Good Game? Social Fatigue Surrounding…well Everything
Mass shootings in elementary and middle schools, the ongoing Russian state-backed assault on Ukraine’s Democracy, raging protests outside last year’s COP26 Climate Change Summit held in Glasgow, Scotland, - all of these events ignited a furor decrying the disruption in acceptable social and global order. Or did they?
As demoralizing as it is to think about, what if given all the seemingly endless conflicts in a mere two year period didn’t signal a commitment to a socially just world, but an extinguishment of advocacy stamina? When examining the immediate response of these crises, it would seem this is not a plausible belief. However, when our immediate outrage abates and the spirit behind whatever recent tragedy fizzles into a perceivable state of submission and acceptance, this theory may yet hold some merit. It at the very least warrants some degree of discussion. My theory is that with all of these horrific phenomena occurring in such a short period of time, the world’s community of advocates is running on fumes. We’ve been forced to spread our righteous outrage thin. As a result, it’s getting more difficult to keep the flame of our advocacy kindled any more than a couple of weeks post crisis at best. Just as one crisis is being attentively addressed and calls for change are echoed in masses, another crisis sprouts up. This has essentially led to many tragedies being quasi-accepted as a part of life, when not long ago events such as mass shootings in schools would rock the nation for months on end.
Within a period of 10-days in the United States, two mass shootings tragedies alone claimed the lives of 31 citizens. Rightly so, heated debates and mourning quickly ensued. Sadly the discussions and debates these tragedies spurred weren’t new births, but resurrections of buried ones. Keeping in line with America’s morbid tradition, there appears to be little promise for any plausible, effective gun reform to be passed on the federal level. Any person of conscious is outraged at this senseless violence waged upon innocent school children. Despite this, once our anger begrudgingly subsides, it would appear our nation’s community settles back into the usual routine: outrage, demand change, federal legislators offer no more than hollow empathy for lives lost, and repeat. It truly seems impossible to a certain extent to keep up with it all. Unfortunately, this chronic burnout is a key ingredient for this lack of action to persist, and it produces an end result of our advocacy running on a kitchen timer. Set outrage for 5 weeks, timer goes off, and our collective voice is exhausted. It’s genuinely frightening because the growing numbness we as a whole have involuntarily adopted to such horrific events is completely unnatural. Even more insidious is the fact that this involuntary numbness has only grown because of the frequency of so many high profile events.
Similar outrage was voiced on the international stage at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russia’s regime dubbed it as a “special military operation”, a smokescreen denounced to justify the country’s invasion. But it wasn’t a smokescreen. Putin’s goal of a baseless assault on a Democratic neighbor was the special military operation. Predicted furor and global sanctions resulted, and with the invasion having entered its fifth month, the community response while still evident has seen its flame begrudgingly reduced to that of a tea candle as we wait for the end of the conflict. Even worse is that the invasion has aggravated an already inflated global economy, recking further havoc on food and oil prices. With the trifecta of witnessing a besieged democracy under constant shelling and bombardment, pantries seeing less stock in food, and the painful swipes of credit cards at the gas pump, our flame is gasping for air to breathe further life. Another crisis that would’ve seemed unthinkable has us dying for a water break, hoping for just a couple months to recharge our batteries before another tragedy erupts.
Prior to the major tragedies in 2022, the most notable outrage hailed in the streets in Glasgow, Scotland, as the United Nation’s 26th annual Climate Change Summit was underway. However, the 26th anniversary of global leaders gathering was distinguished as the “now or never” point by the world’s leading climatologists. As some critics accurately predicted, little if any tangible international agreements were settled despite that the world stood on its thinnest pivot yet. More record breaking heat waves and regional temperatures were recorded in 2021 than any year prior. Polar ice caps and tundra habitats shrink in a tidal wave of carbon emissions at a staggering rate. Battles for stabilizing the earth’s climate have raged throughout the past four decades, and we’ve lost them all. All reliable climate data models predict that the cost of losing the war will result in a global climate that will displace up to one-eighth (1/8) of the globe’s population. Yet again another alarm has forced us to call out for sustainable change, and while answering its call signals our community’s advocacy is still alive, the silence of our shared voice that once filled the streets of Glasgow demonstrates it’s living on borrowed time.
And to think these are only some of the mass-affecting events that have drained our community’s stamina. It’s truly painful to consider, but what if all the novels and feel-good films about the future got it backwards? What if the trajectory of our shared destiny resembled not rainbows and sunshine, but an earth featured in Neill Blomkamp’s dystopian film Elysium? If Elon Musk has any say in the matter, my wager is it certainly will be. At a younger age and in a gentler time, I use to enjoy gazing into the crystal ball for what the future may hold. Now, i’m more inclined to let it gather dust in some dark, cold storage room.
I suppose time will only tell..
