I tried to stay connected to the community in the aftermath of the Hurricane – but that ultimately led to hours of doomscrolling and too much social media and way too much anxiety for what I was getting in return. Of course this coincided with the run-up to the elections and before long I was just feeling sick with the wealth of news, commentary, opinions…media.
Our brains were never meant to comprehend this scale of things. Maybe the worst thing we ever did for ourselves was put our existence in the space of “the universe.” Or suggested that the sky above is infinite – we just can’t comprehend. Hell, most of us can’t comprehend the few hundred, thousand, million people who may follow us on various social media things.
It’s never about “keeping up with things” is it? We used to count on these platforms to learn about your friends who bought a new house or to give your aunty a place to upload a million pictures of her new nephew for her sewing group. No, social media is for rabbit holes. The algorithm is only giving you more of what you want and need, right? And before too long you are looking over the edge and into the Abyss of international, high-tech conspiracies that likely took place to steal the results.
So you delete the apps from your phone for the 19th time this year and a day later the more heartbreaking and violent truth sets in: most people aren’t as good as you want them to be.
In the past few months around Asheville I have seen and felt an amazing level of love and support for the community – everyone wanted to help get everyone whole again. But there were also rumors of mini-militias who were “hunting FEMA” (not entirely true, but one man was arrested for threatening volunteers) and the nation-wide disinformation about weather machines, quartz mines, illegal immigrants, and so, so many other absolutely absurd and hurtful things. And that’s just among the half-dozen counties we live in.
And that seems to be the disconnect: the fantastical stories always come from somewhere else. The people most concerned about borders don’t live anywhere near them. The jobs people are worried about losing to migration or automation are the same jobs they would never want to do themselves. The social welfare programs your tax dollar funds are designed to do just that: ensure the welfare of our society.
We decided this long ago when the country deemed, collectively, that an 85-year-old widow who was no longer able to work shouldn’t have to survive off expired tins of cat food.
The ones who are loudest about despising those who are on welfare programs are also the ones who create the conditions where people have to rely on them to survive. Not “fraud” or “exploitation.” Survival.
Oddly, this may be where the conspiracy really exists. Every society is three meals away from its next revolution. Let them eat cake. As Aristotle suggested, most of the public is too occupied with working to survive to then think they are engaged enough participate in an effective democracy.
The promise of the internet is that anyone, anywhere, could create something the entire world could see. The early promise of social media – in the days of Arab Spring and OccupyWallStreet – was that the public majority could organize and be heard. Yet, both of those tools have been weaponized against us. The barrels turned towards the ranks and caused us to scatter. This online space is now a war between the right and the wrong (and everyone is always on the side of the right, always) and even if we managed to discern truth from disinformation, what then?
In an emergency, the digital space allows us to enact the physical world. The digital space around Asheville is helping the physical brick and mortars survive, revive, and ultimately bring the community of the people who are here together. At the same time, the disinformation in the digital space brings conflict to the physical – vigilantes who move to act upon a digital fever dream. Or people who take an All Caps Lock approach to an argument in a public space.
Digital actions, physical consequences. Talk shit, get hit.
If it goes on like this, it may as well get worse. If we’re too busy with survival to engage with our politics, then we’ll go with the easiest tagline no matter the falsities. When we’re working to the bone to get by, how can you expect to have the energy to properly educate yourself on what is happening around us all? Why develop critical thinking when it’s done for you by the brilliantly manipulative?
Education has always been a personal responsibility, and today it is more needed than ever.