Blog #8

In the article "The Epidemic of Worry" by David Brooks, he expresses his thoughts and intake on this years election campaigns and gives thorough examples throughout. Making multiple different viewpoints but still being on topic, Brooks uses the term "worry" and "anxiety" a lot throughout, that being the key main theme of the article. Many interesting things were pointed out when explaining these terms. Brooks also talks about something I found interesting and enjoyed reading, that being the split between the nation between the poor nations and the more affluent nations.
Early on in the beginning of the article, Brooks talked about how there was both bad and good types of anxieties with some being more dangerous than others. Brooks dug deeper and went more into detail and what stood out to me was in paragraph four, David Brooks mentioned his book "Worrying" and the notes Francis O'Gorman took over it. Great examples were made when talking about how worrying can start off with "concrete anxiety" to help other readers including myself get a better understanding. One of the examples that helped myself was when he said "...Did I lock the back door? Is this headache a stroke?" That being, what I took out of it and what stood out to me was that we as humans can start off worrying about such basic things and it then spread to much larger but not as necessary things.
Further on in the article, David Brooks discuses the difference between anxiety rates in affluent nations as opposed to poor nations. The difference being the poor nations are less anxious than the more rich countries. You would think the opposite, at least I thought so until reading this article and this specific part. When the affluent people express worry, "it's usually related to the fear of missing out, and the dizziness of freedom." The more wealthy people often feel surrounded by the busyness and daily choices thrown at them. Brooks made an interesting statement in the last paragraph that tied into the discussion, the statement was "many affluent people use money to buy privacy, and so cut themselves off from both the deep relationships that could give them purpose..."