Political performance anxiety

the conundrum of reacting to the news in a time of such suffering

A lot of you expressed interest in an Examined Family virtual book club on Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. I am excited! So is Sriram Shamasunder, who worked with and was mentored by Paul Farmer (and wrote this gorgeous reflection), and likely some other special guests. On March 31st at 4pm PST, we will explore questions around global public health and activism, but also the measure of a meaningful life, how to live ethically in a such an unequal world, and much more.

Please register here so we have a sense of how many people are coming (we’ll limit it so we can have a real conversation, so please don’t wait on signing up if you’re interested). This event will be free, but I will unabashedly hit you up for a donation to HEAL (Sri’s organization) and Partners in Health if you are inspired by the conversation, so be prepared for that.

Now on with the newsletter…

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About a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, I finally had a moment on a long drive to listen to a couple of podcasts focused on the various dynamics there. Up until that point, I had done some headline reading, seen some Instagram pictures of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his family, noticed the critique that Americans, especially White and privileged, seem way more worried about White refugees than, well, all the others, and sent a text to my college roommate, who is Ukrainian, expressing solidarity. I didn’t know much, so I generally tried to join the public vibe of “and yet again, everything is trash.” 

Listening to actual experts–a journalist who has spent their entire life reporting on the region after growing up there as a kid, for example–talk about the big geopolitical implications, but also the worldview of Vladamir Putin, and the historical context leading up to this moment was edifying.

Masha Gessen, an actual expert

It didn’t turn me into an expert. It turned me into a slightly more informed person who has otherwise spent very little of my 42 years learning about this particular region of the world, not to mention foreign policy and/or nuclear war. 

Why am I telling you this? Because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which social media and the theoretical shrinking and speeding up of the world impacts our ability to be nuanced thinkers and ethical actors, not to mention emotionally stable. It’s produced a sort of shallow political performance anxiety in so many of us.

Even admitting to you that I haven’t spent much time studying Eastern Europe makes me feel sheepish, like I’m admitting that I haven’t brushed my teeth this morning. Which is absurd. Nothing about my profile would lead one to assume that I know a lot about contemporary Russia’s electoral system (clearly deeply compromised) or Putin’s psychology (megalomaniac). I am not an expert on nuclear war, so why–somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious–do I feel like a) I am supposed to know more than I do and b) I am supposed to have a “reaction,” particularly on social media?

This is my genuine reaction: WAR IS WRONG. I don’t know much about this particular war, but I’d like to learn more, and I’m sad anytime I see images of women and children forced to flee their homes because of some dickhead elected official who doesn’t deserve to be in power. 

I’m not sure that genuine reaction is all that valuable–to me or anyone who follows me. But the energy I put into not posting that, and instead absorbing the ambient outrage and sadness about this war while continuously wondering if I should be performing a reaction in some way, creates a weird noise in my psyche. 

This political performance anxiety is not a noise that does anything for the Ukrainian people or creates conditions that would prevent future wars in other regions of the world. In fact, it’s a noise that leads me away from real, deep questions about my power, American power, violence, war, masculinity etc. and more towards the surface-level questions of who I think I am and who other people think I am based on my ability to perform my sympathy in a way that doesn’t fall into some trap of obliviousness, saviorism, racism etc.  

I recognize that not everyone feels this compulsion to say something on social media. A lot of people aren’t even on social media (including the Russian people, who have been systematically prevented from understanding what is really going on right now!). But a surprising number of us feel like we now live in a world where we know a small, discomfiting amount about horrendous things happening all over the world and that we have a moral obligation to react. Is this moral progress? I’m not so sure.

There are a range of possible reactions. Some people may pray for others and it settles their own soul over this question of “doing something.” Some people may send money, and this too, seems like a reasonable reaction, though of course it’s full of complexities. Some people may talk about it with their neighbors, friends, and kids as a way of raising awareness in their own sphere of influence, and this seems worthwhile, too. My kids are very clear that I hate war (and overpriced cupcakes), but everything else is pretty awesome or at least redeemable.

These are all decent actions. What is not decent, and so common, is perseverating about what to say on social media or at the next zoom meeting rather than actually learning more and feeling more. The Instagram post is often a way to feel “in the know” and then done with something—a police murder, the gutting of a bill that would have changed lives, the adoption of a bill that endangers lives, Europe’s largest ground war since WWII—rather than sitting with the pain of these realities, admitting your ignorance and coming up with some of your own questions of inquiry, and continuing on the journey as a whole, humble person in a very beautiful, horrible time.

What I don’t want my kids to grow up feeling is that they should somehow know more about everything than they actually do, or that their individual response (whether online or in the water cooler of the future) to a war or natural disaster is important. Their ability to learn and think critically and in a nuanced way and empathize and redistribute power and resources are of the utmost importance; their ability to craft a tweet with just the right amount of pathos and political awareness is not. I want, for them, a life of awareness, but not headline whiplash. I want, for them, an emotional openness that I have a hunch will only be possible if their nervous systems aren’t trained for constant consumption of content and hot takes. 

And I guess, at the end of the day, what I want for my kids is what I want for myself–space to say, I don’t know. Space to learn. Space to listen. Space to care quietly, sometimes. (Other times, my caring will be loud.) Space to take action when it feels aligned, not like a way to affirm my own identity in the panopticon of political intimacies. I am retraining myself to resist the political performance anxiety that has seeped into my psyche, to ask the deep, wide questions of genuine care not the shallow, protective questions of performance, to offer, not soundbites, but solidarity worthy of the suffering that is happening right now.