I have this nervous pent up energy today. Reading and watching what’s happening in the country has been emotionally draining, and it’s as if my body is pumping through adrenaline to help compensate.

What’s been going on in our country is disheartening. For me personally, it comes on the backdrop of reading Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, so it’s particularly acute as well as distressing. Before saying anything else, I want to note that what happened to George Floyd and too many others is wrong. We need to address this immediately and thoroughly.

Without trying to be too reactive, there are 2 main points I’d like to make.

Firstly, we can effect change peacefully, through both discussion and civil resistance, but we must do so with awareness.

I’ve seen horrifying videos of citizens rioting, looting, and vandalizing property, and I’ve watched disturbing videos of police unnecessarily assaulting peaceful protesters. I’ve watched and read about citizens helping police officers, and vice versa. This is nuanced. Blanketing statements are not solutions nor do they contribute to a solution—do you accept blanket statements from the other’s position?

On the most basic level, we can all engage in a discussion about these visceral issues, such as racism, police brutality, and the state of our country’s institutions. Talk about it. Talk about it with your family, with your loved ones, with your friends. But we need to do so conscientiously. We need to heed Stephen Covey’s powerful words: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD. Ask questions. Start conversations with the intent of learning, not winning. Productive discussions are possible and productive.

But, a conversation alone will not result in the changes people want. It merely sets the guardrails to scaffold a path towards improvement. If you want to accelerate change and directly affect its course, you need to get more involved.

I support organized nonviolent action. However, if you participate in such, part of your duty is to organize and mobilize responsibly, to best ensure the safety of everyone involved. There are some great examples of this right now throughout the country—let’s continue to emulate those. There are some examples of the opposite as well—let’s prevent more from happening.

Secondly, let’s acknowledge the fragility of widespread consumption of this relatively new technological capacity at our disposal. I’m referring to the news machine and social media specifically.

I saw a post online that stated “Anybody notice how fast the COVID conversation disappeared when the nation’s attention was turned elsewhere? Notice how the media controls you.” The media does not control you. We have simply built a society that is rich, healthy, safe, and peaceful enough to spend a lot of time online—as opposed to focusing on our direct survival. We have some pretty amazing technology. The 24 hours news cycle and social media is a part of that. We can follow events live, from our mobile devices, through watching actual videos filmed by people on the ground in another time zone. Social media enables every single person with internet access to add a voice to the conversation. These are incredible feats, and they’re new feats. We didn’t have social media in 1992. There wasn’t 24 hour news coverage 3 decades ago.

With this technology, we’re still figuring out how to use it. We need to be more conscientious about how we consume. We can’t handle it yet, we’re learning how to handle it. It’s on the news corporations and social media companies, but it’s also on us. We are all addicted to our screens. We need to get our technology under control, we need to learn how to use it for good. It will take time. Social media can be a great thing, it can give every person a voice in a real time, global conversation about important topics and current events, but we’re working through its consequences; with bots, with trolls, with people not thinking critically about the conversation… this is hard stuff. It’s not easy. It’s on us to recognize that and push ourselves to contribute sensibly and respectfully.

The ideals of the United States are honorable and inspirational. Freedom is beautiful, but it’s also fucking hard. Understanding that it’s hard, and being deliberate and intentional with how we go about creating a prosperous, fair, free, and peaceful society, goes a long long way. We’re on a difficult road. Let’s make it easier on ourselves by continuing to discuss these important issues and by conducting nonviolent resistance. We can do this, but it’s going to take everything we’ve got. It requires active engagement from the masses, not just the few. Let’s change the world.