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lolan @lemmy.world

Atheists of lemmy, what is your coping strategy when things goes downhill?

I am at an accepting stage that not everything that happens in your life is in your control. When things goes really bad and you dont have much control on it, I would assume a person who believes in god or religious figures has their belief system as a coping mechanism. For example praying to the god and so on.

I passed that stage where you believe a single entity has a complete control of each and everything happens in this entire universe. So falling back to god and thinking it is all according to the plan and he will find out some solution is not really an option for me. At the sametime I also acknowlede that there are some gray areas where science can't provide a logical explanation so as to why this is happening to some of the life events.

So to atheists of lemmy, how do you cope up with shits that happens in your life that you can't explain logically and you really don't have much control?

88 comments

  • I've always found it easier to accept that the universe is fundamentally random and today is my turn in the barrel than wonder why God did this to me.

  • Honestly, I think we have it a lot easier than the theists in that regard. If someone dings my car, I find that my dog has cancer, or I lose my job, I don’t have to address the problem of evil. I don’t need to figure out how to square the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god with misfortune. I don’t need to wonder if I am being punished or tested, and I don’t have to worry about prayers that aren’t being answered.

    There are multiple non-theistic philosophies and religions that offer a framework for understanding and coping with negative events. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism have an explicit dependency on anything supernatural, especially in the schools and forms most popular in the West. The general idea is that we need to be less attached to certain outcomes and that our suffering arises more from our wanting the world to be how it isn’t.

    There’s also a large number of non-theistic schools in Western philosophy that have taken their own various approaches to questions ranging from the meaning of life and the meaning of suffering to how to identify and pursue the good. There’s multiple schools of existentialism, of course, but I would even think that writings on the nature of justice (eg John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer), the nature of the ego and human experience (eg Thomas Metzinger), and even works of film and literature can help approach an understanding, which is itself perhaps the best coping mechanism.

    • Don't rule out Nietzsche either, with his ideas on the creation of your moral system, becoming a "god" unto yourself, exercising will through art, and will-to-power by helping others (and thus altering their lives and will in a much more effective way than harming them as a "show of force" / what most think of as power). I highly recommend studying his thinking very deeply when anyone abandons the idea of god. And remember, even though god is dead, in thus spoke Zarathustra the character (representing one of us, who knows that god is dead) never told that to the monk, but rather envied his ability to believe. Believing in a god is by far better than taking that responsibility on yourself, but for us, it is no longer possible. We ought to envy that kind of belief.

      But at the same time, any dogma that harms us or others (Christo-fascism, all forms of theocracy, etc.) is objectively bad except to those in charge of it. Which is no one except one who "speaks for god," and protestant Christianity has abandoned such a figure and taken on a life of its' own. It helps no one, not even a person in power, and thus should be abolished.

      But as I said, I envy those who hold other beliefs. For now we must take the responsibilities of god onto our own shoulders.

      • I think the idea of being envious of religious people is grounded in two fundamental errors. First, it is attributing a level of solace to religiosity that is rarely, if ever, achieved in practice. Yes, you can find religious people who are content, but the same applies to Zen monks who have no god but do have a grounding in a framework that explains the world and their role in it. As the Buddhists point out (if we can take that path), discontent and suffering comes from wanting the world to be different than it is. Whether one subscribes to a Buddhist philosophy or thinks everything is in God’s hands and is therefore all for the best, the key is accepting what happens. Or in the Taoist saying “Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” My point here is that it’s absolutely not religion that’s responsible for that, but rather a philosophical point of view that can also be arrived at via non-theistic justifications. I’d argue it’s even easier without the god part, since you don’t have to rectify with the problem of evil. If an all-powerful and loving god gave your newborn child a fatal disease, that’s a lot to have to figure out. That’s where you get all of those ridiculous, stomach-turning platitudes. If your child developed cancer because biology is kind of stupid (and I’m saying that as a biologist), it is still a cause of sadness and mourning, but there’s no causal party involved.

        The second part is that whether you’re reading the lives of the saints, talking to friends, or pouring over the latest Pew survey on religion and life satisfaction, you’re looking at self-reports.

