Maybe even if I change
The world will stay the same
But on the other hand,
How can the world ever change
If I’m still staying the same
How the World Can Ever Change
Taking Accountability- Conclusion
Big Problems)
In this little series of posts, it was my sole intention to act out the principle I had recently espoused, to put my behavior where my belief was. And so, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death I identified a way that I contributed to the culture that got him killed, and I took steps to change my behavior accordingly.
But that wasn’t all that came out of these posts. By going through this exercise, I was able to more fully flesh out some of the vague ideas that originally inspired my call for us to find our own personal responsibility in every ill that besets us.
I realized that a major reason for us all to seek out our own slice of responsibility is because that is the only way that the world will ever be healed. Some problems are just too big for some of us to solve it for everyone else. Everyone has to tackle the part that is directly in front of them.
We must not have the arrogance to think that we can divide ourselves into fixers and problems. We all have to see that we are each a fixer, and we are each a problem in and of ourselves. And so, we must take our fixer part and use it on our own problem part, and only by doing this individually can we heal collectively.
A Call Inward)
I invite all of us to start looking at the big problems of the world in this way. I suspect it will be best if we look at the deepest problems, things much more fundamental than politics or ideological divides. Let us consider the hate, the poverty, the deceit, the confusion, and the loneliness. For once, let us set aside who is most responsible for these issues, and just ask, “to what extent am I responsible?”
Is there something negative that we are doing that we could stop? Is there something positive that we should be doing that we are shirking? Can we truly say that we have a clean conscience? That we have contributed nothing to the problem? That we have done our part to contribute to the solution? Or is there room for improvement, room for taking the beam out of our own eyes, room to re-establish heaven in our little corner of the world?
Taking Accountability- Acknowledging Limitations
My Commitment and Influence)
In my last post I explained how I feel that I have given my attention to social media that escalates tension and promotes an “us vs them” mentality. I have been more likely to click on a video because the thumbnail or title promised outrage and blame. And in so doing, I have signaled to the algorithms that I, and people like me, want to engage with this sort of content, want to consume it, and want to be emotionally charged by it. And it’s not hard to see how that drives division, animosity, and eventually violent ideation in the most impressionable of minds.
And so, with yesterday’s post I made a commitment that I was going to stop engaging in this cycle of escalation and tension. I have gone through all of my subscriptions and purged the voices that were most divisive and angry. I am resolving to lessen their reach by at least one viewer, and by that take accountability for my own, little slice of the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Limited Scope)
I think that that conclusion is pragmatic and realistic. Of course, to be honest, it has its limitations. It is not as though that I am equally responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk as some other people are, or that I have the power within me to change everything wrong that led to his murder. This moment of introspection wasn’t about convincing myself that I’m guilty of his murder or making it my sole responsibility to make sure something like that never happens again. That would not be realistic. This moment was about seeing how I am guilty of some things, and how those parts are in my power to change.
This isn’t about changing everything; it’s about changing me. And that might not seem important from the scope of the world, but it is important from the scope of me. My own world and my own soul will be better for making this change, and right now that’s what I want to focus on.
Also, who knows. I’ve seen in the past where I’ve made changes to myself and then seen parallel shifts happening in the world at large. I actually do believe that our spirits are bigger than we think, and that they pull on more strands than we know, and one person making a change for himself can create unseen ripples in the world around him.
More than anything, though, I think the real importance of making a personal change comes down to this: the world is much bigger than I am and requires much more effort to be moved, so if I won’t find the will to change just myself, then obviously the world won’t either. Or in other words, maybe the world will stay the same even if I change, but how can the world ever change, if I’m still staying the same?
Taking Accountability- Clicks and Views
Self Inventory)
In my last post I made the point that I want to find my own personal responsibility in regard to the murder of Charlie Kirk and take accountability for it. Perhaps it would be possible to conduct that inventory, and genuinely find no fault whatsoever, and then I could have a completely clean conscience and continue living exactly as I was.
That, however, is not the case in this event. As I have examined my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, I found something that I would like to do differently moving forward. There is a prominent regret that I have, one which I believe helped feed into the culture that led to his death.
Divisive Social Media)
And it all has to do with the social media that I choose to engage with. As I look at the big picture of things, I do believe that there is a great, terrible machine in our culture, one that I have been a part of.
