What is the Trait You Most Deplore in Others?

Proust Questionnaire 4/35

Photo by Fabio Santaniello Bruun on Unsplash

It’s taken two weeks to pull this post together 1) Because life has been nuts (we traveled to Washington, we packed the pods, the pods arrived in Colorado, we unpacked the pods, we threw a birthday party for J, I volunteered with a bunch of bunnies, I salsa danced, I rode my bike up a mountain, AND THERE’S STILL MORE HAPPENING) and 2) Because it’s very very hard to talk about another person’s deplorable trait without in some way implying that person is inherently deplorable and I’m just generally trying not to be a person who finds people in my community deplorable (there is a 3,000-word draft essay currently sitting in my Google Drive that I am never going to publish because I think I was a little too mean). 

So this is attempt round two. And it’s kicking my butt.

If you missed last week’s post, I explained that to deplore is not necessarily to just dislike something, it is “to feel strong disapproval. It is to regret, lament, express grief, to acknowledge the loss of something of value.”

I suppose, after reflecting on what I’d already written (damn my own morality), it became clear that the trait I most deplore in others is also the trait I most deplore in myself. I sincerely lament, grieve, and see an utter loss of value in the fact that myself and others are losing our collective ability to pay attention.

What’s funny, ironic, or just maddeningly frustrating is that the more I work to pay attention, the more aggravated I get by people not paying attention. Sometimes it’s truly small things that get under my skin:

• Hello, the light turned green, can you please go? What are you doing? Where are you looking instead of at the traffic light? (your phone, no doubt)

• You’re walking in the middle of a multi-use path and seem utterly SHOOK that I’m dinging my bike bell at you to move over so I can get by. Were you born yesterday, or have you literally never used a shared path before?

• The person beeping at me to turn right on red when there is literally a giant sign hanging over the intersection that says “no right turn on red.” JUST USE YOUR EYES!

And those are certainly all forms of paying attention in one way or another. But perhaps what really drives home the “deplorable-ness” is when people aren’t even aware that they’re losing their ability to pay attention. And I don’t just mean an inability to put the phone down when hanging out with friends, or trying to read a book and finding their thumb mindlessly drifting toward the Twitter app. I mean truly losing the ability to see a world that exists outside of a screen and newsfeeds and headlines. An inability to pay attention to the very real and very physical world all around us. And weirdly enough, the place I’m seeing this happen the most (and maybe it’s just because it happens to be my sphere of work and influence) is in the activism space.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

What Are Our Obligations?

A few years ago, I came up with this (unanswerable) philosophical thought experiment that goes something like this: Let’s say we somehow got a colony of humans settled on Mars. They’re thriving, making their own atmosphere, growing their own food, doing all that good life-sustaining stuff. But something has happened, our technology falters, and we can no longer get people from Earth to Mars and vice versa. The only tether we have left are video feeds to share with one another. Now let’s say it’s the case that war breaks out on Mars, terrible (deplorable?) people take power, disease spreads, their systems falter, and people are truly suffering. But we’re here on Earth and we have no way to get help or supplies to them. All we can do is watch the videos they create and send videos in return. 

The question is: Knowing you have no way to physically get to these people, are you morally obligated to watch the videos of their suffering as well as create “helpful” content to support their efforts and inform others about what’s going on? 

Or maybe the simpler question is: Are you morally obligated to be informed about suffering you personally can’t do anything about?

As someone who manages social media and communications for a living (and generally chooses to create lots of informational content to try and get people to care about a thing they know nothing about), it’s a fascinating, perplexing question. 

On the one hand, it feels thoroughly cruel to say, “Not my circus, not my monkeys. I don’t need to watch this tragic shit.” On the other hand, it also feels cruel to say, “Hey, watch this awful suffering so you know it’s happening. But also, there’s nothing you can do.”

This feels like where a lot of activism has ended up on social media lately. And I know the metaphor has lots of logical holes in it. The biggest is that there usually is something we can personally do to help in most suffering-related situations, even if we can’t solve the entire lot of suffering on our own. 

But I suppose what I’m getting at is, how far must we extend our efforts to end suffering or to inform ourselves that it exists? And I mean literally far — like how many miles? Right now on social media, it feels like the answer is there is no limit. Caring about your neighborhood is not enough, you must care about your city, which is also not enough, you must care about your state, which is also not enough because what about the larger bioregion? Which is also not enough because what about federal, country-wide policy? And also you can’t forget America’s deep, messy geopolitics, so better extend that out to the entire world. But don’t forget we’re talking about colonizing the moon so keep that in mind for future locations of suffering and injustice. And absolutely heaven forbid we find life somewhere else in this vast universe because we will then need all kinds of new ways to be informed about suffering and tragedy in ways we can’t even fathom right now.

