A big part of why I started blogging in the first place was that I realized that the internet in recent times has become, for lack of a better term, dumbed down with academic cred. I see graphics of quotes from well known intellectuals of the past and sometimes present reposted ad nauseam all the time. The implication of intellectual engagement with the least amount of effort.
The fact that this is so common—and that I often see the same platitudes posted by multiple people across the span of a few days—feels very endemic of the current state of online discourse. Radically minded thinkers putting up their hands and putting their fingers to the keyboard in an emphatic burst of passion…only to share a doom-confirming quotation from a source seen as reliable, with any additional commentary boiling down to an annoyingly exasperated sigh and “yep”. That’s not even two words.
Where do we go as a country when the best commentary we can muster on our society is someone else’s theory regurgitated verbatim with little thought regarding the content as long as it sets off nicey bells in our heads? In today’s America, we choose a side and ride it ’til we die, only activating those wonderful Critical Thinking Skills when it’s to demonize someone who even slightly leans towards the opposition. That’s not freedom of thought. That’s mental slavery. Your freedom is the price you pay to come off to your friends as “right”.
It is almost as if this glory of proving yourself “right” to the nebulous entity that is whoever may be observing you at any given time, outweighs the formation of actual solution and action that can lead to the solutions you want. It’s a damn shame that the legacy of these smart-whipped creatives who wrote the originals, if we keep sitting on our asses, is going to be “all we did in reaction was sigh”.
In our interactions with the wider world we always see ourselves as the little guy. This transcends any sort of societal status or access to privileges; everyone loves to be a victim. Because of this we embrace negativity and wallow in it. If ignorance is bliss, then abject suffering must mean we are intelligent, and intelligence equals righteousness. We conduct ourselves to these standards of being the most “right” to such a degree that we simply don’t take action. Action is normally messy. Individually crafted politics are inherently so. Getting mustard on your sweatshop-new, hackney-slogan t-shirt isn’t a good look.
This is because we have taught ourselves that humans have an apex and we ourselves, to ourselves, are that apex. It’s the mythos of the little girl getting depressed by her peaches and cream Barbie, except we are are the little girl and the doll simultaneously. We plasticize ourselves because we are faced against not just established systems of power and economics but the will of human nature itself, and not much can be done to radically alter the not so skillfully applied makeup of humankind. We are still humans underneath all the buildup, vested with the history proven capacity to make radical good and to make radical evil, though we often forget the latter attribute since we don’t like thinking about scary things and prefer reducing anyone who doesn’t agree with us to a subhuman, a fascist ball of primordial ooze. (As if we’re not collectively swimming in it.)
It’s much easier to blame everything on a redneck who lives five states away. Obviously the blame is on the big guy only as it applies to the little guy, but the other kind of little guy than you. This is unity, right? This is getting things done?
When we prune ourselves over like this for others we deny ourselves the do, because doing requires room for error and failure, and belly flopping isn’t the “right” thing to do. So we become complacent to what ails us instead. We may know the truth that the people running the asylum are the real crazies, but we’re so obsessed with proving our own manufactured sanity that we can’t let ourselves be seen as even 1/24 delirious. But you have to be a little unhinged to have the ambition to actually try. You have to let that side of yourself be seen.
But ambition isn’t a good look. It gets you looked at funny at best and gets you locked up at worst. So we call for our armchair revolutions all the while.
If we keep up this lethargy then maybe the only solution is to keep our eyes peeled to the heap of melted plastic as it slowly disintegrates into the landfill earth. To keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing. Half life after half life.
But it does not have to be this way.
Well said!