Apparently, there's a precise way that you must place your fingers on a cell phone so that you can, one-handed, take a selfie. I did not know this. My niece showed me the other day. As one not of the selfie-generation, I had no reason to know this. My niece however is thirteen so she's an expert.
Watching the ease with which Smallie handled the phone made me wonder: how else is the selfie changing us? I have a working hypothesis, and there's some research beginning to bear this out (take a look at this and this) that selfies are related to growing rates of narcissism. And so my question is this: if we've been selfie-ing for just a few years, and it's already having a perceptible impact on our psychology, what impact do we think our 400+ year history or slavery & savagery might have had on who we became as a nation?
I'm moved to ask this question in light of Steve King's odious (and terrifyingly uninformed) thoughts at the Republican National Convention a few weeks ago. When Cong. King asked on national TV, "Where are these contributions that are made (to history) by these other categories of people?" in an interview with Chris Hayes, the only reasonable response could be stunned silence. That public bit of Lord-have-mercy-did-he-really-say-that was followed only a few days later by the Republican candidate's inability to stand down in the face of criticism from a Gold Star family, exposing his rather shocking lack of empathy.
These two events made me wonder at the level of willful public delusion that is our current understanding of American and world history. If a sitting Congressman can reach his 67th birthday and still believe fervently that people with more melanin have contributed little of worth to the development of the world we are doing something very wrong.
I won't devote a great deal of space to listing the things that people of color - Native American, African, East or South Asian - have given to the world but the information is out there. If Steve doesn't know one or two things from these lists by now, it can only be because he's not thought to look to find out. He has presumed that there's nothing for which to look. 'Those people', he has concluded, 'are capable of creating nothing'.
I'm moved to ask this question in light of Steve King's odious (and terrifyingly uninformed) thoughts at the Republican National Convention a few weeks ago. When Cong. King asked on national TV, "Where are these contributions that are made (to history) by these other categories of people?" in an interview with Chris Hayes, the only reasonable response could be stunned silence. That public bit of Lord-have-mercy-did-he-really-say-that was followed only a few days later by the Republican candidate's inability to stand down in the face of criticism from a Gold Star family, exposing his rather shocking lack of empathy. These two events made me wonder at the level of willful public delusion that is our current understanding of American and world history. If a sitting Congressman can reach his 67th birthday and still believe fervently that people with more melanin have contributed little of worth to the development of the world we are doing something very wrong.
I won't devote a great deal of space to listing the things that people of color - Native American, African, East or South Asian - have given to the world but the information is out there. If Steve doesn't know one or two things from these lists by now, it can only be because he's not thought to look to find out. He has presumed that there's nothing for which to look. 'Those people', he has concluded, 'are capable of creating nothing'.
The issue really isn't so much what Congressman King doesn't know, it is the confidence of his ignorance and happy vapidity of the White supremacist belief system; the utter contentment and comfort with the notion that no one who didn't look like him could possibly have contributed to the development of society. That is hubris, with a capital 'h'. Clearly, nothing in his sixty-seven plus years of existence has challenged that system of thought. Why would it? The fact that the belief has remained unchallenged tells me more about his life (and our mis-education system) than the 'thoughts' King periodically offers up for our edification.
But to return to the selfie story, it would appear that "researchers [were finding] that posting more photos was correlated with both narcissism and psychopathy. Editing photos, however, was only associated with narcissism, and not psychopathy. Narcissism measures inflated self-image (often motivated by underlying insecurity) (emphasis mine), while psychopathy involves a lack of empathy and impulsive behavior." (Find the study here).
And so I ask again: if we've been selfie-ing for just a few years, and it's already having a perceptible impact on our psychology, what impact do we think our 400+ year history of White supremacy and its attendant violence might have had on our national psyche? Do we really think that the murder; the domestic terrorism; the Jim Crow; the separate but never ever equal; the "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"; the poll taxes; the dogs; the water hoses; the crime without punishment (the police, the lynch mobs); the crime and excessive punishment; the punishment without crimes; the indignities small and large, have had no effect? Four hundred years and there's no effect? Really? Nine years of Twitter has had an effect. Twenty-five years of the internet has had an effect. Forty years of cell phones have had an effect on society but we can somehow cling to the notion that 400 years of brutality haven't? Um, k.
From my vantage point, if Steve King is anything to go by; if Donald Trump is anything to go by; if Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are anything to go by; if the loud voices of the All Lives Matter chorus are anything to go by, there's your evidence of the 400 years.
This ain't rocket science y'all. Maybe it's time to look at these things and figure out, as the Don says, "What the hell is going on."?
And so I ask again: if we've been selfie-ing for just a few years, and it's already having a perceptible impact on our psychology, what impact do we think our 400+ year history of White supremacy and its attendant violence might have had on our national psyche? Do we really think that the murder; the domestic terrorism; the Jim Crow; the separate but never ever equal; the "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"; the poll taxes; the dogs; the water hoses; the crime without punishment (the police, the lynch mobs); the crime and excessive punishment; the punishment without crimes; the indignities small and large, have had no effect? Four hundred years and there's no effect? Really? Nine years of Twitter has had an effect. Twenty-five years of the internet has had an effect. Forty years of cell phones have had an effect on society but we can somehow cling to the notion that 400 years of brutality haven't? Um, k.
From my vantage point, if Steve King is anything to go by; if Donald Trump is anything to go by; if Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are anything to go by; if the loud voices of the All Lives Matter chorus are anything to go by, there's your evidence of the 400 years.
This ain't rocket science y'all. Maybe it's time to look at these things and figure out, as the Don says, "What the hell is going on."?
No comments:
Post a Comment