And it’s that kind of endless demand to not only acknowledge but find a way to fix suffering and injustice that sends me into deep depths of despair and can also make me sort of hate social justice work. If there is no boundary to our obligations — and suggesting there could or should be a boundary gets us into hot water with fellow activists — hopelessness and meaninglessness abounds. (Again, to be clear, I say this as a liberal democrat/socialist actively working in the climate and environment space).

More and more it seems that social media — that great big attention economy glutton — and the activists putting most of their attention toward it are caught up in its vicious, capitalistic cycle, where there is no excuse for doing nothing or opting not to watch because at a bare minimum (and sometimes a maximum) you could be consuming content, sharing content, or creating content. And if you choose to opt-out, or worse, opt-in but NOT use your “platform” to advocate for not just some but every source of injusticed suffering currently residing on this great big planet Earth (and maybe someday the entire universe), well then, you better check your privilege. 

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

My Relationship With Social Media

After answering last week’s question, I decided it was time to re-evaluate my own relationship with Instagram and digital media in general. I manage social media for a living, so taking the apps off my phone just wasn’t an option. But I knew I had to find a better balance.

To start, I logged out of my personal Instagram account and deleted the autosaved password — a login process just tedious enough to make me rethink if I really needed to be on the app. I also gently forbid myself from opening the explore tab if I decided to log in. And the rule was when I was done (which could be however long I wanted) I had to fully log back out again. And we’d see if that helped.

For the first week or so this was enough of a hassle that I stayed off Instagram pretty much altogether. Sometimes I’d mindlessly click the app when there was a lull in my day (which is kind of horrifying to witness) and I’d see the login screen and think, what the heck am I doing right now? I didn’t even consciously want to open the app, it was just a habit.

After about 10 days, I wanted to share a picture of me being a badass biking up a mountain (yes, it’s a self-serving platform! Don’t act like you don’t use it for the exact same thing!) and I allowed myself to open it up to post my photos and see what my friends were up to.

You’re doing great, Anja! I thought. This is a much more reasonable way to use this platform. 

After posting my own photos, I clicked on stories and was immediately greeted by the sweet scenes of my friends’ lives: Flowers! Gardens! Road Trips! Camping! 

Wow, this is actually making me happy! I thought for one whole minute. 

Then BOOM! This post:  If you’re not actively posting and getting angry about LGBTQIA+ rights, you’re not an ally and you don’t actually care about queer people. 

Oh, I thought, Don’t love that! I clicked away as quickly as I could, but I could already feel the cortisol beginning to flow. It took just that second for my brain to start churning. 

I don’t agree with that sentiment. But it got a lot of likes. And lots of people are commenting supportive things. I identify as queer, but I don’t think people need to do what this person is asking to be an ally. Do I need to let people know that? Do I need to make a statement? Am I supposed to do something for pride month? *Tap*

Then: *Ad for cute mushroom night light*

Okay, that’s better. But also, bleh consumerism. But also, that’s so fucking cute. But also, we don’t need more stuff and it’s bad for the planet. *Tap*

Then: Cooking! Bike rides! Puppies! Birthday parties! Art! 

Yay! This is what I came here for. *Tap tap tap tap tap* *like like like like like*

Then BOOM! If every aspect of your environmentalism isn’t centered on justice and BIPOC, you are not an environmentalist. *Tap*

Oh, gross. What? That doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. Also, who’s deciding this? Are people judging me for my work? Do people not think I’m doing good enough work? Oh god, am I going to get canceled? Am I the problem? I manage our social media, which means I’m at fault if I didn’t post something perfectly. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m going to lose my job. Is this industry getting too stressful? Should I go back to school for something less in the public eye?

Then: *Ad for cozy sheets with sustainability in mind*

Fucking christ.

I had the app open for less than 10 minutes before quickly logging out of my account and staring dead-eyed at the bedroom wall. 

What the fuck just happened? 

My heart was racing, my hands were getting sweaty, my cheeks were flushing red, and I felt my guts stirring up. I was on the verge of a panic attack. 

What I was swiping through was nothing new on my feed. It’s not like something had changed in the last week during my break. These were my friends, acquaintances, and people I really genuinely admired. 

Still, it only took one week off social media to feel suddenly bowled over by the expectation to jump through such extremely different posts every few seconds and somehow develop an emotional response to each one that was meaningful and appropriate. How had I emotionally survived this platform just a week ago?  

What I think happened was this: I had gotten so accustomed to allowing my thoughts, emotions, and nervous system to bounce around from cute puppy! to intense social issue! that I had thoroughly convinced myself that this constant jolt of guilt to joy, shame to outrage was totally normal. I even allowed myself to get riled up that “people weren’t doing enough” with every activist-y post while also sharing content that said things like Rest more! Do less! In fact, I checked social media so many times a day that I basically stayed in this constant state of arousal my entire waking hours.

