The 21st Century Activist

We have outsmarted viruses by curating life-saving vaccines. We’ve made the sum total of human knowledge accessible to anyone with a computer and a connection. We have built means of transportation that allow us to reach almost every square inch of the globe. Us humans, we are remarkable creatures. We consistently put our smartest minds together to create innovative solutions for the world’s most complex problems. We consistently achieve the impossible. Yet still, somehow, despite all our advanced accomplishments, we cannot seem to overcome our innate urge to harm one another. It is 2023, and we are just as barbaric as the Mesopotamians who lived 13,000 years ago. Cultural and political tensions, combined with evolving land disputes, have made war a natural side effect of the human condition. While millions lose their homes, their babies, and their security in the name of expanding or preserving invisible borders on a two-dimensional map, everything we have worked tirelessly to create becomes fruitless. What becomes of our greatest accomplishments if we don’t know peace? For considering ourselves the smartest animals on Earth, we certainly don’t act accordingly. Terrorism is conflated with nationalism. Genocide is conflated with preservation. Suddenly, the violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We cannot turn a blind eye to it.From the comfort of your living room couch, cocooned in Western privilege, you can witness the graphic butchering of innocent people on the other side of the world. The reaction is to feel helpless, emotional, and traumatized. We are not meant to process this type of secondary trauma. But, we see so much that we have become desensitized to it. And, when we are desensitized we lose our ability to self-reflect. Grief is said to have five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. We are collectively grieving the loss of human life on an unfathomable scale. Our big emotions leave us feeling powerless. We want to make things right, to ease the burden of those in the line of fire. How can you watch the atrocities of war in high definition and be complacent? But, we do not know how to react in a constructive way. The only logical thing we can think to do is voice our outrage, often about conflicts we know little about. Your outrage is a natural trauma response. These feelings of discomfort and helplessness are exacerbated as your community watches you. They pay attention to what you say and, often, what you don’t say.

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