You always speak right to my soul. This is something I’ve been thinking about for years! As someone who has kept her distance from the news and social issues for a long time, this hits home. I kept my distance from these topics because I was aware of the mental and emotional affect they had on me. But I’ve been made to feel guilty for it. As I’ve grown, I’ve found more capacity for learning about social issues and have enjoyed learning and being involved more. Still, I find I feel a lot of that ‘all or nothing’ pressure. As in I feel I cannot have a discussion about a topic if I haven’t experienced it or done extensive research into it especially if it is a highly polarized topic that I feel kind of in the middle about.
Anyway, all that to say, thank you for this very validating article ❤️❤️
So glad it was validating to your experience!! It's unfortunate that social issues and politics have taken on this nature, it doesn't serve anyone (including the people involved in any social issue that those outside of it are discussing or trying to help/support). I trust you are finding the right balance of space and awareness/action for you 💞 Your heart is good, you do not need to prove it. xo
"So even as people make fun of and criticize performative activism, they also criticize those who don’t ‘perform’ how they think they should in regards to social and political issues."
You put into words something that I haven't been able to formulate - thank you for sharing this and for this whole post!!
This is an excellent piece in many ways. I really appreciate and admire your authenticity in this piece, it inspires me to write like this.
There's so many important ideas you've pulled together here: the cultural pressure we all feel to confrom and signal tribal affiliation for particular causes; the growth in anger and canceling that has emerged out of this (in Greg Lukianoff's latest book he points out that signficantly more people have been canceled in the past few years than during the height of McCarthyism!); the inability to give our full attention and empathy to everyone and all the world's problems; the need to protect ourselves from being drained into anxiety and helplessness and depression; the importance of connecting deeply with and giving our full attention to the most important people in our lives; and the need to include ourselves in the people we care for.
Extremely well done pulling all these threads together in an honest and compassionate way.
The empathy point is something I think about alot. There's a popular psychologist at Yale named Paul Bloom who makes a convincing case that empathy is often misused in dangerous ways. Because it's so powerful, empathy forces us to think and act through emotion, which can open us to being tribalistic, to becoming hostile to people outside our tribe. Truly bad regimes throughout history almost always rely on empathy to pull togther people to advance their causes at the expense of others.
Empathy is such a profound way to connect deeply with people. It’s a vital tool in our toolkit. Bloom says we must use it with intention and caution. He argues in favor of what he calls rational compassion: treat everyone with respectful, rational compassion, and in many select cases apply empathy as well. I think he's onto something.
Re: perfomative activism, if you haven't read The Status Game by Will Storr, I think you'd appreciate it.
Your response makes me want to read like 3 different books haha. I definitely want to look into the Paul Bloom perspectives. Thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough response, I really appreciated it so much!
You always speak right to my soul. This is something I’ve been thinking about for years! As someone who has kept her distance from the news and social issues for a long time, this hits home. I kept my distance from these topics because I was aware of the mental and emotional affect they had on me. But I’ve been made to feel guilty for it. As I’ve grown, I’ve found more capacity for learning about social issues and have enjoyed learning and being involved more. Still, I find I feel a lot of that ‘all or nothing’ pressure. As in I feel I cannot have a discussion about a topic if I haven’t experienced it or done extensive research into it especially if it is a highly polarized topic that I feel kind of in the middle about.
Anyway, all that to say, thank you for this very validating article ❤️❤️
So glad it was validating to your experience!! It's unfortunate that social issues and politics have taken on this nature, it doesn't serve anyone (including the people involved in any social issue that those outside of it are discussing or trying to help/support). I trust you are finding the right balance of space and awareness/action for you 💞 Your heart is good, you do not need to prove it. xo
"So even as people make fun of and criticize performative activism, they also criticize those who don’t ‘perform’ how they think they should in regards to social and political issues."
You put into words something that I haven't been able to formulate - thank you for sharing this and for this whole post!!
I feel that so much! Exhausting haha. Thanks for reading and reflecting.
This is an excellent piece in many ways. I really appreciate and admire your authenticity in this piece, it inspires me to write like this.
There's so many important ideas you've pulled together here: the cultural pressure we all feel to confrom and signal tribal affiliation for particular causes; the growth in anger and canceling that has emerged out of this (in Greg Lukianoff's latest book he points out that signficantly more people have been canceled in the past few years than during the height of McCarthyism!); the inability to give our full attention and empathy to everyone and all the world's problems; the need to protect ourselves from being drained into anxiety and helplessness and depression; the importance of connecting deeply with and giving our full attention to the most important people in our lives; and the need to include ourselves in the people we care for.
Extremely well done pulling all these threads together in an honest and compassionate way.
The empathy point is something I think about alot. There's a popular psychologist at Yale named Paul Bloom who makes a convincing case that empathy is often misused in dangerous ways. Because it's so powerful, empathy forces us to think and act through emotion, which can open us to being tribalistic, to becoming hostile to people outside our tribe. Truly bad regimes throughout history almost always rely on empathy to pull togther people to advance their causes at the expense of others.
Empathy is such a profound way to connect deeply with people. It’s a vital tool in our toolkit. Bloom says we must use it with intention and caution. He argues in favor of what he calls rational compassion: treat everyone with respectful, rational compassion, and in many select cases apply empathy as well. I think he's onto something.
Re: perfomative activism, if you haven't read The Status Game by Will Storr, I think you'd appreciate it.
Your response makes me want to read like 3 different books haha. I definitely want to look into the Paul Bloom perspectives. Thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough response, I really appreciated it so much!