[Q&A] Looking for historical references for handling horrible times

With so much history out there, I'm looking for specific recommendations on reading material of how people maintained their hope and acted to make the world better.

From a historical perspective, I'm aware that these days are not literally the worst days and that in fact many groups throughout the years have lived (or continue to live) under constant direct or threatened persecution that made even mundane activities like trying to get an education for you child or traveling to and from work truly harrowing experiences.

I am however struggling mightily with both the limitations of what I can do and with the sense that so many people can appear to blindly move past horrible injustices or be caught up in comparatively minor squabbles.

With so much history out there, I'm looking for recommendations on reading material of how people maintained their hope and acted to make the world better. I'm looking for something that might help my perspective and help me move forward. Rebecca Solnit's "Hope in the Dark" was given to me and helped a bit but I'm curious if you can offer other suggestions?

I find coping mechanisms by reading and learning how people go on living in the face of horrible events. Survival stories...the Andes plane crash in 72 where people survived by cannibalsim before a pretty serious feat of mountain climbing. The Black Death...half of Europe died in wave after wave of plague, but that led to the Renaissance. Climate change terrifies me for my son's future. The Black Death led to later good (in some respects)...maybe a small percentage can survive climate change.

I'm generally suicidal, so hearing how people have gone on and lived after tragedy helps me get through my days some days.

specific books...
Miracle in the Andes
I Had to Survive
These are both by He two men who climbed out of the Andes. Amazing stories.

The Black Death by a historian. It's fictionalized but based in as much fact as he knows. A bit dry, but I found it fascinating. I'm also watching the Great Course on The Black Death which is also fascinating. Some libraries have access to Teaching Company courses via hoopla.

A Mother's Reckoning Sue Klebold writing about her son's murders and his suicide at Columbine.

The Unthinkable Amanda Ripley

Under a Flaming Sky about a firestorm in the 1880s. Riveting. Same author wrote about Donner party.

Isaac's Storm Erik Larson. Hurricane in Galveston in 1900. Images stayed with me.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Boy who Harnessed the Wind

I just listen to The Dollop. It's a somehow palatable way to learn about the horrible people in America's history. That said, it's not like it's made me go out and do anything. It's just minimal history awareness.

Tagging. I could use the same help.

MathGoddess wrote:

Isaac's Storm Erik Larson. Hurricane in Galveston in 1900. Images stayed with me.

Spoiler:

My prime image from Isaac's Storm was how many people got swept away in the darkness or crushed in the wreckage of the pier, only to be discovered weeks later during the clean up.

For me it's a brutal story about how people could have survived if other people ignored their prejudices and politics.

DSGamer wrote:

Tagging. I could use the same help.

Ditto. Drinking copiously and rampant escapism isn't going to work for four years.

MathGoddess wrote:

I find coping mechanisms by reading and learning how people go on living in the face of horrible events.

Things I'm oddly comforted by: people thousands of years ago endured the same despair over terrible things.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:

I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
and they have no comforter.
And I declared that the dead,
who had already died,
are happier than the living,
who are still alive.
But better than both
is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
that is done under the sun.

Read the "Flashman" books. They will give you a detailed overview of British Imperialism in the 19th century, with all it's warts and oppression, but they are funny and light-hearted as well. And there's nothing like British Imperialism to make you realize how good we have it, still...

Another good book to read in the vein of "it could be worse" is "The Fall of Berlin 1945" by Anthony Beevor. Or if you want the full experience, Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" covers the political and social aspects. So does "In the Garden of Beasts", another Erik Larsen book, about the US ambassador to Nazi Germany during the 1930's.

These are great suggestions and I'll start working through them.
To elaborate a little further in addition to the history which gives perspective on the moments, I'm also looking for the strategies people used to persevere in those times that might be applicable today.

I suspect there are as many strategies as people, and most of them fail to do more than maintain, and many just fail. At a certain level of failure, your individual condition is out of your hands. If an EMP goes off over Kansas, high double digit percentages of Americans will die within a few months. Not much anyone can do about that.

