#13: Too Much Room to Assume
The following piece from Lauren is one I absolutely connect to in various ways, especially as a Gen Z. This piece reminds me of how wonderful it felt when I was in Australia with barely any cell-service. When I eventually went in my suitcase one day to grab my phone, I couldn't even find it.. and for once, I was VERY happy to have no clue where the thing was due to the liberation I had been feeling for days without it! So after reading this piece, I ask myself: What can I do to unchain myself from my devices/technology on a regular basis and simply JUST BE... with others, with my environment, and with myself...
-Amanda
I read these sentences at the very end from Lauren’s piece below and they carried such a wallop for me — they spoke of presence as opposed to the grasping and flailing and craving that can lure me in at times as opposed to a knowing I think we all have of what a rich relationship feels like even in texture and nuance. I heard someone say “to know a thing you must get close to it”… I don’t think they meant physically close but they had deeply understood Lauren’s three sentences below. Thank you so much Lauren… Pip
"But you can't build a stable bridge by reaching across the rift of the internet, trying to grab ahold of something (anything!) in the dark void."
"As John Powell says, "when we define others at an extreme distance from ourselves, it means we have to cut off large parts of ourselves.”"
"Too often, we see the bridge collapse on both ends across the rift."
(FROM LAUREN)
Too Much Room to Assume
A few weeks ago, I accidentally left my iPhone in an Uber on a trip to Philadelphia. After frantically calling it a number of times, the kindhearted driver eventually picked up and offered to ship it back to New York. Once I had the assurance that I wouldn’t scrap together money for a new one, I settled into a new rhythm of daily life. Those few days without my phone, I felt more clear-headed, creative, and self-assured than normal. And I have no doubt that this was because I didn’t have the ability to go on auto-pilot and stare and scroll on the subway or at home. My default was to turn to a book or talk to a friend. I was consuming more thoughtful words than spontaneous and compulsive (even desperate?) images and captions. A part of me was deeply disappointed when I opened that FedEx box to see the thing that both unites and isolates me from the rest of the world.
I read an article recently that argued in 20 years from now, we are going to look back on our 2017-selves and say, “what the hell were we thinking?” when it comes to social media – in the same way we look back on our 1885-selves that gave opium and cocaine to children to help with toothaches. We will say, why did we believe in these platforms “despite mounting evidence that they were tearing society apart?" We – myself included – keep trying to convince ourselves that there is power in being connected in a globalized world, that having these platforms to voice our opinions and engaging with people we wouldn't normally be able to has the capacity to build bridges, to inspire empathy through seeing how another person different from us is thinking and feeling. But who can tell me about a time when they've actually seen this happen in practice? Looking at our world, I keep thinking that the power of social media to divide largely overrides the power it has to reconcile.
And so I had to ask myself a very simple question – when was the last time I went on Instagram or Facebook and exited the app actually feeling better than I did before?
I couldn’t think of an answer.
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it rings true for other people too – but I do wonder if it’s not the danger of comparison that makes these social platforms so unproductive and unhealthy, but rather the fact that we have so abused the unspoken permission to fill in the gaps of people’s lives. With such limited information about people we – let’s be honest – hardly know anything about, our minds have been trained to infer and make leaps of logic that frankly aren’t logical at all. Maybe this is why we have tried to convince ourselves that social media platforms can be a tool to create peace though connection- because it gives us so much (too much, I argue) room to assume. But you can't build a stable bridge by reaching across the rift of the internet, trying to grab ahold of something (anything!) in the dark void. As john powell says, "when we define others at an extreme distance from ourselves, it means we have to cut off large parts of ourselves." Too often, we see the bridge collapse on both ends across the rift.
Lauren Culbertson: lauren@restorenyc.org
Someone once told me that I "move" when I see the “earth out of alignment,” which is just a fancy way of saying that I’ve always had a natural inclination to pay attention to what happens in the margins; that’s where the most exciting things happen, after all. That brought me to Restore NYC, an anti- sex trafficking nonprofit, where I work to inspire generosity and help our fundraising team make data-driven
decisions. I experience the most joy in my work when I witness two things clicking inside someone: sex trafficking is a major issue that is closer than we think, but it has a solution that we can all be a part of.