Going Bananas in the Age of Anxiety

We’re freer, richer, and safer than we’ve ever been. And yet we drive ourselves crazy over things we can’t control.

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There are many ways we could describe our era. It is the information age, early-onset Idiocracy, the rise of the authoritarians, etc., etc., etc. 

We won’t know the truth until the age is over. But to me, we live in the age of anxiety. Americans get about 20 million prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs annually, and while Americans said this year that our worries on a host of subjects has retreated from all-time highs in 2020, we are way, way more worried compared to the recent past. Many of these worries are intensely personal, but others are dislocated societal or political concerns being experienced as personal anxiety. And that’s no good. 

There’s so much anger in our culture today, and you can’t hate something you aren’t afraid of. We are an angry people because we are an anxious people. Politicians, popular culture, the news media, and leaders of major institutions speak in a language of anxiety, and did so long before our now-receding pandemic began. It wouldn’t be so odd if it weren’t for the fact that things are so much better here and now than they’ve been for most of human existence: freer, richer, safer, cleaner, and easier. Yet somehow endlessly problematic and anxiety-inducing. 

There are a lot of reasons for this mismatch. But part is surely a result of media overconsumption—panicky pulp produced to shovel at you in order to hold an audience in a fragmented marketplace. All day, every day, you are offered an unlimited array of serious worries about which you can do next to nothing.

How worried should you be about, say, banana fungus? The story has been everywhere over the past few years, but in case you missed it, the species of bananas that make up almost all human consumption, the Cavendish, is under serious threat. It is the same fungus that took down the previous, ahem, top banana. This time around it could be more serious because of the overreliance on one species. The end of the banana as we know it is a real possibility.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Wait, you’re telling me there’s going to be no more bananas!?!? Oh no! I love bananas! No!

    Just kidding. (I do like bananas though.)

    Seriously, this is a subject that’s been on my mind for years. I’m actually reading The Coddling of the American Mind right now, but the rise of anxiety started before Gen Z. I blame a culture of overprotectiveness and safetyism that’s been on the rise at least since the 70s.

    I’m a Millennial and can remember hearing about other kids’ schools banning tag or dodgeball because they’re too dangerous. Combine that with the peanut free zone BS (for the record, I ate peanut butter sandwiches every day for years in a “peanut-free zone” while sitting next to a friend who actually had an allergy and never once had a reaction to food that I ate), and the removal of deep ends from pools and you begin to see how we got to where we are.

    Ben Sasse’s book, The Vanishing American Adult is useful too, although it’s a little different.

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  2. Kurt Von Fuchs

    Thank you right now I have to cancel my subscription to the dispatch

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  3. Pawpaw

    Redbuds will bloom again this spring...both hope and comfort there.

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  4. Eric L.

    Absolutely spot-on. And living in an age of constant clickbait headlines only makes things worse. Maybe we should all take the pledge and ignore them.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Alec

    To everyone complaining about your HOA: you would NOT like your property value if they didn’t exist.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Sully

    This reminds me of an issue at my company where in a meeting 4 or 5 things will be listed as our top priority. I often then stop to ask "okay, but is our top priority X, Y, or Z" and often get bewildered looks. It's a similar problem in politics so you get proposals to make a dozen underfunded shitty programs rather than 4 or 5 that would be really robust.

    But this also gets to the point of how we should trust experts and that experts should know what their role is. Personally, I find being called a dilettante a complement as I'm keen on knowing a little about a lot, but when I was on track to become an expert in oil refining (Something that I realized was definitely not for me. The expertise, the refining was interesting) was that things that I would care greatly about like how much sulfur content restrictions affected costs of producing fuels, were something that should be argued about in conference rooms at conventions in Little Rock or something but that most people just shouldn't care about at all. In contrast I just have no time to care about things that I use daily like how exactly https keeps my data requests secure yet I know that people argue those points constantly (but more online and less around mediocre catering of pastries and coffee at conferences).

    We have to trust that the people are having these arguments in good faith because I just don't have the time to want to understand any of it. But those experts also need to understand that those arguments aren't society wide questions that need long media explainers and for the public to be engages. It's okay and very necessary for people to have their niche. Specialization is what allows prosperity and all that.

