[imperfect_blue]

OP wrote:

> A few days ago, Paul Graham published an essay on “Wokeness”. I skimmed it. I couldn’t finish reading it, it made me too upset...I’ve been feeling quite anxious ever since. It feels like the world is crumbling around me.

...as if this sort of mental fragility is something normal. This is the sort of mentality I've come to associate with woke and prig culture.

In my experience, the more "woke" a community is, the more these sort of hysterics are accepted, normalized, even celebrated - to the point of caricature. Part of it is that in those communities, the more "oppressed" you are, the higher status you are accorded, and the subconscious status-seeking primate part of your brain notices this, and molds your thoughts and feelings accordingly. While those on the right also play up their victimhood, it's not held in high status in their communities. You'd get outrage and compassion playing up victimhood in right-leaning communities, but in left-leaning communities you also get more moral weight when you're upset.

The result, I think, is that the American left is genuinely less happy with the world, and more likely to echo doomer sentiments.