[484] Information Overload

I’m not convinced nearly anyone knows what they are talking about.

I’ve been working on my project to map and record all the information I’ve shared to facebook over the last 5 or 6 years. At present, it’s around 600 articles. I stress, these aren’t Buzzfeed, HuffPo, or Yahoo blurbs designed as clickbait. It’s mini-books, insanely investigatively researched pieces, and frontline experiences of people immersed in their particular worlds.

In order to do this, because facebook is difficult, you have to go into your timeline review page and scroll through the entire year by hand and pick out the links. While doing this, I not only get the brunt of the inane obnoxious person I presented myself as in my early years of facebook use, but I get to go back over fights and discussions with people on any number of topics. It’s a sobering reminder.

It doesn’t matter the issue. Guns, the economy, birth control, religiosity, racism, the death penalty, GMOs...take your pick. The thing about conversation that I never want to learn again keeps rearing its ugly head. While I can now, by the numbers, give you an impression of the amount of work I do to form an opinion about something, all the other side needs is condescending pride or a completely spineless desire to “agree to disagree.”

Here’s how it goes. Someone will pipe up about “girls who should close their legs” so that they’re not getting abortions. I’ll explain that demonizing sex seems a disingenuous way to go about describing the services Planned Parenthood provides, and will offer an article from someone who spent 15 years in the adoption industry about why that’s not a full proof fix. Immediately, I’m met with “you’re demonizing me, god says this or that, why are you so rude?!” If it doesn’t go there that quickly, it’s “well here’s a long and completely irrelevant story about how I feel, now I’ll reassert my opinion, so there.”

Or here’s another one. Someone will chime in that “people are running from god” and that’s why our morals have degraded or any number of other damming sentiments about the modern era. I’ll say “Hey Jim, what do you mean by ‘running from god?’ because I literally have no conception of it.” His response is, “oh you know what I mean, by the way tell me where’d you go to school, and you’re like some poor analogy I’m proving I can’t make up on the fly.” It doesn’t occur to him that I don’t know what he means, because he probably doesn’t know what he means, yet it’s his insistence we should ride off into the sunset content that I was merely antagonizing and he’s de facto correct.

One last one for posterity. Someone will enthusiastically state their opinion in favor of the death penalty. An eye for an eye, after all. It doesn’t matter if we’ve killed innocent people, put mentally handicapped people down, it’s more expensive than life, it doesn't deter crime, and a simple analogy like “we don’t rape rapists” doesn’t connect. I’m a hippie liberal who can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone I love killed. So I take it step further and say “My loved one is killed, I’m suffering, I want that person to suffer like me, so let’s string them up whenever I please so I can beat out of them what they put into me.” How do you think that suggestion goes? Or maybe let me beat them to death. How many people get on board? Their empathy goes right up until the point they feel comfortable with or what society has trained them to say is correct. Or stated differently, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

It strikes me that any piece of intelligently written work can be worth hours of conversation or the pursuit of hundreds of sources and examples to try and bolster its point of view. It is work. It is hard to think. It is hard to hold yourself accountable. It is hard to read for several hours with the intention of taking something away beyond a simple impression. Every single piece a potential spark for a boundless imagination.

Yet consider this. All we’re left with is an impression. I can’t quote and recite back to you the 600 links staring menacingly at me to be organized. But I can offer a more rounded opinion about, not only the topics above, but any number of issues that have struck my interest. My views are not equal to the rabid opinion slinging of “the feelers.” Think about how “debates” (I loathe that qualifier for what happens online) unfold in comment sections. One idiot gets challenged by another idiot, then the birds flock in and start shitting everywhere. No one goes to their bank of resources and shares 3 articles from someone on the ground about the topic. No one ever says “I concede” or “I agree.” They dance in shit.

If you keep this in mind when I’m accused of asking “leading questions” or being “condescending” and “making no attempt to understand someone” you’ll see how the problem compounds. I don’t just ask questions, I ask for someone to describe for me what they found wrong with my question and how I might phrase it for it go down better. Routinely my questions are ignored. Overwhelmingly are they in the vein of “can you clarify that or give me your personal understanding.” I didn’t ask for the numbers, the books, or any work other than the exercise of your brain. And that’s what terrifies me the most. They don’t know how to use it.

So not only do I wrap myself up in a generally fruitless and seemingly “pointless” exchange with someone who knows nothing, has read nothing, nor is willing to read or offer anything, but then I get the “I’M TRYING TO BE ABOVE IT ALL AND OBJECTIVE” person sweeping in to explain to me that asking questions and describing what’s happened is the wrong method. So what impression do you think I hope you take away from that kind of exchange? That I tolerate you? That I accept your unwilling troll-ish nature? That I’m as unwilling as you to challenge something I think is wrong? No, I want you to know I’m angry. I want you to know that I’ll invest my time picking it apart until you’re as exhausted as I am. And if you’re just gonna run, I want you to see the dust kicked up in how fast your legs are pumping.

We start irrational. We start with unsubstantiated weak feelings. You are not human, in my estimation, until you are willing to not only acknowledge this weakness, but show a willingness to fight it. Otherwise, it consumes you. It’s jingoism, it’s religiosity, it’s undue pride, it’s the seething hatred you feel for what displaces your status quo, and it’s the blanket of fear that guides your actions. Every single vote for Trump is suffering from this problem. Every single person who attempts to pretend that there’s something difficult to discern between Trump and Sanders suffers this problem. Every single person who says “meh, I just don’t care” is an extension of this problem.

For all the illusions of security we have, as long as you want water without lead, land without radioactivity, and things on your mind not related to how you’re gonna survive, you care. Common sense, knowledge, a capacity for rational thought, and a respect for why and when you should respect something desperately needs to come back. Knowing when to shut your fucking mouth when you have no idea what you’re fucking talking about needs to come back.

I just see the posturing and lying and empty bullshit so often I wish I were numb and not sick. The weird person who pretends they didn’t google their answer before some unnecessarily uppity reply to a reddit comment. The move to ageism when you challenge someone with grey hair on their understanding of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. The “expert” on love or relationships who thinks their sole partner and 4 kids taught them more than you and your 30 partners and counting. The ignorant replies I get to these things as if there isn’t a wealth of information explaining the benefits of writing, not only about yourself, but in general in trying to cope with all of the horrible fucking behavior and useless opinions.

Instead we instagram. We need a keyboard shortcut for “tl;dr.” Instead we find some job rut and bolster our opinion of ourselves as flagrantly and ignorantly as we approach conversations. We’re tired, so we act like we deserve our own protected safe mental space. I’m proud of the work I do so here’s my impenetrable Fort Kickass that shuffles your criticism and whining to the bowels of facebook where it belongs. How dare you describe the holes in my reasoning! How dare you call me lazy! Why can’t you just calm down? Why do you hate fun?

What’s the sound of one hand clapping? Me ever-slapping myself in the face for ever pretending I could offer something of value to such a gigantic sea of fucking morons.