Not. Paying. Attention.
Besetting sins and bumper stickers
Driving around the other day, I saw a bumper sticker on the car in the next lane. It said (roughly), “If you’re not OUTRAGED you haven’t been paying ATTENTION.” Well, it got my attention. And it got me outraged…at it.
I’m far from the only one fed up with the constant stream of outrage coming from all sides. Even more annoying is the insinuation that if I’m not in a constant state of fervent and authentic anger about the atrocities all around me, then I must approve of them and be a horrible person. Either that or I must be an idiot not to see them or a coward not to speak against them.
But which atrocities am I supposed to be outraged about? The car was bare of other stickers, so the object of its driver’s rage was a mystery. I find plenty of options in my news feed. My conservative friends are outraged about transgender propaganda in the public school system; about Planned Parenthood employees laughing over crushed skulls; and about the latest person who was fired, censored, or harassed for their beliefs. My liberal friends are outraged about abusive authority figures (especially police and border patrol); about the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade; and about Donald Trump’s latest audacious statement, on Twitter or otherwise. My libertarian friends are outraged about taxes and regulations. My socialist friends are outraged about income inequality and the cost of healthcare. On and on it goes.
In the midst of all of this, many accuse their opponents of hypocrisy, of only being outraged when it suits their political agenda. And I’m ashamed to admit I was one of those accusers. When I heard about the family separation at the border, my first reaction was sympathetic anguish, especially for my fellow nursing mother. But my second reaction was partisan anger: “If you’re not upset about abortion — kids literally ripped in pieces — you don’t get to be upset about kids being separated from their parents.” The next day, I noticed several conservative pundits making the same argument. Of course, the liberals fired back: “If you’re not upset about already-born kids suffering, you don’t get to be upset about the unborn.”
The truth is, both are horrible instances of human suffering, deserving of concern. Both are also aspects of much larger, complex problems with no easy solutions. Whatever solutions we do find will be complicated, long, and uncomfortable. Nobody likes that. What’s simple, short, and very comfortable? Posting outrage and virtue-signaling on social media.
Media, I must admit, is one of my besetting sins. I have a powerful FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ll stay up late into the night on meme pages because there might be something funny out there I haven’t seen yet! I’ll refresh Facebook over and over to see if I have any new notifications, any new comments or likes on my statuses, or any new posts from faraway friends and family. All of this, of course, while my two kids are right in front of me, vying for my attention. So should I just unplug completely, ignore the whole world outside my door, and have no opinions on anything that doesn’t affect me directly? I’m still not sure.
It’s a strange world, one that everyone is still getting used to. We are more connected than ever before to events on a national or even global scale. We can know in an instant what the leaders of other countries are saying behind closed doors, or what someone five states away is wearing for Halloween, or who’s getting beaten and shot in communities we’ve never even visited. The barrage of information is like candy to our knowledge-hungry minds, and we gobble it up, becoming addicted, as I described above. At the same time, knowing and connecting more is not necessarily a bad thing. I encounter people online with whom I would never cross paths in real life, people outside my usual Christian/homeschooling/Midwestern bubble, and they give me insights that are useful even in my Christian/homeschooling/Midwestern life. Tedious research and endless ignorance are no longer the only options available, as I can merely wonder “Where does the corn in those fields go?” and have the answer with the touch of a few keys. (Apparently it’s mostly used for animal feed, ethanol, and corn syrup for food production.) For the struggling person who feels alone, a social media group or thread can give them help and hope. So it’s not all bad. We just have to be careful how we use it.
Another besetting sin of mine is wrath. I get fed up and I flip out, shouting or growling or banging cupboard doors. If someone hurts or threatens the people I care about, I’m ready to claw the offender’s eyes out. It’s a coping mechanism, really. Being angry helps me feel more in control, while blaming others lets me avoid the crushing fear that I’m not good enough. Couple that with the social media addiction, and I could literally be angry all day long. I could spend hours composing a devastating takedown of ideologies that devalue me and my family. I could snap at my kids every time their needs interfere with mine. I could dwell on the ways certain people have hurt me in the past, not in a cleansing way, but in an effort to justify my desire to hurt them back. There is so much evil in the world, so much suffering and injustice, that every time I ran out of anger about one thing, I could easily find another.
The thing is, anger is a threat response. It is a stress on mind and body. As such, we can’t physically sustain it for any duration of time. Trying to do so only makes us tired and less capable of complex thought. Anger cries out for a release. If the legitimate object of anger is too far away or too big to reach, we end up taking it out on the innocent, causing even more problems. Again, we run up against the limitations of being human. Anger is a coping mechanism, and with our infinite connectivity, we as individuals seemingly have to cope with all the problems everywhere.
The suffering all around us is real, and it deserves attention. But with such unlimited knowledge that technology gives us, we’re forgetting that humans are limited. We can’t do something about everything. Yes, groups of committed people can make a large difference; but groups can also degenerate into mobs, hyping up their outrage until some easy enemy is destroyed, and then becoming bored and moving on to the next. While we furiously hashtag and blog (oh, the irony), real people are here in our real communities, needing real help. Outrage can only get us so far; to a place where we’re motivated to take action. For that action to do any good, we have to set aside the endless stream of outrage to focus on the problems right in front of us. It’s to them that we have to pay attention.