The whole world is wrong except me
The frequency with which we blame others and express our outrage is quite interesting. Just imagine sitting in a stadium alone and watching all the news channels and social media posts about social issues, simultaneously on a giant screen. It won’t take time for anyone to realize the madness that goes on and never seems to have an end. Now if you are an alien, you will probably have a good laugh at this madness while having cheese popcorn, but if you are an inhabitant of this planet, you would probably be infected by the same outrage or get boggled wondering why is no one doing anything about the issues.
I have the same thoughts. From what I have seen, everyone seems to know a solution to everything, but the problems never seem to get solved. Probably because things are not that simple as they seem to be. Like ‘poverty can be eradicated if only the government was not so corrupt’, but we fail to acknowledge that not everyone in the government is corrupt, or that change takes time, or that we have all been corrupt at some point in our lives, so there is no point constantly blaming others. We fail to refrain from indulging in unnecessary expenses, and donating the excess to the needy. Now, here too, questions might be raised as to what is the definition of ‘unnecessary expenses’ which can vary from person to person and I would personally define it as ‘ those expenses which we can easily do without, while not causing significant distress in our lives’. Another concern that might pop out is that by simply handing over stuff to the needy we would be making them lazy and they might take undue advantage of our offerings. A fair enough concern. But then the counter questions maybe ‘should that stop us from being charitable?’ or ‘how can we point out people who really need help from those who are simply taking advantage?’ I don’t claim to have absolute answers to these questions. My point is, simply spreading outrage and hatred against others and blaming others would not solve problems. Well informed decisions cannot be taken when we are busy pelting stones at each other.
Social media has provided people from all walks of life a great platform to voice their opinions and concerns over the plethora of social and political issues. For the first time in the entire expanse of human existence, people feel united in standing up against legitimate issues. But the same platform that creates unity has also created gaping divides. Freedom of speech has taken the form of freedom of bullying, freedom of public shaming, and freedom of harassment. And for our own convenience or due to our inability to introspect, we chose to feel that we are doing good to our society or country or the world by using our so-called ‘freedom of (hate) speech’. As Mark Manson, the author of the best-selling book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k, puts it, humans have always been like this. They derive some kind of divine pleasure in letting others down. Social media has just acted as a reflector of our innate negativity and at the same time helped spread it like wildfire.
Have you observed how speed plays a role in getting our blood boiling over teeny weeny issues? No? Allow me to explain. Have you ever used such words or seen others use such words while waiting in a line-” These people are so slow” or “These people are so lazy” or “Why can’t they just speed up?” or “What a waste of time”? Otherwise harmless statements, but these seemingly harmless statements build up an insidious form of hatred, anger, resentment, and lack of trust and cooperation. Not a very pleasant outcome, huh? You may ask, “What if people are really slow or lazy and just hold up the line when they can speed up?” You might be right at that. But wait, I have got news for you. The random statements that we make while waiting in the line do not really change anything except adding to our own frustration. The best we can do is either start early or increase our patience while praying to God to grace the person on the other side of the counter with the strength to speed up. Now that is just a small dent on the surface. If we dig deeper, we will find that we are living in the age of instant gratification. If our food delivery app shows our food is 5 minutes away but instead takes 20 minutes, we assume the delivery boy is fooling around and that he should be flying over the traffic if the app shows 5 minutes to delivery. But when it comes to us being late, who do we turn to, to blame it on? You guessed it. TRAFFIC! No one could have summed it up better than Carl Honore, who, in his book ‘In Praise of Slowness’ aptly points out that our impatience “ partly explains the chronic frustration that bubbles just below the surface of modern life. Anyone or anything that steps in our way, that slows us down, that stops us from getting exactly what we want when we want it, becomes the enemy. So the smallest setback, the slightest delay, the merest whiff of slowness, can now provoke vein-popping fury in otherwise ordinary people. “
So shouldn’t we be angry over inequality, injustice, and racism? Of course, we should. In fact, it is inevitable to be enraged. We are all humans after all. We are wired to get angry. But to channel the rage in a way that makes us resemble those against whom it is directed is something that needs much thought. For instance, if we are wronged by someone we often try to get back at them in much the same way, which ultimately places us on the same platform of wrong-doing. To give an example, A gets yelled at by B for no fault of A, and A gets angry and yells back at B thinking B should not be yelling while B is thinking the same. Things just go haywire from there affecting both A and B, instead of resolving the issue. Another possible scenario (which holds some promise of resolving the issue) is that in which A gets angry but takes control of it by deciding not to yell back and proposes that they can sit with the issue later when both have calmed down. This looks like a good approach but is rarely seen in practice. What is seen in practice instead is that if A decides to simply walk away without saying a word ( realizing the hopelessness of arguing with B) A would most probably be judged as someone who is ‘spineless’ or ‘ does not know how to stand up for himself/herself. But then we can all attempt to be the change that we want to see. We are bound to get angry but we can decide to let go of it or tame it for our own wellbeing and of others.
Another amusing fact that I have come across is that our outrage is a product of our perceptions that we are the victims and the perpetrators should be called out. But amazingly we fail to see the hypocrisy when we victimize others and we are called out as the perpetrator. We cry our hearts out when we get cheated on by someone, but come up with all sorts of justifications or don’t even realize it when we are the cheater. One of the best examples of this has been pulled out by Brant Hansen in his book ‘Unoffendable’ -
“Go to a mall food court, grab a chicken
kabob or something, sit down and listen to the conversations around you.
Compare how often people are telling stories about hurtful, wrong things other
people did, versus confessing hurtful, wrong things they, themselves, have done.
We’re brilliant at this. Geniuses, really.”
Isn’t it fascinating how we are trying to head to a place called ‘Peace’ through the highway of ‘Outrage and Hatred’? We are trying to unite through a policy of divide. Maybe we took the wrong route. Maybe we took up the wrong policy. Problems will exist as long as we exist. But can they be solved without rage clouding our visions? Can we show the courage of pointing out our weaknesses and hope to be helped rather than judged?
Can we for once drop this attitude of ‘the whole world is wrong except me’ and hope for a world defined by Love, Compassion, and Empathy?