After 3 days of feeling overwhelmed with depression about the referendum result and rise of racism, to the point of being immobilised and pessimistic about the future, I went out for a walk in the sunshine this afternoon.
I looked at the trees that have grown for much longer than I’ve been alive, and will still be growing long after I am gone. I noticed the way that rivers travel through the landscape making imperceptible changes that can cut through stone over time. And I thought about how evolution means that current species of plants, birds, animals and insects can make better use of their environment than their predecessors.
It made me think how much progress there has been in the last century in terms of human society across the world. We’ve made massive steps forward in science. We’ve cured diseases and developed more effective treatments and means of prevention. World poverty has reduced, infant mortality has fallen, and life expectancy has increased. We’ve seen the world from space, and started to map the universe and the genome. We’ve become a more secular society. War and violence are reducing enormously over time. Our tolerance of prejudice has reduced massively. Human rights have been championed in more and more countries. Gay marriage is now enshrined in law in most western democratic nations. We are more aware of finite energy resources and more mindful of the environment. Through increasing internet connectivity, many more people have access to information than ever before.
I realised that by the time our kids are adults the world will be very different to how it is now. They have grown up in a different age, with more awareness of the environment, greater opportunities for travel, and much wider access to information than any generation before them. They are world citizens, born into an age of technology and opportunity. I hope they will build a kinder and more tolerant society because of that.
It is easy to focus on the depressing headlines in the news, and the latest murders or racist incidents – but they make the news because they aren’t everyday events that we turn a blind eye to. We might have just taken a massive step backwards in the UK, but progress marches onwards, and despite all the skirmishes and set-backs, good triumphs in the end.
I believe the UK is mostly full of decent people who care about each other. Sure, much of the British media is full of poisonous propaganda, that blames the vulnerable rather than letting us look upwards at the wealthy and powerful who are siphoning off our rights and resources for their personal gain. And yes, the ideological choice of austerity has increased the wealth gap and made many people feel they had little to lose. And yes, a lot of people feel disenfranchised and were so used to being ignored that they voted for change without knowing what the change would mean. But I think the proportion of people who are genuinely racist and hateful is smaller than it appears. And the rest of us want to find a peaceful, progressive way forward.
So we need to stop being overwhelmed, stop the collective messages reinforcing our learned helplessness, and put our heads together and push for the most positive outcome possible. We need to all engage in the political process. Let us stop mourning the loss of the country we had and work together for a better one.
ClinPsyEye 
An uplifting read. The only thing I would disagree with, and perhaps this is semantics, is the notion that we should stop mourning. We should allow time and space for grief, which does not exclude hope and work for the future.
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