    So yeah, I guess I just had a random rant channeling Yuval Levin about how institutions matter.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Charlie Hall

    We can still support efforts to try to stop the fungus without going insane over it.

    And it is in our interests. Unless you want even more migrants from countries that grow a lot of bananas.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Dusty

    I was born in 1990, meaning that I missed the Cold War. For my generation, the “dive under your desk if you see a flash” drills are an absolute punchline. However, now, as Russia masses forces on the Ukrainian border and China takes a more aggressive posture towards Taiwan, I’m developing the slightest bit of appreciation of what it was like to live with the prospect of World War III looming over you.

    The Cold War was always a punchline to us because we knew how the story ended. It’s a bit different when you’re actually living through it.

    I’m as guilty as anyone about worrying about things outside my control - Supreme Court decisions, executive decisions, new laws in states I’ve never even been too, etc. So whom am I to give advice?

    But, I will say that I’ve had seasons where I’ve tuned out the political noise. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes because my real life has gotten in the way. And while I won’t say those moments are necessarily happier since real life events can be quite sad and difficult, I will say that they are on the whole quite a bit healthier.

    The trouble becomes, what’s a good balance? For awhile my solution was to just read print. Of course, this ruled out TD, which is why I had an on-and-off relationship with it for the first few months of its existence (though always giving in to the temptation to read the free stuff). Eventually my print only strategy seemed to be useless so I purchased a full year membership here to get me off the on-again/off-again seesaw.

    For me, this subscription has been an overall net good. But has it been completely? How many hours have I spent arguing with people - usually the same people - over issues (like abortion) that none of us have any control over and in which we aren’t going to change each other’s minds?

    Perhaps that is all a lesson in prudence and self-control. But elsewhere in life I’ve learned that the best way to avoid temptation is to avoid the situation in which temptations arises as opposed to simply relying on self-control in the moment.

    Does that logic also extend to TD? I mean, probably. I enjoy listening to and reading Jonah, David, and the gang too much at this point to give it up. But the fact of the matter is that the TD is yet another conduit by which all of the troubles of the world are deposited at my doorstep.

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  9. Avatar photo
    John D. Wright

    The chaos of life’s worries were getting me down a lot a few years back. Maybe five now. I cried out to God asking when my seeming endless trials would end. When would I be able to rest? He answered. When I can trust Him and stop doing everything in my own strength. So I gave it to him. My trials though didn’t go away. They still swirl around me like storms passing through. Now though I’ve trusted God. It’s like I’m inside watching the storm through the window. It’s not so worrisome now. Oh I do what I can do but then i’m done with it. I leave it in God’s hands.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    My advice to avoid going bananas?
    Walk!
    Find a lap track where you can unplug, and simply walk. Plain surroundings, let your mind not get overstimulated. The goal is to listen to your body, shut everything else out. As you empty your mind, you'll relax.
    Walk!
    Don't listen to podcasts, don't jam to music, try to think of nothing for at least 10-20 laps (on a 100m track). Don't try to multi-task. Understand sometimes a thought comes to mind ya gotta right down. I have my phone on the window seal. I'll grab it, jot a quick note for no more than one lap, then put it back down.
    Walk!
    The I do something particular to me. After I am relaxed, I then do prayer laps on a 100m track. I try to dedicate 30 laps everyday to friends and family, 1 lap per person. I begin by chanting "Oh Lord of Lords, how majestic is your name in all the Earth". After 3-4 laps of that, I go through a list of people I want to lift up in prayer.
    Walk!
    The prayers invigorate me, and I feel less anxious. I gotta admit, it feels selfish praying that way knowing I'm getting so much out of it too. I will confess, those who don't know me get worried about some old guy apparently talking to himself on the track. Others get it.
    Walk!
    I then finish the prayers, and re-empty my mind. I then come home and read awhile, then on office days go to the office. At lunch I go walk for 20 minutes, to unwind. Then I walk at night.

    Did I mention I like to walk 2-3x daily? busy days are an 45 minutes to an hour, relaxing days are 2 hours.

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    1. P Satter

      "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday I walk myself into a state of well being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right." (Soren Kierkegaard)

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