In social media, content that is angry, that warns of imminent threat, that gives a simplistic view of an enemy group, is typically the content to get the most clicks and views, which results in more revenue for those channels, which encourages the platform-owner to recommended it other people as well. We are fed content, not because it is true, or virtuous, or good for us, but because it is most likely to get a reaction. And when we give it that reaction, it only encourages the algorithm to amplify that rhetoric even further.
And, like I said, I have been part of that cycle, too. I have watched videos because the titles were provocative, because they stoked my sense of righteous indignation, because they gave me a rush of dopamine.
And it wasn’t even that these channels were doing anything obviously evil, like making calls for violence. But they did still paint the world in terms of “us vs them.” They were still painting an entire group of people as fundamentally wrong and dangerous. They were still increasing anger and division. That alone is enough to push people into desperate patterns of thought, where extreme solutions seem to be the only option. That was the type of content that I regularly engaged with, but I’m here to say that I don’t want to be a part of that anymore.
The Value of Attention)
One of the greatest things that we have to give, is our attention. It is limited, it is finite, and where we point it directs all the rest of our lives. For this reason, it is extremely valuable, and very hotly contested for. Channels become powerful purely by their ability to win our attention from us, and if we do not give those channels our attention any longer, they wither away and die.
So, from this point on, I want to be very careful about whom I give my attention to. I do not want to sell it to voices that are coarse, divisive, and loud. And I already know other channels where the discourse is much more rational, much more open to finding solutions other than domination of “the other side.” I’d like to give my attention to them instead. As such, I have already cancelled a great many of subscriptions and will tell the algorithms to stop recommending those channels when they pop back up on my feed.
Anyway, this was the response that I had from looking at the murder of Charlie Kirk and asking myself what I had done to contribute to it. My answer is, “I gave my attention to the voices of division,” and my personal solution is to not do that anymore.
Taking Accountability- The Responsibility of Us All
A Tragedy and an Evil)
I don’t typically comment on world events or change my post lineup for special days. The way I see it, gospel study should be a constant in life, something steady and reliable, no matter what else is going on. So, whether it’s a special day or a mundane one, whether a happy day or sad, studying the gospel remains my rock through it all, and I try to have this blog reflect that.
But I recently saw a connection between something I wrote a couple weeks ago, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and I thought it might be instructive to talk about it.
First of all, let me emphatically renounce the assassination itself. It was evil, and cowardly evil at that. As Isaac Asimov said, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Anyone that feels any sort of satisfaction from the occurrence, and celebrated it, is also evil, and cowardly evil. Those that commit and celebrate violence upon the innocent are devolving from the divine to the animal.
In the face of such abhorrent evil, it is only natural to ask, “how did we get here?” and “what can we do about it now?”
And these are the questions that brought me back to my post from two weeks ago. On September 5, I shared this simple prayer:
May my first reaction to every problem in the world
And every problem in my personal life
Be "What did I do to contribute to this?"
Taking Accountability)
Well, that was my prayer at the time, but will I actually hold to its ideals in this moment? Will I say that only people other than myself need to change? Will I comfort myself with the assurance that I’m ‘one of the good ones’ and that I contributed nothing to what transpired? Or will I try to find some piece, even if it is small, that I can take accountability for?
Over the next three days I want to take my intentions and make them into actions. I want to look at this terrible thing that happened and see what I can change about myself as a response to it. I want to take ownership for the ways that my behavior has helped build a culture that produces tragedies such as these. I want to be realistic, and pragmatic, and honest.
I want to do this, because I truly believe it is my responsibility to do so. I believe it is the responsibility of us all. Only by focusing first and foremost on our own accountability will we become innocent of the world’s evil and transcend it. If enough of us take accountability, then we will transcend the world’s evil by changing the world so that events like these don’t happen anymore. Or, if not of us take accountability to accomplish that, we will at least transcend the world by no longer being part of the cycle that creates moments like these. Either collectively or individually, we can only create a better world by each of us taking accountability for ourselves.
Accountability
May my first reaction to every problem in the world
And every problem in my personal life
Be “What did I do to contribute to this?”
Thought for the Day-Own Your Triumphs
You cannot own your triumphs
Until you own your failures
Spiritual Wanderings 