Haven’t been as good as I’ve wanted to in posting so far this year but I know I’ve got plenty of time to make up for it. Real life gets in the way some times for my hobbies, and currently besides school and work I’ve had some concerns in my family that for now, at least, seem to be stable.
I did have some thoughts from this past week that I wanted to get down, however. My wife and I went to Moab, UT for a couple days in an attempt to see the total lunar eclipse, which ended up being a bit of a bust due to excessive clouds that night. We still made the best of our time there by exploring a bit in Arches National Park the next day, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest by saying I had one of the best moments of my life there.
From what we’d seen when researching before our trip, it can sometimes take an hour or more to get into the park. But with it still being a bit off-season, it didn’t take us long to get in that morning. After driving for a while on the roads and getting far away from anyone else, we parked off to the side, rolled down the windows, and turned the car completely off.
Absolute silence.
There wasn’t any wind, no bugs chirping, nothing to distract us at all. We purposely didn’t have any music playing, and we were far away from anywhere that our phones would get a signal – not that we were trying to get one anyway – so there was nothing that could distract us from just enjoying the peace that nature was offering. I can’t remember the last time I’d felt so calm in my life. Even when things are “quiet” at work (and as a reminder, I work in a library), there’s still the hum of a nearby refrigerator, someone typing on a keyboard, the low buzz of the fluorescent lights, and plenty of other noises that randomly pop up here and there. When I’m lying in bed at night, and the lights are off, there’s still the air conditioning blowing, and my CPAP working to keep me breathing, the occasional creaking of the house or bed… again, there was just nothing like that for these few minutes to interrupt the total tranquility we felt. After that we did some hiking in a couple parts of the park and enjoyed seeing the monumental formations, but that moment of quiet stuck with me, and I’m sure will still stick with me for a long time.
Later in the day I admittedly went back to scrolling through social media during some down time. And the difference between what I felt when just sitting there, relaxing in the middle of beautiful nowhere, and the deluge of posts from people who were loud and angry and offended and hurt and overwhelmed, in between ads for products and services I didn’t need but they wanted to convince me otherwise because they believe I’d be immensely happier that way, all while I’m trying to ignore random calls and texts sent to my phone that are obvious scams and trying to resist the urge to switch to a different app to see the same kinds of posts there but with the hope that maybe it’s a bit better there – all of that gave me a simple thought.
I need to get out more.
I wrote a few years ago about the shield of the internet and how people feel way too safe to say outlandish things online that could get them in real trouble if said in person to someone else. Unfortunately it seems like that behavior has spread from random commenters in internet forums to many of our country’s elected officials and top influencers (a word that I really don’t like to use but is unfortunately the most appropriate). While I don’t follow a lot of politicians on sites like Twitter, I do occasionally see the retweets by others of some incredibly rude comments made by people who I would hope are much more respectful in person. But then, maybe that’s how they got elected; it’s possible that their rhetoric resonated with people who were already spending too much time in their own echo chambers and couldn’t believe any other way of thinking or behaving was fine, so now they can all rally behind someone who represents their beliefs.
I believe it’s evident that the COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot, some things for the better and many things for the worse. Work from home technology? Much better than before. The number of people believing that vaccines are bad for you? Definitely worse. Services like grocery pickup? A great benefit! Incredibly vocal outcries of people believing that this country isn’t meant to be a welcoming home for anyone and everyone? So. Much. Worse.
A couple recent videos that stuck out to me were the following. The first one is a bit of an ongoing saga, where a 6th grade teacher in Idaho was told to take down a couple of posters that on the surface seem relatively inoffensive (seen in the thumbnail here) because they “go against district policy of displaying personal opinions”. This particular video is a follow up to the original story, and there have been a few updates since then but not much that left me with a good feeling:
This other video is one that I saw clips of on Twitter first. I wasn’t previously familiar with the man in the middle who was debating anyone who came up against him, but his name is Sam Seder and I felt like he handled himself well while being surrounded by people of purposely opposite political beliefs. It was a very interesting experiment, and I’m glad it had some agreed-upon restrictions in place to not get too out of hand. But it made me curious if the people debating him were 100% serious about their beliefs or just trying to get their 15 minutes of fame on the internet. I haven’t delved more into the channel it’s on but it did have me worried that the comments made by the people here (who seem to be right around my age) felt so… anti-American to me.
I literally talked with my wife about this within the last couple weeks, but a major symbol of the United States is the Statue of Liberty, gifted to us by France almost 140 years ago. The inscription on it – which has the now-famous lines “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – just seems so far away from what a very vocal portion of our country desires. And just within the last few days, a French politician made the comment that we should give her back. Later on he clarified the comments, saying of course they wouldn’t actually want the statue back, but what it represents doesn’t seem to be aligned with the direction that the US is going, and the symbolic torch could, and maybe would, be taken up by leaders in Europe. Frankly, I don’t blame him or think his comments are all that out of line.
To get to the point of this post: it feels like so, so many people that raise their voices online are doing so because that’s all they’ve ever known. There are kids growing up now who could never imagine a life without the internet. And while there definitely can be good things shared online, if you go down the wrong rabbit hole it’s easy to get sucked in. Algorithms everywhere are designed to entice and addict, providing more and more of the same thing you’ve already started looking at so that you devote even more time to that subject or cause. Even if you just stay on the same site, Facebook or YouTube or TikTok or whatever your app of choice may be will put things into your feed based on the posts you already interact with because, again, that’s what they’re designed to do.
So what’s the best cure for that? Literally go touch some grass. Put the phone down. Go outside and just enjoy being outside, without thinking of all the pictures you need to take so you can post them for everyone to see. Go travel somewhere, and if possible out of the country for a bit. Just try to experience something in a different part of the country, state, or even city if nothing else is feasible. I was lucky enough to serve a church mission in a completely different continent for a couple years and it was incredibly formative to my views on how the world works. It’s still been a valuable experience to this day, even 14 years after coming back to the United States.
And if me telling you on my blog to get offline for a while seems hypocritical, the only thing I can say in response is that I hope you at least understand my overall point: get out of any echo chamber you may be in and just disconnect from your own thoughts for a while. Take a break and breathe, and it’ll only be beneficial for your overall mental health and sanity, with how crazy things in the world seem to be day-to-day. Speaking from experience, a fresh perspective like that makes a world of difference.
Marshall's Matters 