Sometimes I fall down the existential rabbit-hole. As a child, the world seemed relatively unproblematic. Politicians fought and made threats, but counteracting forces balanced them out. Scientists made new advances almost regularly. I always thought the world was moving progressively, remaining at the same degree of ‘unproblematicness’ as I thought it was at.
Recently, I started taking screenshots of the news, so I can compare for posterity how we framed the events that have happened, how quick and close together they are. It’s easy for one dramatic headline to replace the next, and to forget what happened the other day. Even worse, it’s far too easy to re-accommodate towards a new reality and simply accept it, because it feels do distant to us, on international headlines or in government’s hands. Don DeLillo said, “the American national memory lasts 48 hours at the most.”[1] It’s true. Revisiting my archive, I saw a list of headlines that would put us to shame in front of the eyes of any alien coming to appraise humanity. Climate change, populist governments, a recession leaving up to 100 million more in poverty, invasion of privacy by governments and corporations, powerful governments getting away with horrific human rights violations – the kidnapping of the Belarus presidential candidate, the poisoning of Russian officials have shown that it may not matter how important you are or what rights you stand for. Farmers have been migrating from Central America because their crops are destroyed by the effects of climate change, and yet Democratic advocacy groups were able to amass over 45 million dollars in under a week after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, to stop a rightist judge from replacing her seat.
Tom Gregory’s lecture peeled back the top layer of the news and brought a whole new problem I rarely contemplate to the table; the issue of drones. Wielded by the powerful, it is an issue that often falls down the list of priorities of things to discuss. How is it possible that the psychological hell civilian populations endure is something that can appear in the news, that critics and scholars and politicians can ‘express their regret’ and ‘condemn the flagrant human rights abuses,’ and we can continue scrolling, move onto the next article of interest to ‘inform ourselves,’ and yet these people don’t cease to exist simply because we have moved on.
What kind of issues await us? What future can we expect, with this kind of present? What can we do about this? Despite having centuries to reach a point where women’s rights, indigenous rights, and LGBTQ rights are included within human rights, where we have many new commodities and new ways to ensure everyone has enough, we are at a point in human history where we can enjoy these rights on paper but not in real life. A climate emergency is looming. The law is struggling to keep up with changes in artificial intelligence that haven’t manifested yet but will have significant impacts on our day to day lives. Where does our humanity fit into all this?
I recently read 1984 by George Orwell. Big Brother’s success over controlling people was largely due to conditioning people to accept the news blindly, hear a new headline the next day – no matter how different it was from the day before – and accept it. It’s far too easy to read texts by the academia or in the newspaper as if we were detached from the world, able to study it, and dismiss it once the class ends or we’ve got the facts. But the world we read about is ours. “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King said.[2] Just because it hasn’t affected us directly doesn’t mean it won’t, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about it.
I’m trying to steer my actions according to a new way of operating. In his last interview, George Orwell says, “if you don’t want it happen, it’s quite simple. Don’t let it.”[3] Of course, it’s not so easy – many things are beyond our control. But in a few years’ time, we will be making the decisions that affect the future of our planet and the lives of younger and older generations. We are standing at a critical point in history. I don’t have a solution to all these problems, but I do think we can learn from Greta Thunberg. Rather than being passively occupied with her own life, with an external locus of control and seeing everything beyond her, she saw herself as a human being, able to make use of all the tools she had in the moment and make a real contribution.
Our ability to make change may feel limited within a system that appears to be created for the interests of the powerful. But if every generation thinks like that, we will never get anywhere. Our humanity is something so rare within the universe that we need to cultivate it, protect it, protect our planet – the challenges obstructing it are nothing in the face of the entire cosmos.
We will never stop being students. But what we do during these formative years could have a huge impact. Think about the things you learn and be critical, ask yourself how this will play out if it keeps going on. Listen to George Orwell’s words and treat the world as it is; we are the case studies, the trial samples, the statistics showing up on the graphs. How we approach information and how we view ourselves in relation to the world will be fundamental to how we make decisions.
P.S.: just to put ourselves in the context of something much bigger and remember what’s important – have a look at this program to explore the stars.
http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/?campaign_id=167&emc=edit_ah_20201016&instance_id=23211&nl=at-
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/nov/05/don-delillo-trumps-america-love-lies-bleeding
[2] Martin Luther King, Letter to a Birmingham Jail.
[3] George Orwell’s last interview: retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP3T5tEs7yI
(4) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/national-pride-stake-russia-china-united-states-race-build-hypersonic-weapons
Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/feminist/
Kia Ora Leticia – what a beautiful and harrowing post, exceptionally well written as always. Your words show a deep attentiveness to the world around us and the way in which we are intrinsically tied to it – I love the way you put it so simply here “But the world we read about is ours… Just because it hasn’t affected us directly doesn’t mean it won’t, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about it.” I think I too am slowly learning the dangers of apathy and the importance of educating ourselves on global issues that face us every day, while at the same time learning how to create a balance of accepting the things I cannot change and finding the courage to change the things I can. I think I will take the time to re-read Orwell’s novel over the summer – although I found it heavy-going last time, as you rightly pointed out, it seems almost scarily relevant now. Thanks again for the post, arohanui!
Lovely post Leticia! It’s always simultaneously heartwarming and gut-wrenching to see someone post something about how terrible the world is at the moment but remind us that there are still actions we can take if we care enough. I really like the idea of steering ourselves away from passivity into active humanitarian action, even if the issue in question begins miles away. It reminds me of the BLM protests that occurred all over the world earlier this year. Although sparked in the US, it woke up the whole world to the injustices people of colour face at the hands of police and wider society. A great reminder that our actions count and are not meaningless – thank you!
This article was really interesting to read, thanks Leticia! Activism and politics are something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve dropped further and further into the (amazing) wormhole of leftist YouTube. The theme of constant and often obscured injustice is a theme that has come up again and again. We live in a position of extreme privilege and have the choice to turn away from these problems, but it is that very choice that makes it so important for us to be conscious of the issues that plague our society. Yet there are so many things to think about: climate change, racial and sexual equality, class – it often feels like too much to cram into one human brain and, like you say, it is easy to lose track of where we fit in when considering these issues. I don’t have the answers either, but looking for the answers is vitally important to helping us help each other.
At the same time, it’s pretty inspirational and hope-inducing (if that’s the word) to see you writing about this stuff. The world is crazy and nothing really matters, but that just gives us the opportunity to decide what matters on our own terms and act in service of those goals. We might never finish our journey to find the answers that will tell us how best to live our lives, but it is that very journey that makes us human in the first place.
Hey, this is thought-provoking. It was not until my recent school years I have become aware of misleading global information. Obviously being told what is true and false from your parents is a big shift to the exposure of media. Yet it is not shocking how corrupt human beings are. I agree with Martin Luther King. As technology continues to swamp us into our devices, we now can’t rely on one source of information. In some cases, things like Facebook live have benefited the truth of actions. But for a great percent of global information, who can we trust? I believe you’re on a start to seeing you truths and taking a great unsheltered position when beginning your journey for change.