Shards Of Paradise

I saw the crushed body of a Gazan child. Their blood was beading on the dusty cinderblocks of the destroyed building they called home. I swipe my finger, and see Charlie Kirk, reclining up on stage, make a joke about the destruction of those buildings, and the bodies that are buried there. I swipe again, and see his body jolt as a bullet bursts his neck and blood gushes out. I can find someone to cheer and chant for every patch of running blood, and justify any act of political violence.

Scrolling further, I see a graph of ocean surface temperatures, curved like a half-pipe, and the mass graves they foretell. An island of plastic floats out there too, in the sun and waves, as micro-plastics float in me and I sweat in untimely summer swelter. The bugs are gone from my backyard; and spared the fate of bursting on the windscreen of my car by never being born. Our rainforests are drying up in the hothouse we call home, and deep furrows are dug by sudden floods on our once bone-dry plains.

Too much, it’s all too much.

So I close social media and see I have an email from my landlord. I worry they’re gonna bump up my rent for this busted old townhouse. Lease by lease I’m paying more and saving less, strangled by the rising cost of being alive. Buying groceries is an exercise in wondering what we can live without, but still it is a hundred bucks for a single brown paper bag of food.

I know everyone is in the same boat, and I am so much better off than most. Everyone in the West is better off, no matter how much we bitch and moan. There are people who would kill to live my life. Instead, they’re killed in endless bloodshed cycles that water the seeds for a more violent tomorrow. Each grave lays the groundwork for another generation of hardship.

I just wonder where the world is heading; where the trajectory of current problems will lead us. The climate is changing before our eyes, and I fear how the world will change with it. I fear it will be more violent, polarised, and isolated than at any other time in living memory. The rich will get richer and ride roughshod through the climate collapse on techno-chariots lubricated with the blood and sweat of those less fortunate, and those least responsible for the crisis.

That goes for billionaires and The West in general.

I want so desperately to save the world, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if anyone does, anymore. Sometimes I fear it is far too late to make a difference. It makes me want to give up. It makes me want to overstimulate myself beyond feeling, so that I might feel at peace. It makes me want to bliss out in the Zen state of consumption that passes for happiness to so many. Forgetting the world and its problems is a dangerous substitute for solving them.

Yet, sometimes I put my fucking phone down and look around me. Sometimes in those moments, I dare to hope we can make a better world instead.

My phone has me living in a world not meant for me, or for anybody. In online spaces, the human experience is dialed up beyond what anyone can congruently engage with. The rage, the humour, the sex, the bare flesh, the facts, the fakes, the funnys are all more vibrant through the phone screen, more violent in their appeal to us, even in their inherent unattainability:

It’s literally not real. I don’t know how to tell you that, and sometimes I forget myself, but none of it is ‘true’ in the everyday sense of the word. It is not a window into distant parts of the world. Everything you see online is filtered. First, through the fact that someone posts it to present themselves in a certain way, then again when your algorithm shows it to you; working tirelessly to find exactly your flavour of content. The online is not life, and has very little connection to life, yet so many people are spending their finite lives there, and are the worse off for it.

Next, I find myself living in the future. I am not worried about today, but I worry about next year, next decade. I worry about what kind of world my future kids will be born into. I worry about problems that could arise or turns of fate thus far unrealised. My body is here, but my mind and heart are flung far from me to the future, like a baited fishing hook to lure happiness and security to my waiting arms. I shape my choices and efforts now for the sake of a future that I cannot truly understand or anticipate, and pay the price of ceaseless stress as I try to build a future on the shifting sands of the present. I worry so much on tomorrow, that I do not even make the best of today. And I am the worse off for it.

I know, as I write this, that humans are not meant to live in the future, or live in cyberspace. Trying to do so alienates us from our present self, and our present circumstances, leading to the very fear and horror we all hope to avoid. They make our conception of the world something other than the actual world we live in:

Look around you right now, listen and smell and feel where you are. This is not rhetorical, actually stop reading for a minute and experience your world.

