfort in being ageist or accepting ageism from others. Instead, it's our familiarity with ageism that should make us anxious. Once we realize the harm that ageism can do in our own lives and those of others, we should stop binging on age bias and instead end the cycle of reruns.
In short, we should do everything we can to change the channel.
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