You don’t need to watch traumatic images and videos that media platforms signal-boost.
Spectacle isn’t activism. Digital media have already normalized our 24/7 inter-passivity, creating an entire Canned Culture that eats us for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Similar to canned laughter, which surrogates our engagement with TV shows (inter-activity), the digital inter-passivity of canned culture inverts our “being there, doing something” into “not being there, not doing something”.
This isn’t about any specific news event – it applies to every event.
We need to be healthy in an unhealthy world if we want to care for others. Vicarious trauma is still trauma.
Pray, meditate, wish/bless people in pain with kindness and true hope. Start inward and work outward.
Through the centering of whatever your spiritual/religious system – maybe it’s binding your arm with remembrance, or praying the rosary, or practicing seva, or taking a selfless walk among autumn leaves – we all need anything that breaks us from the inter-passive life of canned culture.
Rejuvenation is revolution.