So maybe the strategy is to put your head down, turn off the news, and live your life as intensely as you can until someone you trust sounds the All Clear.

I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History for putting things into perspective. Things aren't particularly good, but the average American is a long way from fighting at Stalingrad or at the Somme. And if you think Trump or Kim Jung Un is bad, listen to Dan describe Ghengis Khan.

EDIT - I'm a dirty skimmer so I missed the part about survival tips. I guess the good news is many of Dan's sources are from survivors of those great battles, so people were able to survive and move forward despite going through hell.

Robear wrote:

I suspect there are as many strategies as people, and most of them fail to do more than maintain, and many just fail. At a certain level of failure, your individual condition is out of your hands. If an EMP goes off over Kansas, high double digit percentages of Americans will die within a few months. Not much anyone can do about that.

So maybe the strategy is to put your head down, turn off the news, and live your life as intensely as you can until someone you trust sounds the All Clear.

LOL, while morbid, this is absolutely true (this reminds me of my favorite Robear moment, which I can't find anymore, where you explained to me what would happen if a modern battleship fired a shot at a 1600s galleon).

Part of my own tools for keeping my mental health on the up and up is severely limiting my social media use. I increasingly believe that Twitter and Facebook are net negatives for society, and while they do (to an extent) represent reality, they also really, really, really don't. I wouldn't say that to say "actually, everything's great!", I'd simply say that to mean that they have a unfortunate habit of amplifying the worst.

That and keep fighting. Large or small, keep pushing and live your life as best you can.

lol I totally forgot about the galleon. That was so much fun thinking through the effects.

But the overall situation we're in now, and the profoundly nasty effects it has had on many of my friends and acquaintances, has really knocked me back on my heels. Everytime I think that people will be reasonable, they aren't. It's a terrible time to base your world-view on facts and verifiable information. So many people are just going on what they *wish* was true, and I hate to see us hurtling down a highway, lights out at midnight, with the "Everything's Fine" dog blindfolded in the drivers seat and a quarter of the population yelling "let it burn!" from the back seat...

Gremlin wrote:

Things I'm oddly comforted by: people thousands of years ago endured the same despair over terrible things.

There's a bit from--I think it was the Odyssey, but I can't find it right now--about someone who was comfortable in old age and thinking their legacy was secure with grandchildren and great-grandchildren...and then the place where their family lived was attacked, and burned to the ground, and their family was all killed. That emotion keeps coming to mind when I look at what's going on in Puerto Rico or northern California right now.

Robear wrote:

So many people are just going on what they *wish* was true,

So many political discussions I can't have right now because the people I want to have them with have so many preconceptions that they're married to that they won't see where it's led them...It's really weird to go through a shift in your political views, because it takes you through a place where you can look back and see the assumptions behind the arguments people are trying to make. Often ones they're not necessarily aware of, which is why they get confused when it fails to persuade people. It was so obvious in their head!

Gremlin wrote:
Robear wrote:

So many people are just going on what they *wish* was true,

So many political discussions I can't have right now because the people I want to have them with have so many preconceptions that they're married to that they won't see where it's led them...It's really weird to go through a shift in your political views, because it takes you through a place where you can look back and see the assumptions behind the arguments people are trying to make. Often ones they're not necessarily aware of, which is why they get confused when it fails to persuade people. It was so obvious in their head!

I'm really struggling with this. I work at a large corporation, and many of my coworkers are conservatives whose view of life is foreign and distasteful to me. My feelings about them over the past few years have moved from disrespect to contempt to anger to borderline hatred as I see them actively rooting for things I consider evil and hateful. They seem more uncertain about Trump than they did six months ago, but they still air his news network in my building, still support the vast majority of what he's done, still talk about how this is a Christian nation, still talk derisively about illegal immigrants and BLM, still think evolution and environmentalism are hoaxes, still think homosexuality is sinful and gun rights are worth whatever trouble they bring...

