10 years ago I certainly never thought I’d write something like this.
Early 20’s, college-student Brandon spent much of his time listening to Rage Against the Machine and bitching about the overreach of a political system he barely understood. He’d watch documentaries like Religulous and rail on faith, saying such things were only for podunk hillbillies whose parents were related before they were married.
He thought watching The Daily Show made him informed about what was really going on in the world. He even went to the Rally to Restore Sanity back in 2010, which seems like something we need more now than ever(minus the obvious disease spread risk, just roll with me here).
…In a Hand-Basket
Like many of you, I find myself a bit…disconcerted with the current state of things. It feels like an unending avalanche of shit has been sweeping down on us lately.
And I don’t just mean covid-19. The goings-on of the world have been a bit outta hand for some time now. I could say that all this chaos happened when a narcissistic diva took over as leader of the United States, but the storm clouds were looming on the horizon long before that.
We’re more informed yes, but in a spectacularly one-sided fashion. We’re more opinionated. We live our online lives in echo chambers.. We post funny memes of the carrot in chief and his latest bout of nonsense, all so we can get a digital high-five from our friends who already agree with us, and certainly don’t drive divisions deeper with those who disagree in a very real way(/end sarcasm).
And now our country is being ravaged by a pandemic, and we can’t agree on any kind of reasonable way to deal with it. One side wants things completely shut down for an as yet undisclosed amount of time, another wants to open up tomorrow without any safeguards in place. You want a nuanced approach that’s somewhere in the middle? Fuck you and your nuance.
When I write and publish something, usually it’s because there’s some nagging question in the back of my head I need clarity on. Writing is a very cathartic activity for me, and often when I’m done I’ve discovered a good answer somewhere in the process.
The question today is: how did things go so completely to hell?
Turning the Volume Down
I don’t know how much time you spend around people with opposing political views; for most it’s a very small chunk of their day, if any at all. The most common exception seems to be when someone gets a job where they’re surrounded by people with opposing views; and mysteriously the person in question will often have a change of heart over the years about how they think.
You could say that humans are simply highly mimetic creatures, and there is some truth to that. We’re also very tribal, which should be obvious to anyone paying attention to political and social discourse right now. Flip the channel between Fox News and MSNBC and you’ll think you’re looking through a portal into two different realities.
That tribalism of ours has been a minor annoyance up to this point. Maybe it provided some tension between you and your blue collar family members every year at Thanksgiving, but for the most part it didn’t affect day to day life.
Except now we’re stuck indoors hiding from a virus we can’t seem to manage, while other parts of the world are learning how to deal with it and getting back to some semblance of normalcy.
We on the other hand, are like two groups of chimpanzees flinging feces at one another. Chimp group A thinks they’re smarter and that chimp group B is a bunch of ignorant mouth-breathers trapped in the past with overly-simplistic world views. Chimp group B thinks they’re harder working, and that chimp group A are a bunch of communist chimps who want to take their hard earned bananas and give them to gangs of drug addicted transsexual teenage immigrant chimps.
They both have their reasons for thinking the way they do, and sometimes the reasons are valid(obviously not the ones mentioned above). But it doesn’t matter, because they’re both flinging feces at each other; and getting hit in the face with feces does not make you want to engage in discourse with the offending chimp, or their ilk.
When you see your social media news feed jammed with chimps flinging your brand of feces at chimps you disagree with, it’s easy to convince yourself that this behavior is justified. But if you take the time to talk, and I mean really talk with a chimp who flings a different brand of feces, and ask them what it feels like to get hit in the face with some of yours? You might think twice about that behavior.
Because even if you’re right, your hand is still covered in shit; and while you’re preoccupied with that, the world is falling apart around you.
So…Where Am I Going With This?
Normally writing of this sort leaves me feeling a bit more relaxed about where I’m headed and what to do, but this time seems to be a bit of an exception.
The South is reopening in full force as fast as they can. If this plays out the way I think then they’ll get a short term boost in economic activity; but in a few weeks or months they’re going to get absolutely ravaged by the virus and need to close down again. History shows us that the second wave is always worse; the shutdown will last longer, more chimps will die, and there will be a much larger social and economic fallout.
Meanwhile the densely populated blue chimp territories are being much more cautious about it and will be able to keep the spread to a reasonable level until they learn how to manage it. They’ll take an economic hit short term, but when they reopen they’re more likely to stay open, as they re-opened one piece at a time with each safeguard tested in turn.
The question plaguing me is: what happens when chimp group B (that’s been ravaged by the virus) sees themselves getting outpaced economically by chimp group A? Is there an exodus to chimp group A’s territory? Do they ask for monetary help from the congress of chimps, the type of help they’re constantly railing against? Or do they view it as the final straw that pushes them over the edge, graduating from minor feces flinging to full-on tribal warfare?
Basic game theory could point their behavior in any number of directions, all of them unpleasant. So I guess what I’m getting at is this: can we all, just for a little bit, stop flinging feces at each other?
I recently heard someone say, in response to the question of what each of us can do to help during these times: “don’t try to save the world, just take care of the people around you”. Aside from the close friends and family members we look out for, the main other way we’re impacting the people around us is through our digital communications.
For every other chimp in group A who digitally high-fives you for the funny meme you posted about the bright orange chimp-in-chief, there’s a chimp in group B who saw it, took offense, and is digging their heels in deeper.
I was told that after 9/11 happened (since I was 12 at the time) there was a great feeling of camaraderie among all Americans; that the crisis had brought us closer together.
Well this crisis seems to be doing the opposite. Each of us, individually, needs to stop it with the feces flinging. The more we argue the longer this will take to resolve, and that’s going to be worse for EVERYBODY.
We don’t need to agree on every point, we just need to move in the same general direction.
And I say all this as someone who has railed against the congress of chimps and the head chimp in the big house. I’m as guilty of it as anybody, so here I am working on it. Ask yourself if you like the direction things are headed; and if not, what can you do to change it? Every bit counts.
Til next time.
-Brandon