Give It All to Get It All

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker entitled Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.  I loved it so much that I feared I would lay awake restless and twitching, unable to fall asleep due to the adrenaline I get when reading something on which I've reflected for some time.  Before too long, though, I fell into a nice slumber with the warm anticipation of coming here this morning and writing a little bit about the article and my thoughts.

In the article, Gladwell draws a broad comparison between high risk, strong-tie activism and low investment, weak-tie activism.  High risk may be characterized as the act of risking something in your own life for the cause - often your own safety and well-being, as in Gladwell's example of white activists who came down for the Freedom Summer in 1964 and risked injury and death to help move forward the Civil Rights movement.  The strong-tie aspect refers to connections with other people whom you know and share some background with - friends, family, members of the same church group, etc.  It is a sliding scale for sure.  I think of it perhaps as having two brothers with a whole life background together on one end, and the other end as being myself and a person in Lithuania who have nothing in common but membership with million others in an online group called I Love Jelly Donuts.  One of these pairs is likely to feel closer to each other, and to be willing to risk and endure some degree of hardship to help each other out.  The other pair is less likely to know anything about each other or to feel any investment in the life of the other.

Gladwell posits the idea that online social networks are mainly weak-tie networks, and that strong-tie networks are what create social revolutions, in the past and today as well.  He is challenging the idea that Facebook and twitter are tools for meaningful social revolutions.  I say, Right On Mr. Gladwell.  The key to this argument is that we (the generation that is logged on to facebook and twitter much of the time) will join nearly any and all movements that come our way and look even the tiniest bit like something we may sympathize with.  We'll sign up to save cities we can't even locate on a map (where is Darfur?  somewhere in Africa?), we'll oppose dictatorships for crimes we can't recall, and we'll put our name on a list to support a charity without giving any time, money, or attention to the cause.

The problem with this type of "activism" (I put it in quotes to show my skepticism at our efficacy in such endeavors) is that we end up subscribing to a large number of causes that each take very little investment.  It's easy to work for peace and freedom in Rwanda, Sudan, Tibet, Burma, Cambodia, America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Sri Lanka all at the same time if all I have to do is click a button between browsing You Tube and browsing J. Crew, while I wait for 5 o'clock to roll around.  Do I give substantial donations to each of these causes?  Heck no - I belong to so many I'd break my bank account.  Do I go to weekly meetings for their organizations?  Not nearly enough waking hours in my week for that.

The kicker for me is that I think we are still sensitive and sympathetic people.  I think this type of activism does not necessarily reflect some sort of growing callousness or apathy on the part of the younger, completely plugged-in generation (kids these days! :-).  Instead, I think it is another manifestation of an idea that we are hoodwinking ourselves with - that we can have it all and give up nearly nothing in exchange.

Gladwell talks of the early protesters in the Civil Rights movement as putting something at risk in their activism, and being highly invested in the cause.  I can't even imagine, due to my comfy suburban upbringing, what it was like to have your life and liberty threatened by other people in your very own town who were angry and terrified by your challenge of being black and sitting at the white folks' counter.  Or seeing other volunteers with your organization get beaten and shot at for registering people entitled to vote, who had been denied suffrage only through persistent, deep-rooted discrimination.  Or, in other cases, taking to the streets to oppose the corrupt dictatorship of your country (Philippines, Iran, Chile, everywhere).  These people were invested in their cause, and faced much higher risks, including their lives.  Would you go toe-to-toe with the National Guard to support a facebook group with a million members you've never met?  I pause and wonder.

What is the upshot of me writing all this?  I, like Malcolm Gladwell (I enjoy comparisons between he and I), feel that there are so many aspects of our culture that deserve a good, hearty revolution, that it's difficult to fathom them all.  At the same time, our lives are precious and finite.  We only have so much energy in the day - call it X amount.  I believe that we can only do so much with that life every day, week, and year, and still give our high-quality attention to the task we are engaged in.  The promise that we can do 1.1X things, or even 2X things or more, and still make a high quality effort, is an illusion.  I hold that we can't belong to 15 social justice groups on any social networking site, be a full-time student, get enough sleep, eat mindfully, get in some movement and exercise, and do all the other things in our daily routine in a high quality way.  Something has to give.  I think we can do many of those things in a low-quality, half-assed way if we choose that route.  Or, I think we we can do fewer things and really learn to feel a sense of investment in the activities we undertake - work, study, exercise, loving, etc.

I feel that we are doing the world and ourselves a disservice by continuing to perpetuate the myth that we can do it all and give up nothing.  At Stanford University, where I help teach a class, I see this in students all the time.  I have literally talked with students who are basically nodding off while trying to explain to me how they are just fine cutting out sleep as part of an overstuffed life.  I've met students who are really excited about committing to a club fully, only to end up attending two or three meetings over the whole quarter.

It isn't fair to pick on Stanford students, though.  From my interaction with other students around the country, and my peers who are now young professionals, I get the impression that we all want to feel like we're having and doing it all while giving up nothing.  Beyond social media, we've turned this trend into other troubling aspects of our culture: bumper stickers on cars about not supporting a war for oil; conferences where we fly in people from all the over the world to talk about local-focused living; green building assessment standards that purposefully omit the energy footprint of the building materials that went into it.  We're like three-year-olds sometimes - we really really want to fly all over the world while saying that we're sensitive to climate change.  We really really want to consider ourselves in touch with various global causes.  We really want a cheap, steady supply of all our consumer goods in a green, sustainable way.

Perhaps we can have these things.  Perhaps I'm a curmudgeonly pessimist at the age of 32 - wouldn't that be a hoot?  I have yet to see evidence for it though.  I think we're wrapped up in the illusion that we can have it all.  Wouldn't it have been great if the black guys at the white folks' counter could have started their revolution without being threatened with violence and imprisonment?  Sure.  It would have been nice if they could have kicked off big changes without having to invest and risk a lot, and have their girlfriends, sisters, friends, and mothers worrying that they were going to be the ones to "take one for the team" and lose their lives.  Wouldn't it be great if I could click my mouse and stop deforestation, violence, ocean acidification, and more?  Sure.  Sign me up.

I think it takes more, though.  I think we need to slow down, accept the limitations on how much high-quality life we have to give, and then use that life to get invested deeply in the work around us.  I think this is the way to foment the revolutions we need.  I think we need widespread actions where we feel solidarity with others by actually giving something up and taking a risk.  I am skeptical that the revolution will have a corporate sponsor, souvenir t-shirts, and prize giveaways.  I doubt it will happen while we click away during a bored moment at work.  It might happen if we question the suit and tie, and walk out of the office.  It may happen if we actually pledge to not use fossil fuels for transportation - not sometimes, or just this one wedding, or for this one special event, or because we haven't seen so-and-so in a long time.  If we give up some things, and feel like we're doing it with others with whom we have strong-ties, I think we'll get amazing results. 

The other incentive (who likes sticks with no carrots?) is that when we slow down, and shed the illusion that more and faster is fine and even desirable, we really begin to notice the world and people around us in a deeper way.  We hear more of what others say.  We notice the place we live (I'm telling you that you can't take real stock of your home if you're flying 50,000 miles a year for work).  We enjoy the food and the water.  We learn more about the plight of others, and feel moral outrage at a deeper level.  We're less quick to proclaim that we already know and understand everything, and more likely to open our senses and learn.  We give and get more out of this one precious life.