        Do a thought experiment. Pick a cult-like religion. It could be Mormonism, adventism, Scientology, or something more like a David Koresh or desert dwelling new age thing. Imagine running through questions about satisfaction and happiness with those members, given they know you’re interviewing them on the basis of the religion they hold and (essentially) whether they’re good people because it’s working for them. Or talk to former members of those cults about how they acted versus how they really felt and what that realization was like.

        At the end of the day, we as atheists have fewer reasons for existential dread because once you progress past the theology of a twelve year old, there’s far more problems introduced than answered by religions, and a large percentage of those problems come from the mythological component of their philosophies. I don’t go around trying to pick arguments or disabuse people, and I very, very much get Marx’s point, but I think he under-theorized the social and psychological dimensions and that he could be over-generous.

  • I'm not a control freak, I know that most things in life are outside my control, and I'm generally fine with it. And when those things outside my control are bad for me, I just... accept them while doing whatever I can to make them less bad?

    Two people here mentioned media and booze. For me they're refreshment; they distract me from the problem that I can't solve, but they won't help directly. (Sometimes you do need a refreshment.) Same deal with cooking or talking with my pets.

  • some gray areas where science can't provide a logical explanation so as to why this is happening to some of the life events.

    Not really sure about this one. Science doesn't have answers for really big questions, like why does the universe exist. But for stuff smaller than that, like "why do I have some disease", or "why did I lose a loved one" ... or just "why did I lose 200$ dollars at the casino" well science tells us a lot about how it's all one giant lottery we have been playing involuntarily, and we are all really bad at it.

    We take chances just by existing. It's literally called a genetic lottery. We take a chance by getting in a car or stepping out onto the street to go to the market. Just by loving people we take the chance that something could take them away. Life deals you a hand. You win some, you lose some. You don't get to decide what your odds are. The best you can do is play the hand you've got. Which to be honest, is a lot less control than we tend to think we have. And even then, most of us don't play our hand all that great, cause we are thrust into the game of life without a practice round. And we are often too young and arrogant to listen to those who have come before us who already learned the hard way. Worse yet, we see few of our peer's mistakes, so we have a poor sense of what success and failure really looks like.

    Science tells us about the gambler's fallacy, the human bias towards falsely thinking that the universe tends towards some kind of fairness or equilibrium which is patently false (consider how little the gambler expects "good luck" to turn bad, therefore why gamble at all if it always equalizes?). Karma doesn't mean the universe owes you exactly what you put in. Life doesn't hand out exact change.

    Science also tells us about how we (humans) don't truly understand randomness. In nature, successive repetitions of some outcome of luck are vastly more common than we tend to think they are. We see a series of bad luck outcomes and say "that's not natural, this can't be real" when in fact it is often the natural laws of the universe on full display.

    Despite it all, even if the game of life makes no promises to you at all, it sure as hell is better than not playing the game at all. Regarding karma, the only thing you can be sure of--and forgive me for using a dead meme but it is apt--is that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

    Edit for the pedants: gambler's fallacy actually means that past results of independent events do not predict future outcomes, but that's basically what I just said.

  • When things happen you can either control the outcome or not. If you can, and things go sideways, you simply made the wrong decisions along the way and can learn. If you can't, find out what small parts you CAN influence and do your best to make things turn out okay. If you are totally powerless, remind yourself that nothing lasts forever and you can wait it out until an opportunity presents itself or the situation changes.

    Sometimes you will find yourself in a ruinous situation beyond your control. Lower your standards until you have something you can act on - even if it's going to sleep to give your mind and body some rest. One step at a time, even if they're small steps and you're not quite sure where you'll end up. Find any positive you can. That said, allow yourself to get angry, sad, or anything else you need to feel to vent the stress - but afterward, find a positive and hold it.

    Religious people have a built in community around their place of worship or shared interests. If something bad happens, the good people in that community will do what they can to offer support - this is usually mistaken for "god is great, look how he sent you to help." That's just silly (and rather insulting).

