yes.

arleeshar — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:06:18 -0700

Anyone who has worked at media monitors or spent any time engaging in community activism knows this:

Dr Berry said that some kinds of social participation were good for the community but not necessarily for the individual. For example, people who were involved in community activism reported worse mental health, as did those who rang radio talkback shows and wrote letters to the editor.

I don't believe that this is causal, although many people within the Left are prone to consider that being a 'caring' person is a very stressful past-time. Rather, lonely and unwell people are attracted to trying to 'make a difference' in non-committal ways requiring little research or forethought. The difference between dialing up at 7am to rant at/with Alan Jones about teh immigrants, and chanting FUisms in a band of seven people outside the US embassy to protest Globalisation, is marginal; the fact that the former is an activity of the elderly and the latter an activity of the young is largely reflective of mobility issues, willingness to brave public transport, and degree of access to a platform of dissemination within the mainstream media. I have for many years felt that I would make a wonderful elderly person. One's elder years, I feel, are a golden time where the sorts of behaviour that would otherwise be attributed to antisocial tendancies can be waived off as an endearing sign of age; I have long had plans to wield a shillelagh at small children and live bra-less an a mu-mu eating cake mix out of a bowl. I will make constant crank calls to whomever I please, and because technology will have by that time caught up with my dreams, I will be able to do this in full holographic representation, nude, my rubenesque belly painted up with lurid slogans. This post has been brought to you by arleeshar's stream of consciousness.

lonely grandmas

yes.