I am doing it right now. There are birds chirping in the trees behind my back fence as they jump from branch to branch. Their passage shakes rain droplets off the shiny leaves. The wind rustles, restless there too, singing a song to which I feel I should know the words, but have forgotten. At the table with me, my wife works on a puzzle, scritch-scratching among the pieces in the box. Behind me I hear my cat nibbling at the biscuits in his bowl. In my stomach I feel a flutter of happiness. Real happiness, the type that comes when you are living in the real world. The one we are made to live in.

But like I said, I am blessed far beyond what most people enjoy.

Maybe you see a tired fan idly spinning in the tense and humid air, and the pale white light of a cheap bulb hanging from the ceiling. Maybe a homeless man sleeps across the street from where you drink your coffee in a crowd of lonely strangers. The sun is glary, too hot, and your forgot your sunglasses. Maybe your kids are screaming amidst their latest battle to the death, while you hide in the bathroom and wonder when you will feel happy again. Widening, think about your workplace, your neighbourhood, and your town.

You could see problems, heartache, loneliness and pain, deep and real. Life is hard, and solving the problems people face is hard work. I am not at all trying to downplay how much life can and does often suck. Everyday misery is so often forgotten in the face of blaring doom-news headlines, but still it is more than enough for people to endure.

The future, in many ways, is dire. In measurable terms it is getting harder and more dangerous to live, and that very hardship sometimes feels like a boulder rolling down a hill. With each thump and thud it speeds up and up. With each video of extreme weather or out of pocket violence, the videos looks shot closer to home. It seems like we should scramble and run and worry. We need to do something to save ourselves and everyone else, as though worry will be enough. All too often, we worry and do nothing else.

But take a second. Put the phone down, emerge from the online like a swimmer breaking the surface of the sea, gasping for air. Reel yourself back in from the fog of some hazy future. Look around you.

This is the actual world you inhabit; one that you can see and feel and hear in real life, not what you get filtered through your phone screen and gummed up in your brain; not the glaze that forms over your eyes and tints the way you see the world.

It may be whole and wonderful, filled with more little joys than you can ever take time to appreciate. Or, as so often is the case, it could be riddled with problems like holes in a cartoon cheddar cheese. Life is a million multitudes of joy and pain. But whatever you see, it is the world you should focus on. The real world you live in is the one for which you are most responsible. The present is the problem humans are meant to face, and often the only one we can actually handle.

I wonder how much good goes undone because those who care most have their empathy sapped by too much time online. I care, I seriously do. But I can point to times where I did not reach out to people I could help in real life because I was too caught up caring about foreign atrocities. Caring takes work, and being too often in online spaces can trap you in an algorithmic loop that takes all the caring you can offer, then releases you to a world where you do no good at all. Tangible good. Not liking and sharing, but volunteering time or money or convenience.

The future is a bottomless pit of inherent uncertainly and instability. Trying to clutch at it, like dandelion spores in the wind, will only ever allow the fear inside you, and leave you unprepared to take what limited steps you can to shape it.

Instead, think of what world we could make by focusing on our day-to-day lives with their mundane day-to-day hardships. The water of your time and worry should not be poured out fully on things outside our experience or control. We each are meant to make our present into our home, and water first our own patch of life.

Imagine a world that is made the best it can be, little piece by little piece. Our own shards of paradise:

You wake and notice particles floating in the yellow beam of sunlight shining through the window. The bedsheets are fresh and warm, and you stretch out, luxuriating in the bliss of being in bed. Dimly, you hear your kids or partner or cats rustling downstairs. They might be preparing breakfast and that first sip of a good coffee that you know is waiting for you, along with the loving family you have built in a thousand heartbeats of joy and hardship.

Imagine the neglected patch of brown grass we all see here and there, in our backyards, schoolyards or workplace courtyards, if it were tended with love and care. Nutrients put into the soil by patient hands so wild flowers can bloom. Buzzing bees could return and sing their little humming song around fluttering moths and munching caterpillars, while ants march below the foliage and conduct their haphazard operation. A tree could be planted and nurtured to grow tall. Birds could roost there, dancing among its wide branches, below which people stand and talk and laugh in the cool of its shade. Someone could make a bench for the elderly to sit. It could be a green space that everyone can enjoy, if only we take the time to make it so.

