Background Issues
Human beings are drawn to the unusual and sensational.
It’s baked into how we process the world: something that seems to have changed, and which is new and dramatic in some way, will almost always capture our attention and concern more than something expected, ordinary, and casually foreseeable.
This is part of why we’re often negligent when it comes to the maintenance of existing, fundamental, immensely valuable infrastructure, but willing to throw limitless time and money at untested, new whatevers.
It’s why we do research into potential pandemics, but often fail to act upon those possibilities until it’s too late: until the disease has spread far and fast enough to make front-page headlines.
It’s why we’re seemingly comfortable with unequal treatment and outcomes for huge swathes of our populations, as long as those inequalities are kept at a familiar simmer—which makes them no less tragic, no less brutal, no less real, but still somehow more tolerable for our collective psyche.
We’re fortunate that there are people who work, nonstop, to reduce social, economic, and racial inequalities even in the face of denial and pushback, to maintain our roads and bridges and sewer systems despite ever-depleting funding and a dearth of recognition for doing so, and to increase our knowledge of and capacity to handle the most devastating of medical emergencies.
In moments of increased mainstream awareness of our societal missteps and vulnerabilities, then, it’s important that we take stock of these blind spots, these frequently ignored issues that are always there, but which we often only care about in a productive way when things have already gone sideways. Failing to do so makes it far more likely that such disasters will happen again and again, in the future.
We have to fight against our biological reflexes to do this: it’s exhausting to maintain that kind of awareness and sense of responsibility. We’re not wired for it. It’s uncomfortable and a lot less immediately gratifying than participating in a momentum-driven moment.
But lacking such attention, these issues will continue to be issues. They’ll be like water to fish: ever-present, but ignored, unseen, because of their omnipresence.
Bridges will collapse due to a lack of maintenance, pandemics will spread, maim, and kill due to a lack of know-how, collaboration, and resources, and systemic injustices will continue to plague our communities due to warranted concerns that lack consistent attention and followthrough.
The specifics of the issues we each face will be different, depending on who we are, where we live, the time period in which we exist, and so on.
Our individual capacity to influence these circumstances will similarly vary from person to person.
Committing to an awareness of such issues, though, even when they’re not in the news, and even when the solutions are not flashy, exciting, or particularly satisfying unto themselves, is a commitment to slow, steady, across-the-board improvement.
Empathy, generosity, and engagement are commendable traits that are made even more potent and positive when applied persistently, sustainably, and with consideration that extends beyond one-off actions to prioritize the eventual outcomes we’d like to see.
If you enjoyed this essay, consider donating to the Equal Justice Initiative, the ACLU, and/or Campaign Zero.
Folkestone, Kent, UK.
Updates
This week on Brain Lenses I published an essay about Groupthink and a podcast episode about Shifting Baseline Syndrome.
This week’s episode of Let’s Know Things is about Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about tools and resources, and how access to and knowledge of how to use these things can amplify one’s capabilities, leverage, and overall ability to instigate positive change.
There are as many ways to approach this and similar issues as there are people, but for my background and skill set, I’m inclined toward building new tools, resources that help people use existing tools, and maybe even scaffoldings that help people build their own tools.
I don’t know precisely what that means in practice, frankly, but a few sub-projects I’ve mentioned recently are components of a larger ambition I’ve been working on to create an intuitive resource for folks who want to learn, to make things, and to hopefully, as a consequence, gain more leverage they can then apply toward problems they perceive and societal maintenance that needs performing.
I’ll talk more about specifics when I have them, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, if anything comes to mind.
Community
Stop by the forum if you’re keen to respond to the weekly prompt, or just want to share/chat/lurk: NeverNotCurious.com/forum
This week’s prompt is about finding balance as we try to be present for what’s happening and to better understand why it’s happening.
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things:
Spotify World Map—top songs on Spotify from around the world
Radiooooo—musical time machine
Short Trip—quirky, beautiful little browser-based “game”
Today’s Front Pages—front pages of newspapers from around the world
International Photography Award Winners—beautiful photos
Daily SciFi Art—lot of classics on this Insta account
Quartzsite, Arizona, USA.
Outro
The past week, for me, has been a cycle of horror, sadness, intense anger, concern, fear, and exhaustion.
I’ve been catching up with friends who are currently in the literal line of fire, and with those who have been for their entire lives, though in less photograph-worthy, less reported-upon ways, due to their race, gender, faith, economic circumstances, or country of origin.
I’ve been worried about not doing enough, but also worried about producing noise that might drown out information and messages from people who have something more relevant and useful to share.
From within that psychological muddle, I’ve been working on a podcast episode about some of the larger context here, including research-backed solutions to police violence (which helps those on the sharp-end of such violence, but also police officers, themselves) and some of the incentives that have been influencing matters in less-than-obvious ways.
Something to consider as you go about your day: step away from the deluge of media updates from time to time.
You’ll have access to better, less-likely-to-be-fake-or-misinformed information if you check periodically, rather than hooking Twitter or Facebook up to your veins, because more fact-checking will have been performed by the time you’re updated; we collectively have a better sense of what’s real and what’s not, as stories evolve and misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is filtered out in favor of more facts.
Don’t look away completely, but don’t feel compelled to sit and unproductively stew in misery, either. No one benefits from you being psychologically drained, and you’ll be less capable of making a positive impact when the opportunity to do so arises if you’re a hollowed-out shell of yourself.
How’re you doing this week? What’s on your mind, what’s happening in your area, and how’re current events being portrayed via your news medium of choice?
If life is looking up and you’re doing just fine, that’s wonderful. If you’re not doing so well and things are all a bit stressful and weird, that’s okay, too. There are a lot of unusual and volatile variables at play right now, and your experience of those variables and response to them is valid, whatever that might look like.
I respond to every email I get, so feel free to send me a message and tell me about yourself and what you’ve been thinking about, or if you just want to vent to a stranger from the internet.
Feel free to reach out and say hi via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or using keyboard characters that maybe shouldn’t exist.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work by becoming a patron of my writing, buying a book, or becoming a supporter of Let’s Know Things or Brain Lenses. You can also buy me a coffee if you’d like.