Hater World

It saddens my dented heart to see how far we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Social media was meant to do just that: makes us more social, more connected, find more friends. It has morphed beyond our control into a sophisticated weapon, literally a call-to-arms to stoke anger and incite hatred, with the occasional tutorial on how to bake the perfect cake.

The never-ending nightmare which is the pandemic has helped enormously. With time on our hands, there are only so many walks we can take; so many times we can convince the sleeping pooch that he needs to get off his hind legs and take another pee in the park. He doesn’t feel like it, neither do you. The luster is gone and with time on our hands there is plenty to hate.

Remember a year ago everybody clapping our gallant health workers promptly at 8 pm? Try that now and you will probably get a Frisbee or a flying pan lid hurtled at your head. Remember the impromptu cello recitals on the neighbor’s balcony and the ethereal ballerina giving us a “pas de one” inside her candlelit room?

Remember everybody baking like mad and contributing unheard of amounts to charity? Well no more. Enough is enough; time to go back to the life, to work, to the theater, to restaurants, to places where you meet real people in real time, time to love.

If I don’t Zoom ever again I will be too soon.

In this locked-up world one thing has really thrived and that is our lowest common denominator: someone to blame for the mess. The easiest venue is politics and its ugly offspring xenophobia.

We have seen a level of yet unknown hate in the US –except perhaps for the dark days of Segregation, N-lynching and Jim Crow- and social media was the perfect outlet to rouse the mob. BLM last summer and White Supremacists on Jan 6.

Don’t get me wrong.

One went after property and the other went after the Republic. I am impartial but I am not neutral. Now all these folks live in the same country, eat pizza and burgers, profit from the same freedom and yet they managed to raise their level of anger to a point where they started killing each other; none of it was possible without social media.

There is much responsibility on both sides: the politicians whose short-time goals are a disgrace and social media which just rakes in profits without giving a fig for the world they leave behind.

Recently the UK and the EU have started their own post-modern version of the Cold War: the blaming game for the vaccine kerfuffle and are enthusiastically going at each other’s throats or in this case arms.

Then there is private lynching via the bullying of fat people, short people, and slow people: the unpopular kids in school: people you dislike and by pressing Send you can destroy or wound deeply; it is much like having superpowers with zero accountability.

Like all of you I have witnessed the unleashed fury directed at least at one defenseless target, the epitome of coward behavior. I have seen the mob roused and incensed become angrier and angrier until it becomes unstoppable.

And then I think Norway.

(What?) Yep. Norway.

Fjords, reindeers and hand-made moccasins made from fur -although I think they don’t make them anymore and that is just nostalgia.

Some time ago the world decided that in order to measure a country’s real GDP one had to take into account happiness.

It was no longer only just a case of personal income, jobs, level of education, health and housing, we had to ask ourselves: are we happy? It came as no surprise to anyone that the happiest folks were the Scandinavians.

Not the richest, not the wealthiest (not the same thing) not those with cut-edge technologies, but those with an ingrained respect for their country and its countrymen; perhaps not the oldest of civilizations but the most civil.

In the long run that is what we all want: respect, tolerance, acceptance, inclusion and the right to be heard.

One thing is sure; our quota of anger and hatred has reached a saturation point, we would do well to backtrack or the road will close behind us. The world is too small too frail and life is too short.

Let’s not waste it.