Honestly, I'm nearing the point where I'd trade our current government for a progressive dictatorship. I think we're screwed with the status quo, because I don't think logic is capable of changing most of these people's minds, so government isn't going to change direction in the timeframe needed.

For reading, I recommend On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Snyder's an historian who specialises in 1920-30's Eastern Europe and has written many books on the subject. On Tyranny is essentially a 20-step guide on what the average citizen can do to resist authoritarian regimes. It's a really great clear, concise read. Cheap too!

And to reassure yourself that things really aren't so bad right now, historically speaking, it might be worth reading The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker.

Mormech wrote:
Gremlin wrote:
Robear wrote:

So many people are just going on what they *wish* was true,

So many political discussions I can't have right now because the people I want to have them with have so many preconceptions that they're married to that they won't see where it's led them...It's really weird to go through a shift in your political views, because it takes you through a place where you can look back and see the assumptions behind the arguments people are trying to make. Often ones they're not necessarily aware of, which is why they get confused when it fails to persuade people. It was so obvious in their head!

I'm really struggling with this. I work at a large corporation, and many of my coworkers are conservatives whose view of life is foreign and distasteful to me. My feelings about them over the past few years have moved from disrespect to contempt to anger to borderline hatred as I see them actively rooting for things I consider evil and hateful. They seem more uncertain about Trump than they did six months ago, but they still air his news network in my building, still support the vast majority of what he's done, still talk about how this is a Christian nation, still talk derisively about illegal immigrants and BLM, still think evolution and environmentalism are hoaxes, still think homosexuality is sinful and gun rights are worth whatever trouble they bring...

I’m in a very unhealthy headspace right now and it’s basically like this. I’ve unfriended all my conservative friends and family on Facebook. I feel like the things they support aren’t just disagreements. These aren’t policy differences. They’re risking our very democracy. And that makes me so angry. It doesn’t make me very likely to forgive them. Ever. I don’t know what would need to happen, to be honest.

I still haven’t heard a word of remorse for Bush and the Iraq war. I don’t know how we get past this. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive them and if so how.

It's absolutely unfair to keep expecting it of them, but the black community in the US (among other people of color) has countless inspiring stories of not only surviving the struggle but being the better person while being oppressed.

I've also been trying to be better about supporting heroes rather than trying to be the hero myself, so stories about people who don't look like me are valuable. Also, I'm increasingly getting those stories less formally than from books, which makes it harder to pass on. I've got a couple Ta-Nehisi Coates books on my short list, though.

I'd warn you that a lot of these stories are not unalloyed optimism. I mean, as inspiring as MLK or Malcolm X were, neither's story ends positively.

I think unalloyed optimism would be wrong toned anyway. The times are difficult. I'll accept a miracle if it comes but I'm assuming I need to make the world better in the small ways I can despite the unlikelihood of greater success.

The Camus essay on Sisyphus is a helpful example of not being able to change the situation but changing your perspective.

We took the office to volunteer at the local food bank this week. Felt good to help for a day even if the problem itself is likely never ending.

Small actions are better than inaction.

I'd suggest a book called Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl.

Per Amazon blurb description:

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.

I also avoid most social media, only briefly look at the local news while checking the weather, and do lots of spiritual things. Oh, and also giraffe watching. Such beautiful, calm, enviable creatures.

I personally don't find it very helpful to try to diminish my own problems and feelings by trying to think of all the people that have or have had it worse than I do. Doing so only adds guilt into the mix that I shouldn't be feeling bad or unhappy about something because someone, somewhere has it worse.

If y'all wouldn't mind me looking at this from another angle, are there any good historical, political or sociological writers I should be reading regarding how bad things are. I've heard everything from we're back in the Nixon era to it's 1932 Germany and we're just a year or two away from a fascist takeover. And then of course I have plenty of libertarian tech buddies who all feel Trump is a blip and a glorious new era of innovation is just around the corner.

