File #9
Why no post in support of Israel? F@#*ing coward
Cast your mind back to 2020.
The Tiger King’s reign was supreme.
Sourdough starter attempts were being made with varying degrees of success.
And social media went absolutely nuts.
One of the big philosophies of that time was “silence is violence”.
So began the era of performative posting. To the point of complete absurdity, everybody in the world was being told that they needed to share a public opinion on every single social issue or they were now enacting a form of violence on the oppressed.
So of course many of us dutifully shared our swiftly googled together press statements on issues we barely understood. And now the world is a utopia thanks to our contributions…right guys? The black squares fixed everything!
(A particularly fun pastime in this season was watching companies like Twizzlers make grandiose statements about social change. Like we were all holding our breath waiting on that press release. I don’t even want your opinion on candy frankly - licorice is the brussel sprout of the confectionery aisle.)
No, silence isn’t always violence.
My silence can allow other expert voices to be heard more clearly.
My silence can facilitate my listening and learning from those who have a better vantage point on the problem.
My silence can be an important choice to quit centering myself in every conversation - a practice in humility.
Can silence be motivated by cowardice? Certainly. If my voice was the one empowered to make a change in this circumstance but I failed to use that power out of fear of losing personal status, privilege or safety then I would be a coward. But I’m not so empowered. Or afraid for that matter.
It’s more that my spiritual tradition has always placed a high value on being “slow to speak” (James 1:19 …and I wanna say about 60 percent of Proverbs!). I’m not going to blurt out some zero nuance, uneducated opinion so that people online can think I’m on the right team or a nice guy or whatever.
I’m going to think. I’m going to pray. And I’m going to block the person who so rudely posed this question.
As someone who started a Master's degree in 2020 in Public Policy, and having regular academic discussions about a range of political topics, these issues are not so simple and jumping on the bandwagon with well intended but ill informed views can do more harm in the spread of misinformation. We don't all have a solution to every nuanced problem, but listening to different views, changing perspectives from something you knew little about, and educating yourself on big issues that require more than a 5 minute google search is so important. And yes it's difficult. But learning to provide an educated articulated response after research, or deciding that you're not the person to have the best input is great progress and better than simply putting out a well intended but ill informed statement on an issue you know little about.
In a black and white world where there are only 2 sides to every issue and everyone HAS to pick a side, this is so refreshing to hear.