What Scares Me

A Small Slice of my Discomfort

The world is big and rich in data. Information is plentiful, disruption constant, and change far-reaching. In contrast, human capacity, at least at this kind of scale, is kind of small. As a result, we’re always looking for ways to cut through the bulk and filter the important bits, separate the meaning from the maelstrom.

One of the ways we do this is to fixate on some aspect of a person or event and de-dimensionalize that large, untidy mess of facts, opinions, and reality into a single point of understanding. This isn’t a scientific piece, so I’ll leave it to others smarter than I to explain how our minds work, but I’m fairly sure you’re familiar with this impulse.

Consider how the lady who was your neighbor, friend, and fellow school parent becomes less dimensional when she runs for the school board and then votes along with the majority on an unpopular response to a budget cut. Gone is the wave of her hair, the way she fell in love, how she cares for her children when they are sick. Gone her staunch belief in the vital importance of friendship or community. In an instant, she’s reduced to a single decision. A defining moment, we could say, that takes up our whole view of her.

Or consider how people view politicians on the other side of the aisle. They are grandfathers, mothers, and friends, carrying private pains, hopes, struggles just like the rest of us, certainly just like those on this side of the aisle. We are always more the same than we are different. But somehow, in the paint-swapping bad-driving contest that is politics, they’re reduced to monsters who hold a position opposite our own. Out come the nicknames, the sweeping assertions about character, the thousand conspiratorial threads of how they and their kind are benefiting from their support of a particular issue. You know what I mean, I am certain. I won’t make you admit it, but it’s like you’ve even participated. It’s okay. You aren’t alone.

This piece isn’t about them. It’s about us. You and me. Not the high and mighty, not even the unrepentant neighbor and her school-changing budget vote. This is about you, and me, and the unique risk of our times, or at least the one that disturbs me the most.

Social media, Facebook specifically, used to be a place that mimicked real life. What was important to you in the world, was shared and enjoyed. It was a place to interact with others, sometimes sparring, often congratulating, and necessarily commiserating. But always, and sometimes quite profoundly, a place for human interaction. Of course, there’s always been some judging, usually down in the comments. Maybe even a little teasing and meanness. How *could* she say she doesn’t like Nutella? What’s wrong with people these days?

But lately, things have been changing. If your feed isn’t an echo chamber of people who agree with you, it’s gotten a little ugly. Through the recent spectacle of the American presidential contest, the mood is different. A polarization has set in that looks a lot like our approach to public figures, only this time, it’s just us nobodies, judging and being judged. Reducing whole populations of real, sturdy, three-dimensional people into targets defined by a single meme.

We are going boldly(badly?) where no man has gone before, but this time not in some lasting momentous sense, but on a more pedestrian, and frankly, sad trajectory. Reducing the breadth of human context to a few hot-button issues may be a reliable path to electoral victory, but it’s no way to experience community. It’s no way to know your neighbors, or to be known to your family. In short, it’s no way to be human.

I recently left Facebook. I’m taking a break because I had a profound realization — I don’t have any of these problems in real life. I interact with diverse people in my living, breathing life all the time and I typically find mutual respect and appreciation, coupled with a sense of responsibility, duty, and shared experience that outweighs the differences we may have in politics or a particular set of issues.

I’m not going to lie — I have misgivings about the direction of our country. But they are not new. They are not because of any single person or election result. But they are recently overshadowed by a new misgiving. By a deep sense of concern that more than our politicians failing us, we may live in an era where we fail us. If the divide we feel on Facebook becomes how we behave in our towns, churches, and families, it won’t matter who is at the front of the line, we will be unmanageable. Too late, we may learn what it feels like to gain the world, and lose our souls.

If you’ve gotten this far and you agree with me, even a little, you’re probably wondering, okay, what do I do about it all? I’m not sure. For myself, it means investing more in real relationships, more direct communication with friends and family, and a more focused approach to creating the sort of space I want to inhabit in the world. Stop reading to share, and start reading to learn. Stop seeking the article that will change people’s minds about x and start enjoying what you’re reading. Stop feeding on ideas and sources that divide for profit and start looking for what connects us. What we focus on, grows.

I don’t know anyone who is fine with the way things are. We all long for a better world. Our disagreement is about how to get there, and to some degree, what it might look like when we arrive. But much of our dialogue doesn’t reflect this — often it just seems like we’re pointing fingers and grousing about how this one or that one dreams of taking the whole world to hell. This is no way to be human.

Change is difficult. Activism is not change. Burning down our conventions and weakening our institutions will not yield the better world of anyone’s dreams. This era has fooled us a little, I’m afraid. We’ve begun thinking that simply aligning ourselves with some cause or idea is valuable. When that hasn’t worked as hoped, we’ve dialed up the volume, thinking this would win over the recalcitrant.

But stop for a moment. Think about your own experiences of change — what motivated them? Was volume or repetition the key? Were you bullied into switching sides? Or was it, as they say in the recovery literature, ‘enlightened self-interest’? How hard was it to change yourself? Do you really think you’re going to change others with a few clicks? Do you think if you double the amount, YELL, or post in bold you’ll be more effective?

We live in a world that is fundamentally free not to change. That may dismay, anger, frustrate or annoy you, but it’s true. No one is going to make someone else change something in their mind.

What can we change? Ourselves. But this seems so small and insignificant. Hardly worth it, we think. Even more, it’s hard. But it’s good and useful. In fact, it may be the only sure thing. Explore your biases, test your theories, build bridges to people not like you, and remember to be generous in your opinions of others. You are not likely your final version, and if you’re anything like the rest of us, you’re desperately hoping to complete a few inner projects before your demise.

Being the change you want to see in the world does not mean simply posting inflammatory memes that line up with your point of view. It has always, and will always, involve the hard work of reflection, personal discomfort, and relationships. Right now, our best tools for this are being used against us.

I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones who can stop us. In the words of Flannery O’Connor, “…the life you save may be your own.”