It would be nice to get a bearing from some trusted experts.

jdzappa wrote:

If y'all wouldn't mind me looking at this from another angle, are there any good historical, political or sociological writers I should be reading regarding how bad things are. I've heard everything from we're back in the Nixon era to it's 1932 Germany and we're just a year or two away from a fascist takeover. And then of course I have plenty of libertarian tech buddies who all feel Trump is a blip and a glorious new era of innovation is just around the corner.

It would be nice to get a bearing from some trusted experts.

I really like Yasha Mounk on this. He writes a column on this for Slate and really gets in the weeds on how authoritarianism happens. He also has a podcast - The Good Fight - where he brings experts on the subject and they talk about where we are, how bad things are, how does it compare to other times, etc.

His podcast, strangely, is the most uplifting thing to me, because it provides much needed historical perspective about the current world as compared to pre-WW2, the Soviet Union and other examples of non-democratic movements. In many ways the US is in good shape according to many of his guests precisely because it’s so hard to consolidate power in the US. I find this fairly persuasive.

But he also makes a strong case, as do many of his guests, that faith in democracy as an ideal is flagging and so we’re more vulnerable than ever should Trump get focused or should someone else come along later and follow his playbook.

jdzappa - the recent Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam (especially in this context episode 6 "Things fall apart") covers just the first six months of 1968 which saw an unsettling combination of events was pretty profound for me as I just old enough to have been alive then and yet my family was almost unscathed directly. It's been a weird thing for us until the last year or two to realize so much could be happening around you and yet you aren't sure how to respond.

Tagging 'cause I could use some guidance as well.

I find myself dipping in and out of following the daily political headlines. I've got a real balance problem as one minute I'll be voraciously following every Trump tweet, political analysis, podcasts like Pod Save America, etc. To the point where I feel overwhelmed, angry and hopeless. Then I step away from it all and bury my head in the sand for a couple weeks, detaching and maybe feeling a little better but ultimately still harboring shame and dread for the direction my country is barreling down.

I wish there were some middle ground between awareness and detachment. Being tuned in to what's going on but not emotionally hobbled by it's grim nature. Maybe it's a normal reaction, but I don't know how I'm gonna last for years on this turbulent ride.

I think you need to break with the Crooked Media folks. As entertaining as I found them once, they’re also talking heads at this point. They’re pundits from an administration that failed to protect us from this and I don’t know that they have much useful to say if you’re trying to figure your way through this.

I feel, at this point, that they’re a more informed and well intentioned version of left wing FOX. They’re ginning up more panic than helping, IMO.

I listened to basically every episode of The Good Fight this weekend and I found an hour of that podcast much more helpful than every hour Crooked Media has recorded. Yasha Mounk and his guests are talking about why we’re here, what could happen next and how it’s worked in other countries. I’m finding that far more useful and insightful.

This last week I also started the audiobook of “In the Garden of Beasts”. It’s interesting. Maybe not the most useful for getting through this in one piece. However, it is reminding me both how different things are right now (and thus how far away we are from something *really* dark) and also how slowly things can creep up.

It’s reminding me not to get numb to casual talk of violence. To condemn talk of violence or discrimination openly and in public before it’s too late.

DSGamer wrote:

It’s reminding me not to get numb to casual talk of violence. To condemn talk of violence or discrimination openly and in public before it’s too late.

Had to inform a software developer that "relax" and "letithappen" were neither funny, nor appropriate names for function calls and told him to change them. There are women coders and DBAs sitting right next to him. Ugh.
Luckily he didn't fight me on it, and I will be more confident shutting down garbage next time.

Saying something is an important step.

Rahmen wrote:

Saying something is an important step.

Probably the most important. Say something before it’s not permissible to.

Sounds like you did great, Mixolyde.

I'm actually reading a wonderful book called Devil in the Grove right now, which I'm finding heartening, if only because if Thurgood Marshall could live through 1949 while literally fighting the KKK in court, the least I can do is keep my head up.

Thanks for the suggestion, DSGamer.

Think I'm gonna take a break from Crocked Media podcasts for now.

I need this thread. Thanks for starting it.

Also I need that link where Robear talks about the effects of a modern battleship firing on a 1600s galleon.