But having your emotions, morals, thoughts, ethics, needs, wants, desires, passions, and relationships yanked around from the moment you wake up until the moment you close your eyes each day is decidedly not normal. And almost definitely not good for your health. 

This is what every day on social media feels like to me (especially as someone who works in climate/justice work): Take time to smell the roses! But if you have time to smell the roses, you are a privileged piece of shit! Fight climate change, but do it the way I tell you or you’re a racist! Support oppressed people! No, not like that, you absolute sack of human garbage! We need to offer people grace and kindness BUT NO NOT THAT PERSON YOU FUCKING IDIOT! You made a minor mistake, or just expressed a not fully perfectly academic thought in a public place? #CANCELED. 

I  realized this week that my nervous system was not built for this. Sometimes the same person would share a story with three photos of their weekend camping trip, then *MASSIVE POLITICAL AND ETHICAL DEMAND WITH NO NUANCE*, then “photos of my dog!! Lol!!” 

And yeah, I know this attempt to publicly share our stances on contentious issues without “actually doing the work”  is called virtue signaling, and I also know virtue signaling was the big, hot word of 2020 as we virtue signaled about virtue signalers — but can you see what I’m getting at here? What if there was no social media? What if there was no internet? What if there was just you and your community of what researchers say can realistically only be about 50-100 people? Have we gotten so sucked into the digital world and ensuring everyone everywhere knows every horrible thing that has ever happened and could ever happen that we’ve forgotten that we are alive, right here, right now, on this patch of dirt, just doing our best? Have our attention and emotions been so stolen away from us — or rather — so willingly forfeited over, that we are now manipulating each other’s shame for the profit of billionaires in the form of meaningless pixelated squares? 

SHAME ON US!

And look, this isn’t some moral judgment on the way other people use social media. I’m not telling you or anyone else that you need to either only post nice stuff or political stuff or give people warnings about what’s coming. I am and have been that person. And I fully intend to keep working my nonprofit job, sharing difficult information via social media.

But what I am only now realizing is how fucked up it is to jerk people around like this and expect them to be able to pay attention to the world when they have to constantly numb themselves to the deluge of wildly explosive information flying at them every day. You can’t ask people to care about everything and care about it perfectly and also have them be present, grounded people.

And maybe some of y’all are better at protecting your energy than I am. Maybe you’re able to jump from cute animal pics to extreme ethical demands and just shrug and say, “Not for me!” But I just do not have that superpower. Whether I was able to admit it or not, my poor body, my poor soul was getting whipped all over the place all day long before I changed my relationship with social media. I might be physically incapable of living like this if I don’t want a constantly activated nervous system and I have to imagine some of you might also be the same.

And it’s not that I’m incapable of taking in distressing information. I just can’t do it at the speed that a platform like Instagram demands. I need time to sit with the content, I need lots of information (maybe an entire book’s worth, maybe two!)I need time to process, I need to discuss with others, I need to make mistakes, I need to be politely challenged, I need to see the research, I need a piece of chocolate, and then I probably also need to sleep on it FOR SEVERAL NIGHTS. And even after all that, I’ve rarely, if ever, walked away from one of these contemplation sessions with a public-facing phrase that demands someone do X and not Y if they really cared about Z. What an absolutely black and white, binaristic, inherently un-queer way of not only framing the world, but demanding that others frame the world as well. 

And while I’m on this rant (I promise I have a way to tie this all back around to the “deplorable” question at hand) it’s also worth mentioning that I’ve quite possibly never heard anything dumber than when people get all in a huff that someone or some company is being “performative” on Instagram. IT IS A PLATFORM BUILT FOR FUCKING PERFORMANCE! That’s literally what the platform is for! That would be like critiquing a press release saying, “Sounds to me like all you’re trying to get out of this are media hits.” YES! THAT’S THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF A PRESS RELEASE! Instagram is not where “the work” happens. You can’t claim to hate “performative actions” and in the same breath ask why you haven’t seen “the work” appear on the Instagram feed. GAH!

So, to bring this all back around, when I say the most deplorable trait in others is their increasing inability to pay attention, I must also say that I GET IT. As I mentioned in last week’s post, there is an utterly MASSIVE system purposefully built to buy your attention, the same way there is a system built to hook you on fossil fuels and make it nearly impossible to transition off of them, the same way there is a system built to hook you on prescription drugs, the same way there is a system to hook you on consumerism, and on and on and on. 

It takes a truly immense amount of emotional labor to pull ourselves out of the system.

