Wander alone like a rhinoceros

One of the key antidote’s to the ills of the modern web that Jaron Lanier proposes is a return to individuals. He’s not talking about radical individualism; he means the writing and thought of an individual, with all of his or her personality and idiosyncrasies on full display. This contrasts with the nameless mashups who repackage generic “content” and memes.

Something nice about reading the thoughts of individuals is that you can easily find people with radically different experiences and views. Freya India is a young woman who writes about ubiquitous technology confronting girls and young women.

The introduction to her latest piece has some bits that resonated with me:

I find myself hard to place politically. I feel alienated by the progressive left. I feel disheartened by the commodification of everything. I have a conservative temperament, and think there is much from the past worth holding onto. But when I look at many conservatives today, all they seem to care about conserving is their own fame and follower counts. They care more about the culture war than their own character. Many fight for Western civilisation but few fight for their own civility. Plenty wish the world wasn’t so prideful or self-obsessed, but seem blind to their own vanity. A lot of talk about faith, little living it.

Yes, yes, and yes.

The MAGA movement is vulgar and base. I will never support it nor vote for its proponents. And tet I feel decreasing affinity towards the progressive left, and even the most pragmatic of centrists have lost their allure for me.

In the tech world, especially among the chronically online, perhaps the most shocking thing is to come out as apolitical. Among Western Buddhists, it’s unheard of to be a disengaged Buddhist.

I’m all for democracy, but I’ve come to stop believing it scales well. The more energy I invest in American and Ukrainian politics, the less I’m involved in my local community in Amsterdam. Although even that’s too big. How about being a good person and sharing my values through spending time with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers?

I’ll quote Amod Lele again, who wrote the above academic article about disengaged Buddhism. He has a persuasive blog post critiquing the idea that’s come into vogue in progressive circles that you have to be vocally anti-X or you for whatever horrendous thing X is. Yes, you can be not racist is best read in full, but I’ll give a couple of meaningful excerpts:

Therefore, by Kendi’s logic, he and I are “allowing” the war in Sudan to “persevere” – and we are therefore supporters of that war. We are not confronting the persecution of Rohingya refugees in Burma; therefore, we are allowing it to persevere, and we are therefore supporters of that persecution. We are not part of any of these solutions – and therefore, by Kendi’s “no safe space” logic, we are part of all of these problems. One must be a part of the solution to any and all problems in the world, including climate change, gun violence, famine, emerging diseases, biodiversity loss, nuclear proliferation, desertification, AIDS, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, human trafficking, terrorism, inflation, water scarcity, peak oil, cancer, heart disease, traffic accidents, the teen mental health crisis, soil erosion, acid rain, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or else one is a part of each of them. For one who does not confront them allows them to persevere, and by that inaction supports them.

And the conclusion:

Because of course we can’t actually be working to solve every possible problem the world has. There are people who try to do so: they’re called burnouts. If one is to be an effective activist for the causes one cares about most, one must be active in one’s support of those specific causes. One must focus, one must pick one’s battles. An anti-racist activist can be against climate change and nuclear proliferation and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but if she tries to confront all of those different issues, she will weaken her own anti-racist activism.

I don’t think this goes far enough. The trendy term “compassion fatigue” is a real thing, I suppose. But there’s an underlying assumption that I disagree with. We don’t, nor can we have perfect knowledge about that long laundry list of all the world’s ills. Most of those issues flat out don’t have a single right answer, and the oversimplification of every global problem to a solution that neatly fits into an Instagram story is, in fact, part of the very problem.