A Reaction to the Overturning of Roe

(Tricked you with that headline.)

Last night I did something I rarely do: scrolled social media for an hour before bed. By the time I shut it down close to midnight, I was so irritated I could have screamed. I said as much to my husband, flicking on the bedroom light to clear our bed while my husband groaned against the unwelcome brightness. “What is wrong with people?” I said, throwing books and folded laundry to the floor with more force than was necessary. “Seriously”—I thumped a stack of books onto my nightstand—"why are people”—I hurled shoes toward the closet—"like this?”

My husband peered at me groggily from beneath the covers, likely (appropriately) thinking, “no, why are you like this?”

I mean, fair question.

My frustration had brewed since the Supreme Court’s Roe announcement and accompanying online uproar.

And no, I actually don’t want to talk about abortion here—which decision is not some insensitive assertion that women’s rights or the rights of the unborn do not matter. My silence on the topic isn’t an assertion at all because I have very strong opinions about all that. My choice not to publicly “weigh in” is—as is almost always the case when it comes to engaging internet discourse—a deeply considered one.

The point is that, for all the weighing in, nothing I read was helpful, least of all the reposts and the memes and the single, dramatic, graphically designed sentences declaring one’s allegiances.

To say they weren’t helpful is not controversial because “helpfulness” is rarely a metric of concern in this environment. Which is to say, I am unconvinced the posters and reposters are much concerned with whether they are being generally helpful (to their communities? the country? humanity?).

The posts are not intended to be constructive. They are tribal markers, declarations of victory or defeat, rally cries.

I understand the impulse behind them. For one thing, it’s science. For another thing, the problem I have is not with the poster’s strength of conviction. Giving a damn beats not.

The problem is that the declarations are (1) simple, (2) hyper-emotional, and (3) catastrophizing.

1.     The issues are not simple.

I have difficulty understanding the mindset that any issue controversial enough to divide a nation is not (at the very least) complex.

If I believe issues like abortion are simple, my two-fold presupposition *must be* that (a) the nation is full of Good Guys and Bad Guys and (b) I am a Good Guy. The social media post then becomes a signal to the rest of my tribe: You can include me; I am a Good Guy!

To use the terminology of writing craft (because it’s what I know best), these posts read like a first draft, lacking nuance and personal accountability and the kind of curiosity that keeps a reader’s attention for the long haul. Where do we see the main character’s conflict or complexity? Is this really a story of complicated humans working out their lives in real time and space, or is this merely a morality fable?

2.     Lord knows, I feel things. But outrage and glee have little affect on public policy. What they do have an enormous effect on is how it feels to live in the world together.

Endowed with larger-than-life emotions (enneagram four, hello), I had to decide early on to believe reality was not the sum of how I felt about it at the moment. Reality was not the way I had most recently been hurt or misunderstood; it was not the most recent personal or global injustice; it was not my own confusion or even clarity.

If you share outrage online, you are **creating outrage.**

If you share hope online, you are **creating hope.**

3.     Catastrophizing looks like this: Today’s __________ [event / edict / public revelation] makes it clear that we live in a dystopia / live in a failed state / are doomed.

Climate expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson—a person intimately acquainted with bleak environmental predictions—emphasizes possibilities for positive change rather than what most climate alarmists emphasize, which amounts to hand wringing. She says the most important question we can ask is “What if we get this RIGHT?” What if we left behind the fear (and fear mongering) and focused on what it might look like if everything went just the way we hoped? Only this imagination for the future can create positive change.

Whether declaring solidarity or disgust, online declarations tend to reek of the same desperation: what happens *here* (fill in the blank with the issue du jour) determines how I exist in the world. (Not what happens in the smallish slice of being that constitutes these particular choices or rights, but who I fundamentally AM and what will fundamentally become of me. Or by extension, and this is even more common, who the nation fundamentally is and what will become of us.)

Even these instincts (to oversimplify, to feel all the ways, to spiral in either direction) are understandable. But if Supreme Court rulings—or any actions of the state or system to which you are subject—can derail your day, family, generation, or life, then, by definition of living in a global society, you live always a moment away from despair. If the day’s news (no matter how grim or delightful) is a barometer of your feelings, strap in. And forget any hopes of being useful—you’ll be too busy gripping the sides of your seat to do or change anything.

Here is where our species evolution seems not to have caught up with the technology. From 2022 on out, we can count on two things:

One. We are going to know many things about what is happening, everywhere.

Two. We are not going to like all of it.

Considering, how will we adapt? Saturated with knowledge, constantly despairing (or at least uncomfortable) over some situation somewhere, can we imagine a new way of being in the world—one that centers usefulness over tribalism?

What if we get this right?