One of the biggest questions I have in this era of "social distancing," or "physical distancing," is around mental health. It's fairly well known that isolation tends to have a negative affect on a human being. We're stopping solitary confinement in prisons, because of the terrible consaquences it has on person.
In fact there's a long, dark and terrible history of isolation and mental illness. It shouldn't take much for the modern mind to bring up some sort of image of the old asylum. We can picture inmates (let's call them by how they were treated), all left in their rooms.
Jesus himself once came upon a man who was suffering from what was called a 'legion' of demons. The word 'legion' would have given the image of an overpowering, unstoppable enemy force. Certainly something those who have suffered from mental illness can relate to. There's a lot we could talk about from this story in Luke 8:26-38. But there's one thing that stood out to me as I was thinking about this topic. It comes from vs. 27, "For a long time he had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs."
For the characters of this story living in a house meeant living in a community. There would have been several generations living in a house together. The fact that he didn't live in a house increases this idea of seclusion. "He didn't wear clothes," is important too. It wasn't being naked that was unacceptable, but looking at someone who was naked brought shame to the one who looked. So the fact that he didn't wear clothes is another point of communal isolation, since others would not have even looked at him. Finally, there's the fact that he lived 'in the tombs.' The people this story was written for, the Jews, believed that dead bodies were religiously unnacceptable to touch. Therefore this is yet another point of isolation, since he lived in a place which was 'unclean.'
Do you remember how we used to take care of people who suffered with mental illness? Ironically, we would lock them away. We would put them in straightjackets. They've been around since at least the 18th century. Straightjackets, which were used as a torture device in the Victorian Era, were used as a treatment. The isolation of an asylum, almong with the physical constraint of a straightjacket is disturbingly relatable to the trapped feelings that mental illness can bring. It is no wonder that these 'treatments' would only increase a patients suffering.
After all, it wasn't all that long ago that we didn't have medications to treat mental illness. We didn't have understanding of how things work. In fact, many people believed that these illnesses were the victims own fault. But most of all, and this is the important part, we just lacked a whole lot of compassion for who we didn't understand. And this is a reality that we have, sadly, not learned from too much. We still tend to have the least amount of compassion relative to the least amount of understanding.
Whether it's mental illness, or cultural differences, or ideological differences we still tend to lack compassion on those we don't understand. And it becomes a pretty straight line from "misunderstanding" to blame, anger, and even hate. And this could prove to be a real problem for us as we move forward in our current situation.
In the midst of this global pandemic I have, as many others, sought out social media and other online means of staying connected with people. This has been a great tool. But my fear is that as we self-isolate more than ever before the often referred to "social media bubble" is going to be rearing its ugly head with more vicerally than ever.
We are trapped. We don't have straghtjackets, and we're not locked away. But the feelings of being trapped and alone can still have a negative affect on us. This should only increase our compassion for each other, yes. But what worries me is the way that these feelings of seclusion and being trapped will have on the discourse that is likely to happen online. Our isolation is something that will only increase the terrible ways we are already capable of bringing to sometimes very hostile communication.
So far everyone's been talking about Covid. But pretty soon we're going to get back into politics. Soon discussions will all turn back to the contensious issues that have been vexing our society for so long. And now even more than even, social media is our only means of discussion. We are going to have our own ideas validated for us more than we've ever seen, because these sites automatically encourage us toward those opinions. And we're going to have opposing ideas vilified in greater ways than we've expereinced before. This, to me, is a truly terrifying reality.
The last thing we need in our society right now is greater polorization.
If we want to see compassion as a societal virtue, it's going to start with us choosing humility. We need to choose understanding over the isolation of ideas. Here's a couple things to remember.
1) Realize that you are curating your own reality.
The sites you look at, the posts you linger on. These things all influence the things that you will see in the future. At a time of human history where there is an alomost infinite amound of content, you can always find more of the things that you agree with. This can be great! But the problem starts to come when we believe that what we see is all that's out there, forgetting the infinite amount of other content.
For a little while, it would have been easy for me to beleive that YouTube has nothing but woodworking videas and Stephen Colbert. For someone else, they may have no idea that there's woodworking on YouTube at all. This may seem harmless at first, but when you really start to think about it, you start to see how this is the great first step of human beings manufacturing their own reality.
The trouble comes when people begin to take their feeds as reality. We think that the majority of people beleive what we believe. People who believe in a flat earth, or bigfoot, or alien abductions (I'm not making fun of anyone, truly), begin to believe that their opinions are shared by the vast majority of people. This is understandable, because all they see every day is people agreeing with them.
This becomes destructive when we start to believe that the vast majority of people agree with us about.... Abortion? Sex? Social justice? The last Jedi? If we know we are of the majority than we are truly able to discount, and even ostrisize any other opinion.
How can they believe that? Everyone knows their wrong. People who disagree with me are always of the minority... Are they?
This gets worse when we realize the next natural step.
2) Realize that corporations are curating what you see.
Algorithms written by companies focused on making money are choosing our worldviews. They are showing us what they think we will like. They are, in essence, choosing our priorities and our battles for us. This should be frieghtening all unto itself, especially in a time when we are more than ever turning to corporate based media as our primary means of connection.
Now this isn't to say that you shouldn't use it at all. I don't know how I could be connecting to my church at this time without it, we have a great advantage because of it. But there are a few steps that we can take to increase our humility so that the division may be lessened.
First, try not to overestmate how much your opinions are accepted. Try to assume that no one agrees with you. This is a tool I've use when researching a topic or idea. When you make no assumptions about people agreeing with you, then you need to really think about why you think this. Think hard and logically. But most of all, it forces you to picture people disagreeing with you. The more people disagree with you, perhaps the more coompassion you have on the other side.
Secondly, we need to work hard to bring back authentic dialogue. Not debate! Dialogue is far different from debate. When you debate someone you 'listen' but you're only llistening to try and find cracks in their ideas, or ways that you can flounder them. In dialogue you listen with the purpose of understanding their position, and also their personhood.
And once again, understanding is the greaat goal here. We're all in this together.
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