When I was a kid I was obsessed with reading. I read anything that I could get my hands on that had to do with philosophy, psychology, indigenous culture, and spirituality. I was the only person in my community that seemed to be thinking deeply about the world I live in, as opposed to the rest of the kids that seemed to flow through the trends of the day.
As I grew older, I became very interested in the idea of being surrounded by other deep thinkers. I thought it would be an incredible experience to be in the midst of intellectuals. When I got a full ride to an ivy-league PhD program I was so excited. I was sure that I would gain so much from being in the midst of so many deep minds and lofty thinkers.
Then, in the middle of it all, it hit me: the vast majority of people that I interacted with at the university that had high-minded thoughts on the ills of society and the things that needed to be fixed had never, in fact, known any of those situations personally.
What started growing in me then was a rift between the world of overly-developed ideas that are superimposed on a tangible and often un-wielding world, and the foundational realities of life in communities I live and work in. Communities that function based on generations of individual and familial history of struggle, heartache, and hard work.
A spectator society is a society where people feel comfortable judging, criticizing, and intellectually masturbating all over the issues and experiences that others face from afar. It is a society that mistakes Likes, Comments and Shares for social action. It is a society where people can spend incredible amounts of time patting themselves on the back for aligning with some ideology that, for the moment, has little or no tangible effect on their day-to-day lives.
We live in a spectator society. Just to be clear.
What often arises in the work that I do with young people is the disconnect between the ideas they adopt about the world and the way that the world functions. Through the evolution of post-modern thought, all things have become subjective. Anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion, their truth, their participation trophy. In the meantime, the scaffolding that supports the development of young people has become even more muddled or fallen apart entirely.
While people argue about the semantics of, no doubt, hurtful words that offend their sensibilities as precious little snowflakes, the world around us is being torn apart in literal, physical ways. Our food production system, healthcare system, educational system, actually, the entirety of our culture is collapsing under a wave of self-indulgent intellectualism that proclaims itself social justice.
I don’t mean to offend anyone. If I do, so be it. Be offended. But the arguing over how offended you may be, no matter how great you may temporarily feel for being held up on the fickle shoulders of social media, will gain you nothing in the long run. As a matter of fact, it will cost the world time, energy, and the possibility of doing something meaningful.
At a distance, we can all be experts. We can all be celebrities. We can all be embodiments of the Sacred This or the Embodied That, and we can be a part of the spectator circle jerk.
But the world is falling apart. Each time I get a call about another teen who is in the depths of depression, drowning under the sorrow that masquerades as addiction, slicing into his own flesh to feel something, anything, besides the despair of inheriting a fragmented, fucked up world that seems to be swirling the porcelain bowl, I ask where the intellectual babble of billions of people behind tiny screens gets any of us.
Where does it get you?
Over my journey up and through and out of the elite intelligentsia of the U.S. I have learned a few things about what matters. The thing is this: what is alive only in the realm of thought cannot dictate the well-being of what is tangible. Let me put it another way: if you haven’t experienced it, worked through it, and grown from it, you have no business wasting anyone’s time with what you think of it.
The measure of our lives lies in what we leave behind after our death. But we can so easily get caught up in passing thoughts, ideologies, and the fleeting desire for attention through social media. To the extent that we forget that we are of the Earth, and needed right where we stand.
When I work with teens that are caught in the grips of self-destruction and despair, I ask them what they have to give. Not to the world, but to their immediate community. What are the skills that they have developed, out of the sheer joy of doing a thing, that they can share with those immediately around them.
What lights them up is the acknowledgment of their unique gift, and of the uniqueness of their presence here, now. This is essential to all of our well-being, and so few of us have an understanding of it.
What you have to offer the world is not in your alignment to someone else’s idea of how the world should be out there. While you’re busy arguing or advocating for what should be out there, you are starving those immediately around you from your gift right here. Right where you are.
A spectator society is based on the idea that someone, something, somewhere out there is going to show up and make it all better for you, for us, for everyone. If we make enough noise about enough things and show just how dissatisfied we are someone will show up to take care of us. Right?
We need to shift our eyes from up and out there, to down and right here. No one is coming to save us. And there is a blessing in this. By looking at where we are, physically, we can start to do the work of repairing the world by repairing our communities and repairing ourselves. This isn’t to say that the world needs to go back to any idyllic past, pasts only become idyllic when they are long gone and can be romanticized. You can’t “Make America Great Again,” no matter what side you stand on. But you can contribute to making your community great for future generations.
To spend our time spinning in virtual chaos while the ground beneath our feet and the people sharing it are suffering is the real pathology of privilege.
Start a community garden. Mentor a young person. Seek out the elderly, learn from their stories. Learn where your water comes from. Buy local food. Educate others about your gifts and be educated by others. Do it face-to-face.
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Photo: Getty Images
