I'm Not Okay, but I'll Get There: The Diminishing Individual

It's 2019, and the world is a blender of things that don't make sense. Normalcy is an idea that's always in flux, morality is being redefined, good and evil are nothing more than relative terms, and everything that once seemed to make sense is now slipping through the fault lines of progressive thinking. Generations ahead are looking back in judgement and generations behind are facing problems that we (as Millennials) created, with the god-like malevolence of an angry and shunned author. We've breathed life into a world full of ideas that we don't completely understand, just because it made us relevant at the time of its creation. And as things continue to evolve (or devolve, depending on how you look at it), I find myself struggling to be a part of this world that is completely unrecognizable from the one I grew up in. The memories I have of halcyon days and simpler times are slowly being crushed by this haunting realization that somebody like me can't exist in a time like this . . . at least not easily.

If you turn on the news, or login to your social media pages, the chances are high that it'll take less than a minute for you to come across something social or political (often times, the two go hand in hand). While I do hold my own beliefs on many of the topics that ravage American headlines, I stand firm in the idea that everybody should be able to formulate and discuss their own ideas and opinions. Let me be real clear, as somebody who has been obsessed with journalism since the first time I read a Spider-Man or Superman comic book, I've always wanted to be a writer. There's something about the world and the people within it that fascinates me. I can people watch for hours, sometimes creating back stories for the people I see walking by as a way to comprehend our differences. Then again, that's one of the most beautiful things about this life and this world that contains it all . . . is that everybody is, indeed, very different. That being said, why is it that in a time where differences seem to shine in news headlines and social media posts that the individual has never felt more diminished?

The year is 2019, and for the first time in America's history, people are having discussions about things that, at one time, had crushing consequences, if not in social circles then within the society that one lived in. Today, a man can decide he wants to be a woman (or the other way around), people of the same gender can get married, and folk of different skin colors and cultural backgrounds are more represented than they've ever been in American history. And while I have and will always be on the side of representation and individuality, I look at these changes and feel a sense of pride at how far we've come, but at the same time, I feel a sense of shame at the contradictions and hypocrisy that many of the people representing these ideas have created. Because with these concepts has come a form of social tribalism and bullying. And when you add relevance and social media to that cocktail of progressive thinking, you've successfully built a pendulum for societal destruction. And again, don't take this to mean that I'm on the side of the "hate" or "injustice." I've simply observed that lately, it seems like "hate" and "injustice" have become relative terms to "acceptance" and "forward thinking." It's like we've traded one negative thing for another.

And in the pendulum of thought that is social and political ideas, people tend to forget that pendulums swing both ways.

The more I thought about these ideas, the more I wondered if there could ever be a point of equilibrium. Can people with different ideas and beliefs truly co-exist? Society places ideas of acceptance on a pedestal, but doesn't accept the views of somebody who might disagree. And on the other side of that coin, people who don't want to accept where society is going can't simply just disagree and get on with their lives. At the end of the day, both sides end up trolling each other, and for what? What is to be gained from all of this? A few weeks back, I posted a question on one of my personal social media pages asking what people have to gain by posting political or religious things designed to put a person or group of people down. The answers I got were sort of terrifying . . . and sad. I got everything from, "It makes me feel better," to "I just like to watch people argue." Somebody even posed the idea that it gives people a feeling self-worth. The destruction I've seen in people's lives on social media due to these things is immense. I've seen people isolate and ostracize their loved ones over a difference of opinions. And at the end of the day, what does it all mean? Absolutely nothing. It just perpetuates a system that will eventually destroy social interaction altogether. At this rate, ten years from now, we'll all be opinionated hermits sitting on our couches, watching Netlfix and trolling the Internet.

If you're familiar with Dr. Norman Doidge, MD, the author of The Brain That Changes Itself, he says, "Ideologies are simple ideas, disguised as science or philosophy, that purport to explain the complexity of the world and offer remedies that will perfect it. Ideologues are people who pretend they know how to "make the world a better place" before they've taken care of their own chaos within . . . Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence. Furthermore, when their social contraptions fail to fly, ideologues blame not themselves but all who see through their simplifications."

More specifically, on the point of social media, Doidge says this, "Only tolerance will provide social cohesion between different groups, and save us from harming each other. On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate (Leave aside that telling people you're virtuous isn't a virtue. Virtue signaling is, quite possibly, our most common vice.) Intolerance of others' views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign that you are embarrassingly unsophisticated, or possibly, dangerous."

