Sectional Healing 9/9: Talk Less, Smile More (?)
This newsletter moves its body like a cannonball...
WRITE SECTION
You ever get the feeling that we all just know too much about each other?
Or maybe said a different way, we all just know too many polarizing things about each other?
In a lot of ways, it feels like social media is slowly making us become the sum of our polarities: how we vote, how we believe, even how we interpret both major and minor cultural events and movements.
YOU KNOW ME: I actually think it’s vvvvvv good that we’re constantly faced with new information that we are forced to, WAIT FOR IT, reconsider. But the conflict seems to arrive when this process includes people who can’t fathom that everyone else doesn’t believe exactly like they do.
On some obvious issues (MURDER, CANNIBALISM, PINEAPPLE PIZZA ETC) this makes sense. But on other, less-obvious and culturally / experientially nuanced issues, this makes NO SENSE.
More and more, I feel like the world is filling up with a binary: people who want to delve into the complications and eccentricities of belief that make us all who are and those who not only refuse to do that, but get angry if you try to assert anything that doesn’t affirm their worldview. And what’s sad about that is that the latter group forces the former group to became similarly polarized, lest they constantly be ceding ideological ground.
It’s incredibly sad and it makes me wonder if this is the necessary evil of having more informational access; that invariably, it’s SO much information and nuance to parse through that it becomes easier to just simplify and binarify everything into GOOD or BAD.
Regardless, I don’t know what it says about me that I’m somewhat nostalgic for the days pre-social media when I didn’t have to face the particulars of how my friends and loved ones felt about every single significant issue.
In most every other case in my life, I’m always looking to know more. But not this one.
PICTURE SECTION
READS SECTION
The Physical Traits That Define Men and Women in Literature…*
What Does Everyone See in Jesse Plemons?
The Most Popular Websites Since 1993…
47 New and Returning Shows To Watch This Fall…
The Little Cards That Tell Police 'Let's Forget This Ever Happened'… **
The Most Overpaid and Underpaid Hollywood Actors…
GOOD DOG SECTION
LISTEN SECTION
1980: Carter vs. Reagan: Let’s Make America Great Again
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger
Your write section today 👏🏻 I feel this to my core. Deleted my social media. Avoiding news outlets as best I can. I need to re-group. I long to only have in-person conversations about the important things for the rest of my days.
In your “Write Section” you put into words what I’ve been feeling deep in my heart!! I deleted my Facebook account in early 2017 and have muted some of my relatives on Instagram because I just can’t let myself see what they believe about some things. It’s partly on me because I should be able to separate that from the person I love, and not feel personally attacked, but I just don’t have it in me.
I just want to watch Charlie knock over trash cans all day!