Recently, as world and national news has permeated into my day, I have found myself repeatedly stunned at the actions of others, from world leaders to mass gatherings. Two big international happenings in 2020 have been the Covid 19 threat and the Black Lives Matter movement. Politics also continues to dominate the media, from locals left shaking their heads at being forced to attend voting amid Covid lock downs to the Twitter-scaped agenda of the US President. It seems that daily we see headlines denouncing or promoting the actions of both one and the many.
As I have consumed recounts of events happening around the world, and what people are doing to both catalyse and/or react to these happenings, I have said to myself many times “What are they thinking?”. I struggle to understand a wide scope of recent activity by people around our planet. I appreciate that history is full of people who have taken action that I perceive as non-productive or destructive to humanity and our planet, and the Santayana quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Frost 2010) shouts loudly, yet is drowned in the current social meta.
Compounding the struggle to understand is the increasing lack of trust in news media (Watson 2020), and the emerging dominance of social media in news reporting shackled by platform controls and ‘fake news’ permeation that headlines issues of authentic rigour (Martin 2018). Just the increasing number of spelling and grammar errors I have witnessed in professional news reporting alone has made me flinch at the quality of contemporary news media. So before I even make any assumptions or judgements on contemporary happenings I am having to rely on the suspect quality of information curation.
Recognising that my world view is probably incomplete and subject to many edits, I still struggle to understand the motives of people around recent large scale happenings. ‘Understand’ is not really the right word, I have a grasp of how our actions and behaviours are influenced by beliefs, values and attitudes (Kumar 2018) and recognise the diversity of these that lead to such a wide range of perceptions of our world together (Bauer 2016). Perhaps ‘be in accord with’ their motives is closer to what I am struggling with.
You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there’s no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.
Hozier (Mullally 2014)
At the core of what I am writing about sets a focus on the current status of activism. Activism is desire combined with effort to make change (Martin 2007). Activism however, is viewed as broken (White n.d.) and the pejorative term slacktivism has emerged (Wikipedia 2020) to describe forms that show support through methods aimed at boosting personal egos, with the use of social media to do this also referred to as clicktivism (Wikipedia 2020). The recent blackout Tuesday with social media floods of black squares in support of Black Lives Matter and the criticism it drew claiming it was ineffectual demonstrates clicktivism in action.
Ego as a motive for social action, whether as an individual, including world leaders, or as a mass gathering, creates a climate of disbelief, uneasiness and disapproval. The casual understanding of ego is an unhealthy belief in our own importance, even to the detriment of others (Holiday 2017, in Ranadive 2017). Ego can affect your touch with reality, inhibiting your ability to ‘hear’ others and over-estimate your own worth, creating unrealistic expectations and entitlement, and relies on external validation generating motivation that seeks public and social stages (Ranadive 2017).
The social body of a group can also be considered to have ego (Raufman & Weinberg 2017). Occupied space and time, media presence and defining characteristics including slogans and language, rituals and shared perceptions are some elements of group embodiment. Contemporary activism can also be motivated by group ego, generating action with goals of self-importance rather than those promoted.
In shaking my head and muttering aloud ‘What are they thinking?’ I am expressing my disbelief, uneasiness and disapproval at the use of activism as an apparatus to inflate personal ego. The priority appears to be the ego rather than the betterment of society.
References
Bauer, R 2016, Why Do People View the World So Differently?, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/why-do-people-view-the-world-so-differently/
Frost, B 2010, Ten Misquotations and Misattributions From History, viewed online 1 July 2020, http://www.historyaccess.com/tenmisquotationa.html
Kumar, M 2018, The Relationship Between Beliefs, Values, Attitudes and Behaviours, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Teaching-and-Assessing-Attitudes
Martin, B 2007, Activism, Social and Political, in Anderson, GL & Herr, KG 2007, Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, pp 19-27, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Martin, N 2018, How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2018/11/30/how-social-media-has-changed-how-we-consume-news/
Mullally, U 2014, Hozier: An Interview, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/poplife/2014/09/20/hozier/
Ranadive, A 2017, Why “Ego is the Enemy” and What Can We Do About It”, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://medium.com/@ameet/why-ego-is-the-enemy-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-a4eae45a81d8
Raufman, R & Weinberg, H 2017, Fairy Tales and the Social Unconscious, Karnac Books, NY.
Watson, A 2020, Trustworthiness of news media worldwide 2020, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/308468/importance-brand-journalist-creating-trust-news/
White, M n.d., Are We Creating the Activists That We Need?, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://www.micahmwhite.com/future-hindsight
Wikipedia 2020, Slacktivism, viewed online 1 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
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Peter 