Digital Apathy
A new Civil War...
Dear subscribers, new subscribers and followers. Feels so weird to type that. It’s not about me. I am here to write in a turbulent time, the truth. It’s not my truth. Thank you for hanging in with me. Thank you, profusely, for your interest. If you can’t hang? it’s okay. We are living in times, no different from past history, where it’s about who is listening and who wants better for future generations. In your life, which is only given once, you must decide what you will do with it…
As Mary Oliver says, it’s “precious.”
Go for it. Go now.
On my journey, these last four years, I have risen above personal whining about political observations, enticed by a big finger beckoning me inside the eye of the screen storm, swept up, not in righteousness, but in confusing noise, which came across as righteousness. I was in the wrong battle. The people you see screaming, camping out, authorities doing whatever to quell, is all optics. Very small optics in a huge world-wide picture of wars, oppression, starvation and death. It’s serious. We might think we know something., i.e., a political party which is best, or a way of living which is best. “Your truth.” However, “the truth,” what He says about all that stuff, is worth the deep dive.
So here we are.
Welcome to the Digital Civil War.
As an older person, I say to the young, please pray collectively FOR ALL the pain of God’s world that He so loved He sent His One and only Son to save it. He knows suffering. It is life. Evil exists on this planet and we must not stoke it, but fan the flames by being good to others. Stay outside of the extremely small optics. Sponsor a child somewhere. Visit an elderly neighbor. Donate your clothes to a local shelter. Pray for hostages all over the world, including our own here in the U.S. Pray for victims of domestic abuse. Pray over the world. It is full of goodness, however there is a battle that Satan is waging, so deeply Biblical, so veracious, so hungry, it is swallowing souls in an unattainable fight. You can turn on your social feed or t.v. and see it live.
The battle is against isolation, which sucks minds down a dark rabbit hole of ideology.
Evil laughs in the face of this and we help no one. Children are dying of hunger everywhere. Women, people, are sexually tortured everywhere. I hate to remind of these truths, yet they have existed as long as we have been on earth.
There is one deal and one deal alone to ending a ground war. Do the right thing. Make the right deals. Give my child back and I will stop fighting for her/him. It’s simple. Stop throwing rockets into people’s backyards. It’s simple. Stop stealing. Stop the madness. Most of these fights aren’t ours.
Prayer IS ours.
Kindness IS ours.
L O V E IS OURS.
The Ten Commandments.
Digital isolation. An isolated world, thrown to a digital relationship, that rarely speaks back, is unsustainable. It is the undercurrent war… long in the process. A matrix, a mental, often physical deathtrap. I know. I can feel it. Who here has a one-sided relationship with someone via a digital device and nothing else? Perhaps it’s in every avenue of your life. I know. I can feel it.
We “buy,” purchase digital influence in every isolated corner of our lives.
Hold out your hand. Reach. Are you there? Is anyone there? Thank you for the digital gift. You used to throw it on my porch in the 90’s and run on your way somewhere. You’re welcome for yours. Or. wait? Didn’t I send that, via text, six months ago? Let me check my bank statement. Hope they liked it. Oops! I forgot to say thank you in a text. Here I am, sorry I’m late. Thank you for getting back to me two weeks later. I forgot about the funny video I sent. Thank you, I think. I’m growing lazy. Sorry I don’t call your voice recording anymore, “says me.”
I see you, each and every older person. I see you reaching for the phone to the agonizing recording on the other end. I see you longing to talk to someone. I see you trapped behind “the news.” Afraid. I see you hiding behind your writing, your art, your need to tell the world you are here. I see you young people trying to feed yourselves and pay rent in a hideous economy. I see you unable to find a relationship that is driven only by you. I see the pain and I understand the apathy. Rather than hide behind these keys, writing personal family stories, so I am hopefully found by another generation, I am reaching out to a world of hurting people to say.. if not to keep trying, who then? is for Him on this digital battlefield…
Social
anxiety
hiding
behind
soulful
living
yearning to
be seen
together
in flesh
and blood
rising in
endorphins
of
well-being
a family
to touch
and hold
in my
passiveness
rise
above
the mud
of civil
disobedience
to what
they say
and do
with
the elephant
in
the room
of digital
apathy.
Digital Apathy | The New Civil War - 2024Trained into it. How do we get out of it?
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God - Psalm 46:10
He is in all the details of this digital life and beyond. Create a life worthy of His creation, in whatever way you are able, and keep praying daily. Get out of the matrix. Remember, a smile, a wave, or a hello to someone outside, as you walk, grocery shop, etc., could change the entire course of their day…
A battle cry worth crying! This was beautifully said, especially the last paragraph, doing the things that connect in small ways and create warmth, community, and remembrance that we are all humans with souls. That picture also sums it up beautifully, as does the gut wrenching poetry. Thank you so much, Deb!
The vortex of social media can consume the peace that surpasses all understanding. I cried reading this article because I know how confusing this digital experience is. As a Gen-Xer, I pioneered this territory with a naivety that this was the place to find family and friends. Now I am trying to shield my kids from the phycological effects of what has happened to myself, as well as losing one of my children to the world. Finding beauty in the small things, reading a good book, making a podcast episode, drinking my favorite beverage on my porch, and planting Zinnias and sunflowers have become a retreat. Anchoring my faith in the Word gives me that sense of eternity in such a dark and confusing time. Thank you for sharing what we need to be reminded of. Especially because we are constantly reminded of everything else.