NEXT
Here we are again…
Another inciting incident.
Opinions flow like a river at flood stage.
“You don’t know the facts?” “You missed the point” “You’re ignorant”
As our nation labors under the weight of serious systemic issues we choose to herald our cyber-bullhorns, which are more about shouting than listening and resolving.
Broad-brushed soundbites of polarized rhetoric.
And then…
NEXT
We saunter off to the next thing showing that we really don’t care at a deep level about the current thing, it’s just the popular outrage. Sure, it seems important enough to flame and shout out loudly what we think (as if we have perfect-objective reality firmly in our grasp), but not important enough to get off the couch and actually DO Something…DO justice.
It amazes me that so many of us think a perfectly worded tweet is the final word on an incident that results in lost lives, lost income, lost values and even lost humanity.
“Surely my Facebook rebuttal is enough to end generations of racism”
“Surely my #hashtag is enough to end corporate greed”
“Surely my instagram picture will be enough to prove a 911 conspiracy”
and then…NEXT…
Have we become the NEXT generation? Have we become a NEXT culture?
In other words, is our current outrage more about entertainment and consumerism than it is about the actual tragedy or incident?
I think they way we respond and then quickly disengage moving onto the NEXT thing reveals an apathy and a narcissism that perpetuates systemic issues.
We live at the surface, and the problems we face are much deeper than the “facts.” And I know someone will more than likely cry out against that last statement.
Courts have to deal with facts, we as a society must deal with truths that lead to justice acknowledging the facts.
Today, consider how fast you move onto the NEXT thing.
Today consider how fast you move on from the LAST thing.
Today consider whether or not an incident will incite you to use your bullhorn only, or actually get off the couch and enter into the pain and brokeness as a healer and helper.
A closing thought to ponder from Martin Luther King Jr.:
“The Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.”
In light of the current #ferguson battlefield, consider the deeper conversation that is needed before you go NEXT.
