It seems to me that everyone is ready to move on. We are all experiencing a level of fatigue that we are unfamiliar with. That rolling river of anxiety and tension that is a constantly running under the surface of our psyche has been rising to near unbearable levels. No matter who your preferred candidate may be in today’s election, it is my assumption that you are ready to move on to the next phase of this grand experiment that is the United States.
Likely more important to most of us is the necessity to calm that raging river of anxiety and free up some mental bandwidth so we can get back to some sense of normalcy within our day to day lives. We’d like to not be inundated with advertisements, text messages, emails, and phone calls at every waking hour. We’d like the tension in our familial and work relationships to ease. We are all just exhausted.
As I grow older I have less tolerance for the entire thing. Historically as one ages their engagement in politics increases. This is likely because when we hit middle age the actions and policies of governance have real impacts on the way we live, raise our families, and save money for retirement. When we reach old age I suppose that most people become hyper-engaged with the political system due to a heightened sense of purpose or legacy…or perhaps because older folks don’t have as much to do so they use it as a way to counter their boredom.
I was quite engaged in the system when I was younger and even to the point that it would push my wits to their limits at times. I now realize that this was the reaction of a person that didn’t fully understand what was going on. In recent years I’ve accepted my limited level of understanding and limited level of control. This realization has resulted in a pillar of my current outlook on the world and how I operate in it.
That realization being that there is a great asymmetry between the control we think we have and the control that we actually have. This asymmetric relationship has serious implications on our mental state. It also has a great impact on the choices we make and where we put our attention. With our current state of hyper-engagement with media, social and traditional, we are giving a lot of power to politicians, institutions, and corporations.
These entities have little interest in informing a citizenry and a great interest in gaining and keeping your attention. The reason for this is that your attention is valuable and the more of it you give to them the more money they amass. Every bit of your attention is monetized. Every moment you spend on the media outlet of your choice is a chance to sell you something. Any truthful and useful information that you gain is a byproduct of that interaction.
This isn’t to say that we should become ignorant. This is saying that there is a great incongruence between the time and attention we give to media and the actual control that we have, especially when it comes to our political system. I’ve known for a while who was getting my vote in this election. I needn’t spend my most valuable resources – my time and attention – on something that is only going to spike my blood pressure and give more tools to the algorithms in an attempt to get into my wallet.
Everyone is indeed free to do as they wish, but a simple examination of your motives and the motives of those that are capturing your attention is worthwhile. In recent years I’ve made a conscious effort not to preach in my writing. My opinion is worth a lot to me but likely very little to others. However, the one thing that I’ll strongly advocate for is a realignment when it comes to our relationship to media, specifically social media. I’ve written quite extensively about the reasons for my rigid perspective on the topic. Many of those writings I’ve put out in the public space.
The main point of this piece is to shine a light on what we are missing out on when we allow powerful entities such as political machines and media institutions to capture our attention. We are allowing them to overinflated our level of control for their own gains. In so doing we are missing out on the wonder of life that is directly in front of us.
We are missing moments with our families because we are reading social media comments. We are losing connection with half of the people in our community because we’ve allowed these machines of mass manipulation to turn us into enemies. We’re missing out on a positive mental state because we’ve allowed that with which we have almost no control to rob us of energy that would be better put towards that which we can control.
While disagreement and debate are baked-in elements of a democratic society, they needn’t be at the level they are currently. WE are not being served by this. The collective WE, which is all of us that are showing up for this election, aren’t enemies. WE have been made to believe that we are enemies by those attempting to make some dollars and gain power. I truly believe that WE are better than what we have been over the past few months.
We are all Americans and one of the reasons that our sensibilities were so ripe for the picking is that we all care immensely about the state of our nation. We are showing up in record numbers for this election because we care deeply about this grand experiment that is the United States. We can disagree about a way forward, but we can’t disagree about the passion that exists for this life in this country. I truly believe we all want the best for our families and fellow citizens, and we want the future generations to enjoy the same freedoms that we’ve been fortunate to experience.
This may be naive, but I hope that after today we can put the energy with which we’ve been fighting one another into compassion for one another. I hope we can put that energy towards restoring what’s been damaged. We’ve managed to do great things when we work collectively with one another and compassionately towards one another.
No matter the results of today’s election, I hope that a way forward exists where we can again be in disagreement but resume the work of putting our collective efforts toward building something grand for our future generations.
I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found some value in this. Please take care of each other and find compassion for those that need it. Thanks for reading.
Billy's Briefs 