If I’m finding any people deplorable, it’s probably the people who are knowingly manipulating our attention away from us for profit. The inability to pay attention is deplorable. Manipulating people to become deplorable is worse (deplorabler?).

But also? Maybe just try to remind yourself every once in a while that you own your attention and no matter what some activist is saying on Instagram or TikTok (and sometimes it actually is really great stuff!) you get to decide if you want to engage in this now, or later, or not at all. 

And don’t forget that joy doesn’t grab our attention the same way crisis, fear, and panic do. Joy is softer, more tender, and the algorithm (that great eternal enigma) doesn’t particularly care for it. And inciting joy — as Ross Gay phrases it — I believe is a major form of “doing the work.”

Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash

Back to Mars

Let’s return to the Mars/Earth question. 

Since setting Instagram on the back burner, I’ve been battling this shaky feeling of shame that involves two facets: 1) The activist judginess that it is a privilege to be able to opt out of Instagram politics and advocacy and 2) If I miss some social justice thing on Instagram — where they all seem to live now — then I might be uninformed, and if I’m uninformed I’m going to say something stupid in public or in my writing that is going to get me canceled, and if I get canceled, people are going to think I’m a terrible person, and if people collectively think I’m a terrible person, I’m going to get so anxious I’m going to explode. And I really don’t want to explode. 

What this does is create a sense of lack within me, making me feel like I must consume more and more content to keep up, and when consuming isn’t enough, I must create the content, and I must create perfectly or be damned to hell, and then I must consume some more because if I’d just consumed enough I wouldn’t have made imperfect content to begin with, and it all circles up into one big disgusting ball of grossness that says, “You are not enough. You will never be enough. You can never do enough.” 

*Instagram spits in face*

Which ironically is exactly the mindset of capitalism and settler colonialism. And there is something infuriatingly depressing about watching the social justice movement, the environmental movement, all the movements, get sucked right back into this trap and not only promote but shame people for the very things they claim to be so staunchly against.

Dear lord, I’m TIRED.

Photo by Ahmed Adly on Unsplash

What Death is Teaching Me

For the last month or so, I’ve been earning my certificate to become an end-of-life doula (or “death doula”) online through the University of Vermont. It’s an absolutely fascinating course and I’ve actually learned a lot more about life than I have about death. (Funny how that happens.)

This week we focused on the Jungian notion of “shadow sides,” or the parts of ourselves we don’t want to acknowledge to ourselves or others. Our shadow sides can become particularly messy in death work because as a doula, it is not our job to fix or even to help the dying. Fixing implies a form of judgment, and helping imposes power. Both fixing and helping — these insecure shadow sides — can easily arise if we’re not grounded, present, AND PAYING ATTENTION to our clients. If we’re not careful, our shadow sides can cause us to regard the person we are working with not as whole or equal to us but rather as experiencing something completely different.

Instead, our role as doulas is to serve, where we “experience the other in oneself rather than only in projections of ourselves onto the other.” And that’s it.

What a freaking concept. In this role, we don’t give advice, we don’t fix perceived brokenness, we don’t even help. What we do is bear witness, hold sacred space, and ensure the dying of their humanity. 

And if you’re reading that saying to yourself, “Anja, that sounds like a whole lot of nothing to me,” I challenge you in your next social interaction to try not giving advice, not interjecting with personal anecdotes, not trying to fix or help, and just bearing witness to your friends and holding a sacred space for them. And then you can come back and tell me if that felt like “nothing.”

I bring this up because our attention seems so focused on “the work” lately, especially when it comes to social media activism, but my class this week made me wonder if we’re way too focused on fixing and helping when in this digital space. And that makes sense because I don’t really know if it’s possible to serve, to bear witness, and hold sacred space on Instagram or any other social platform. That’s kind of what makes this turn of attention entirely to social media, where we must tangibly and creatively demonstrate our values to one another (as well as receive so much of our learning and information) so freaking deplorable to me. It implies that bearing witness and holding sacred space is “nothing” simply because it can’t exist on the platform. And it seems more and more likely to me that that’s where “the work” actually lies.

I don’t know precisely what the boundaries of our activism are, but I think it’s risky to demand every person care about, be informed, and act on every form of suffering — and also do it perfectly every single time (also, perfectly according to who?). 

I guess what I’m saying is, let’s start with attention and go from there. Attention not tied to a screen, a device, a digital platform, but attention right in your backyard, your neighborhood, things and places you can physically hold in your hands. Let’s begin with that and see what happens. Let’s bear witness, let’s create sacred space, and observe what opens up, what rises to the surface, what settles to the depths, and tone down our near-constant demands for everyone everywhere to fix and help all hours of the day.

I’m going to close this out with another wonderful line from Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy because he brings this point around better than I ever could: “[Joy] might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.”