I’ve taken a break from writing for a couple of days. I had some important personal matters that deserved my full attention. Because of those intervening priorities, I had reached my limit for toiling against tyranny. I’d had enough. Call it resistance fatigue.
We each have our own limit for how much of this political horror show we can tolerate. Some of my friends seem blithely unaware or unconcerned with what’s going on. For them, it’s just another hot summer, and they have the nerve to be more concerned with their personal lives. How nice.
People make decisions based upon the limited information they have, their cognitive abilities, and time constraints—this is a concept known as bounded rationality.
I’ll let others speak to my cognitive abilities, but recently, there has been too much news about the administration for me to keep up with, and there have been serious constraints on my time, and I feel as if I’ve lost touch a little.
A few things about this:
First, losing touch with the political madness now and again is healthy. We have some ability to limit how much time we spend thinking about tyrants, and rationing how much space we allow them to occupy in our minds constitutes an act of resistance I call personal sovereignty. Just remember to tune back in when you’ve recharged your batteries.
Second, everyone has a limit to how much they can know about what’s going on and how much time they can devote to worrying about it and working against it. When you reach your threshold, don’t be frustrated, simply acknowledge it, and allow yourself the grace to take a break. When you get overwhelmed, it helps to focus on just one issue where you think you can have the most positive impact.
Third, when you recognize your personal limits, it becomes easier to recognize that others have a limit to how much they can take in and understand about what’s going on—and if you’re reading Corridor Rabbit, your limit is probably higher than most.
When we meet in person with friends and acquaintances, we have an opportunity to engage in a respectful conversation about the troubles we face. We can voice our concerns, and we can add our point of view to the matrix of influences that occupy the limited space in their minds, and we can contribute to their understanding of the challenges we all face. If you’re a good listener, you can allow them to become one of the influences on your understanding as well.
In many ways, that’s what keeps me writing Corridor Rabbit. It’s an opportunity to share a snapshot of the issues I’m concerned about and what I’m doing to work against rising authoritarianism in the United States. Thanks for allowing me to occupy a little space in your mind today.
Share this post if you’d like to occupy a little space in someone else’s mind.
Liking, sharing, or commenting on this post IS an act of resistance. Corridor Rabbit is meant to serve as a casual guide for how to start and grow an informal resistance group. It is not authoritative; it is a live journal documenting our efforts. It is a call to action. It's an invitation to connect and share what you are doing to resist authoritarianism. Read more about the goals of Corridor Rabbit. We design our illustrations with the help of AI.
My version of resistance fatigue is remember it's my job to persuade my audience, and that the audience is normally much bigger than the person directly engaging with. In other words, while I would like to go lawyer mode on the person I'm talking to that would be terrible in terms of the broader argument, but it's really easy to tire of making the same basic points over and over again.
It's similar to doing the same type of cases for a decade+, but this feels even more personal than that did so it's harder.
Now, budget fatigue, that's a real and existential thing. Fortunately, there's ramen and I somehow have managed to be friends with a lot of chefs and other service industry people!