The Age of Magical Overthinking

To choose a sole role model for everything, based on hasty but overall sound generalizations, is simply a superior use of one’s tight psychological budget.

“Women, who are objects of simultaneous worship and disgust in the public eye, become both victim and villain.”

No one was leaving their couch, but everyone was afraid.

folks with higher anxiety are quicker to engage with, and slower to disengage from, negative information; so, “as a trait and state,” anxiety itself perpetuates paranoid thinking.

Learning to stomach a sense of irresolution might be the only way to survive this crisis.

The Zen Buddhists have a word, “koan,” which means “unsolvable riddle”:

In 2014, bell hooks said, “The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies…. You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.”

In 1980, only about 25 percent of U.S. citizens trusted the government to do the right thing anymore. According to Grose, that’s when the boundaries separating media figures, politicians, and spiritual authorities dissolved for good.

Broadly, magical thinking describes the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect external events.