Know What Matters

Don't sweat the big stuff.

Like a lot of people right about now, I got drawn into some tribal debates. COVID-19, Racial Justice, Climate Change. Fun stuff. Lots of heat and noise.

Maybe it's one of my mental patterns, but they leave me feeling like I'm the only one out there holding up a cocktail umbrella to a tsunami of reasoning. I don't intend to denigrate my opponents. A lot of what they say is logical, if often cherry-picked, one-sided, and beside the point. There's just ... a lot.

I like to think that I do research not just to confirm my views but to expand them. To aid this I don't just do broad topic searches, but try to think laterally from the topic, then type specific theories into the search box. One thought I came up with was:

"Who cares?"

Seriously, how much do people care about responsibility for the coronavirus, racial violence (police or inter-racial, depending on your side of the fence), or our obligations (if any) around global warming?

Google Trends tracks and displays search activity:

(Alternate link to Trends Explorer if the embed below doesn't display.)

 

"People care, and then they don't", is the simple answer. But that's too ungenerous. Looking at the searches within the topics, you find none about who to blame for COVID-19 and more about thanking first responders, keeping safe, and receiving assistance. And within the Black Lives Matter topic I'd expected more searches on reasons defending or attacking the movement, but found more asking how to get involved in local activities.

People are refreshingly practical.

These topics aren't exactly popular either. On any given day, more searches are done on the weather, celebrities, and sports teams.

On the one hand, this could indicate the general public is short-sighted and simple. On the other hand, it could mean that people like me who like to think big picture are narcissistic-ally obsessed with our ideas.

To be fair, the media produces a lot of explainers and analyses promoting the idea that big issues like history, economic theory, and politics do matter and should matter, despite public appetite for anything but. 

It's definitely not just the mainstream media that seems to be trying to set the public interest rather than responding to actual public interest. Even fringe media - read: conspiracy nutters on social media - harps on about the same controversies, just with more hyperbole and less editing.

Yep, my projection of how pervasive the culture wars have become is definitely the media's fault.

Or maybe not. Maybe my news feed is full of stuff that triggers me because I tapped - and keep tapping on - triggering headlines. I may be literally creating my own perception of reality.

Advice to dive deeper and seek diversity of opinion on the same topic is no help as a lot of that diverse opinion is rubbish. Instead, recognising the relative popularity and diversity of alternative topics has been liberating.

The antidote was learning that what matters to me matters differently - if at all - to most. I don't have to battle half the world, just a vocal minority. I'm not facing off opinions from a tsunami of people, just a few people - like me - with a tsunami of opinions. 

Being outnumbered by people who don't share my interests - or shares them in different ways - doesn't mean that it is futile to care, but that it is okay to do so. I can care about the high-falutin' stuff that interests me because others brazenly care about the release date of Netflix's next rom-com, or who's been benched with a leg injury. Humanity has needed diversity of direction at least as much as diversity of opinion. It's a greater - and far too cynical - leap of logic to assume the masses are ignorant or manipulated, than to suppose that they may in fact be on to something.