    Atheists don't have that default support community, but hopefully we have friends and co-workers, people on our dart league, etc. who would jump at the chance to help out when things go sideways. Be social. Help others. Be part of a community of good people, regardless of their beliefs, and they can help steady you when life gets mean.

  • For me, the existential struggle is coming to terms with my irrelevance (or our collective irrelevance -- our civilization and species has some big challenges ahead in the next couple of centuries). It's not that it's a bad time to be a naturalist, but it's just a bad time to be human and depend on a society that is supposed to continue without end.

    That said, I've only acclimated to the idea that only oblivion and irrelevance await me. Living day to day is augmented by social and hedonistic comforts: I pet my cat and my dog. I take care of my wife. I play video games and limit how often I look at the world burning up.

    We've encountered similar tropes in our apocalyptic fiction. Neo learns that his entire life was a dream, a construct in the matrix. I remind kids they really are in a YAF dystopia in which the education system is trying to mold them into interchangeable, disposable, replaceable soldiers and laborers to be inserted into billionaire vanity projects, used up and discarded, and their story is how they escape that paradigm.

    That's our story too.

  • This is something I really don't understand. Maybe you can explain it to me.

    For me a "normal" day would be one where earth looks like the moon. The fact that we have all kinds of plants and animals is amazing and the fact that we have buildings, technology and culture is something to be very proud of, because every day that you don't run around killing people or doing other horrible things is a day where you overcame your instincts and helped hold up culture. So to me every day, even one that you would deem "shit that happens in your life", is absolutely amazing and something to be proud of.

    But for someone who believes that there is a God a normal day would be one where everything works out great, and it would just be because God took care of it. A bad day would mean that for whatever reason this God decided to let you suffer. And this is supposed to make you feel good?

    Isn't it uplifting to say that you can't explain why bad things happen to you? Do you really think it's uplifting to think that bad things happen to you because an all powerful being decided that you deserved it?

  • 🎶 Here's a little song I wrote
    You might want to sing it note for note
    Don't worry
    Be happy
    In every life we have some trouble
    But when you worry you make it double
    Don't worry
    Be happy, don't worry, be happy now     🎶

    Works for me most of the time :)
    On a more serious note, I learned to accept that not everything will always go my way. But not every bad thing is as bad as it might appear at first, and sometimes by rolling with the punches you can come out on top. Or at least end up in a better position than you started out in.
    Of course I've never had to deal with truly catastrophic life events, so take that advice with a grain of salt.

  • Everything that happens is like water flowing down a river. I don't get mad at gravity and the water for acting according to the laws of physics, why do that for other things? It's much easier to accept it for what it is and try to move forward to the best of my ability

    there's more to the analogy/perspective but I don't feel like putting it into words. Hopefully it's helpful

  • Be realistic - whatever it is, it will pass. It's not necessary to understand why something has happened to accept that it has happened. If you can understand it, great, but quite a lot of things in life aren't dependent on things you do or don't do and trying to understand those things will drive you mad.

    Bad things happen but so do good things. Kipling wrote:

    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same.

    Meaning, exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things are comparatively rare and looking for reasons can sometimes be an exercise in futility. A bird didn't decide to pose as an agent of evil and target you to take a shit on, all that happened was a bird dropped a load when you happened to be walking there.

    In the meantime, do things you enjoy. Go to the pub with your mates, re-read a comforting book, listen to music - whatever. And once it's passed - because it will - exert control over the things you can control that will make you happy.

  • acceptance. hiding my problems behind made up deities will only make things worse when I have to confront them.

  • I tend to hyperfocus on things I can control and/or try to learn a new skill. Both are distractions, but you can't control what you can't control. Obsessing over those things leads to dark places. Sometimes, mental judo helps. You can reframe a situation that seems terrible by looking at it from another context. Unfortunately, it's hard to give examples for this.

  • Said the rich man to the poor man, and the poor man to the rich; "this too shall pass"

  • You're the one in control of whether things go down or up the hill in your life, not some mystical entity. If shit goes downhill, you just have to deal with it, praying to the gods won't fix your life or make you money, only you can do that... Nothing more to it, really.

    That's how I think about it, anyways...

88 comments