This is where ideas of acceptance contradict themselves, because people who are "fighting" for acceptance are now hating people who don't accept them. And the battleground that is social media has become a place where friendships are broken, families are torn apart, and self-destruction runs rampant. I wish I was being dramatic in that statement, but unfortunately, I'm not. Then there's "society," this human made construct that holds sway over us with constantly evolving and unwritten commandments, created by people who have certainly taken notice of all this. Look at the way they market things and portray people. These ideas have even bled into the most sacred grounds of pop culture. Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out in 2017 and is still wreaking havoc in a sub-culture that's more or less known for its open mindedness in the arena of diversity. Yet, any time IGN or Polygon publishes a piece on anything Star Wars related, people who loved the movie and people who hated the movie go to war with GIFs, Memes, and plenty of sharpened words.

As for pop culture, Lucasfilm isn't the the only studio to get involved in the diversity debate. Marvel (Yes, I know they're both owned by Disney) has also jumped into the fray, fueling more division with their marketing campaigns for films like Black Panther and Captain Marvel. Long past are the days when one could like or dislike a film based on whether or not they liked or disliked it. These days, we're all so caught up in the axioms of it all that to not like a film like Black Panther automatically makes you racist, and to dislike a film like Captain Marvel automatically makes you a misogynistic and sexist jerk. Even going into Black Panther months after its release, I still couldn't enjoy it. There was so much pressure to like the movie that it removed my ability to watch it objectively. I've spoken at length about this to Gerald Glassford of the Pop Culture Cosmos show. I believe that women and and African Americans should have always been represented in films (and they sort of always were), because I don't think the quality of a film should be judged based on the diversity involved. I think it should be judged based on the themes, the acting, the editing, the sound, the philosophy, and how much it makes you think afterwards . . . among many other things. But because we're all so caught up in this social zeitgeist, the odds are high that we might never experience the magic of cinema ever again, because we'll be too busy looking for social themes and plotting out our next social media posts. On a side note, I was really excited about Captain Marvel, but again, there's so much pressure coming from my peers and other media outlets to see the movie as a bastion of feminism, that I don't even want to watch it anymore because it's compromised my objectivity.

I'm going somewhere with all of this . . . I think.

Up until recently, I had never realized the effect that these social pressures were having on my mental health. As somebody who dabbles in writing as a side job, it's incredibly important for me to be objective . . . at least to me. When I was in college, earning my journalism degree, it was always taught to me how important it is to be unbiased. There was a time when slander could land you in jail or have other serious consequences. These days, the entire news cycle is made up of slander. Relevance has removed objectivity, and facts are no longer relevant. As a straight, white male, I can't even have a conversation with people, these days, about anything social or political without being told to "check my privilege." So where is this all heading? What is the end result of the path we're on? It feels very destructive, and I don't just mean that in a societal sense. Things have gotten so bad that it can literally ruin your livelihood. People are being fired from their jobs for things they said on Twitter over ten years ago. And nobody is even bothering to investigate before throwing accusations around, because we've adopted this mindset of being guilty until proven innocent, and even when proven innocent, it's too late, their lives are already ruined.

I've been watching this unfold for the past few years, trying my best to keep my thoughts to myself, but I'm finding that in order to be social or even exist these days, I have to stifle who I am as an individual, and that's exhausting. And I know that I'm not the only person facing this problem. We're living in such a weird time. Our kids are going to face problems that past generations would have never dreamt of. Society encourages individualism as long as that individualism propels a social agenda. You can't even be neutral anymore, because to be neutral implies that you don't believe in somebody else's cause, and that automatically makes you racist, sexist, homophobic or all three. You can have an opinion, but only if that opinion aligns with the opinions of somebody else. We're locked in this hive-mind mentality, and it terrifies me. I'm terrified to think about what this is doing to people. How long will it be until this takes a noticeable toll on people's mental health? If it's not doing it already. Will our children grow up in the clutches of anxiety and depression because socializing is like walking on a razor's edge? Suicide rates are already going up. The number of Americans who killed themselves last year almost reached 50,000 with 1.4 million attempts. Again, don't take this as me saying that change is bad. On the contrary, I believe change is amazing, and I'm thrilled that people are talking about things they couldn't before, but if we don't find a place where social/political ideas and the individual can coexist, chaos is going to run rampant, and that chaos can be incredibly dangerous. Hate creates more hate, and if you look at the world around you, your family, your peer group, you can't deny that this method isn't exactly having a positive impact, all because people have lost the ability to have civil debate and conversation. So where do we go from here?

I wish I knew.

#diversity #mentalhealth #captainmarvel #blackpanther #marvel #starwars #anxiety #depression #dealingwithmentalillness #suicideawareness #racism #politics #social #acceptance #conversation #civildebate