As I write this blog post on a Sunday afternoon, I’m sitting at adaptive gymnastics and chuckling, because somehow my daughter managed to get herself appointed Demonstrator, Boss Lady and Chooser-Of-The-Next-Activity. There are fifty people, between kids, siblings, and volunteer “coaches,” gathered in a huge circle following her every instruction. And she’s so ebullient, so eminently comfortable. How does she do that? She didn’t get that from either of us.
I start with that because I have so much on my mind today, and a lot of it is troubling. Some of it involves self-flagellation. But I like to focus on the good, partly because I don’t think anyone wants to read wailing and gnashing of teeth, and partly because the more I focus on what’s wrong, the more it becomes the only thing I see.
I’ve always been opinionatedpassionate, but I also really, really, really hate conflict. So I tend to sit and stew in my own pot of frustration and resentment. For years, sometimes.
Yet recently I’m discovering within myself a nearly irresistible pull to do something. To engage with others or to approach the relevant authorities when I find something troubling.
Not everything. I mean, I find the sheer amount of time people spend on smart devices at the expense of real human interaction tremendously troubling, but it’s clear I’m not going to affect that. (You can sit there reading this on your smart devices and shake your head with pity for my husband, who is caught between a job that requires him to be available 24-7 and his wife, who bares her teeth if he pulls the phone out at dinner or during conversations.) I find the dependence on pharmaceuticals for family planning extremely troubling and birth control in general bad for the earth and for women–especially when there’s a really good alternative–but at the same time I am coming to recognize that many of the things that have made life better for women simply wouldn’t have happened without it.
Generally, wrestling with irreconcilable realities is not something I do in public.
Plus, sometimes it’s not appropriate to get on a soapbox. If there’s a relevant authority responsible for what’s troubling me, complaining about it on a blog or Facebook is passive-aggressive at best; at worst, it’s a deliberate choice to be angry rather than try to improve a situation. (Can you tell I’m contemplating one of those right now?)
And in almost every situation, there’s a need to stop, to think, to go looking for actual facts to back up–or negate–my adverse reaction. The last four months have been particularly fraught in my circles; as I said on Facebook one morning last week, I’d gotten into three arguments–two on one side of the political spectrum and one on the other. “Clearly,” I said, “today I’m feeling like planting a flag on the Centrist hill and dying there.”
The thing is, people are going off half-cocked a lot these days. I mean, is TrumpCare actually going to cut 24 million people’s health care, or are a bunch of people just going to decide to forgo health care?
The fact that both these claims are being splattered across my Facebook feed, without anyone there or in any news report I’ve heard saying, “Hey, maybe we should do some critical analysis of this, because these two claims simply can’t both be true”?—that fact is probably the thing that troubles me most right now. I mean, why doesn’t somebody ask the left-leaning Congressman to directly address the right’s claim, and the right-leaning Congressman to address the left’s claim? I think those two answers would illuminate an awful lot. This business of firing message points past past our opponents’ shoulders is only making everyone rattle sabers.
Recent conversations have caused me to evaluate my own reactions. On the spectrum of online activism, I lean heavily toward “control thy trigger finger.” And yet, I develop opinions as quickly as anyone else. The fact that I don’t fling them around Facebook doesn’t mean I’m actually properly informed. And that’s not okay. I have to do better.
So I guess, after wandering for 700 words, I have finally identified my point. I want to beg everyone I know, regardless of your political, religious, or philosophical bias:
Think before reacting.
Research before sharing.
If what you’re reading has exclamation points in the headline, go find a less biased source.
If it has obscenities in the headline, the text, or the URL, go looking for a more credible, less emotional source. Because there’s no way it’s giving you a clear picture. It’s just not.
If you get angry reading something, take a deep breath and analyze why—what fact or words caused that reaction—and then go do some due diligence to see if there’s more to the story. (Usually, the answer is “yes.” It might not change your opinion, but it will often clarify that it’s not Armegeddon.)
Spreading propaganda—left- or right-leaning, either one (I’ve seen plenty of both recently)—is inherently disrespectful not only to the system we all depend upon in this country—it’s disrespectful of human dignity.
Kathleen M. Basi 