You exist now. Not tomorrow, not two years in the future. As you read this, in your present, most likely the air in your lungs is clean, and clear water runs from the tap. There is something in the pantry and you’re not bleeding. Maybe you recline, comfy, on a fluffy couch, warm and cozy, or sit under the shinning sun embraced by the quiet bustle of the breeze travelling to once place or another. It might not be great, but it is not the terrible future that waits in your mind, and nowhere else. If your ground yourself in present circumstances, usually life is a lot better than it seems.

The power to make the present better is in all our hands. The problems we face in our daily lives are tough, but they are some of the few problems in the world that we’re equipped to solve, if only we seize the opportunity. We can make a better world for ourselves, our neighbours and those less fortunate than ourselves if we just get off our fucking phones.

Little shards of paradise; little parts of life made better, one by one. They can already be found by those with the eyes to see and made by those with the heart to care.

However, this is not meant to at all diminish the real, pressing and tangible problems countless people face around the world. A lecture on the internet about positive thinking and shards of paradise is no help to the families starving right now in Sudan. The dead people in Gaza will not come back to life, and it won’t provide basic necessities to those still living. It won’t stop the exploitative economic system in which we are still so deeply tangled, and all the hardship baked into it. Landlords don’t accept good vibes or limited screen time as payment, unfortunately.

I am preaching no such message. Instead, I argue that that we will only ever be capable of wide changes by tackling the problems in our own lives and communities as a first step.

Constant immersion in the online horrors numb people to the pain, allowing them to more easily scroll it by, or pass it by in person. No action is taken because those sights and sounds of suffering are a commonplace part of the world they inhabit. It’s all too much to care about, and trying to care feels impossible. But empathy leads to action, and the public’s ability to empathise is being worn away, or smothered, as a way to cope with the reality that is chronically found online. You are not meant to deal with all that, all the time. It’s not what you’re equipped to deal with.

In the same way, the human obsession with the distant future is an unhelpful fascination, where the bad significantly outweighs the good. All too often the problems of today, of the now, that could be solved through proactive action are ignored in favour of foggy fears about tomorrow. There have been times when my wife needed a hug and a kiss, and I have sat on my phone looking at our bank account, the news, or some new piece of dystopian AI exploitation and thought about how I could safeguard our future instead of going to her. Then, to make it worse, I didn’t even follow up that melancholy rumination with any kind of plan. All the problems felt insurmountable, and I seemed incapable of doing anything.

My little shard of paradise wilted because I was too caught up with my powerlessness to do the little that was in my power. And I was the worse off for it.

We need to disconnect from unhelpful worries and endless black holes of online empathy to prevent desensitisation to the very problems we are claiming to care about. Because the problems in the world are so serious, they will not be solved without direct action and engagement with the community, here and now. Having the right opinions and a well thought out view on key subjects is not enough.

A tangible donation or commitment of time outweighs an infinite about of subjective heartache and online wailing. This online advocacy is very important, but it only has value insofar as it leads to some kind of tangible action by someone. If everyone is an online personality spreading awareness, who will be the aware people making the changes a reality? Doing good is far more important that feeling good about yourself. I fear that so many spend their time and energy in online echo chambers of virtuous outrage at the injustice in the world, rather than doing the uncomfortable work of actually those helping those in need. I fear that I have been such a person.

Regarding the future, it is good to think ahead. It is. The ship of our world will not get to better sands if we do now point in the right direction, or prepare to hoist our sails when favourable winds arrive. The problem comes when all thought is drawn into endless course revisions and worry over future hazards, and no effort is given to getting in and starting to row today.

Instead, online places and the future should be places you visit with a goal in mind, like the shops or your workplace. They should not be your home, your self-imposed prison, where you return whenever you have the chance. That way, you go to be informed, ready with the ability to care, and to act. Seriously engaging for a few hours with an online issue or making a concrete plan and acting on it will garner far better results than many more hours of scrolling reels and feeling a sense of doom.

The internet needs to be a resource that we have control over and turn to a good use. Instead, as time goes on, our time and attention is becoming the resource with online spaces extract: Fuel for the content mill of problems and solutions, sustenance for the actors in the online saga of good and evil, where we all are spectators waiting for someone else to change the world, forgetting we each could a hero to the people in our own lives.

I ask you to imagine a better world: One where you choose uncomfortable and inconvenient face-to-face compassion for people in need and tangibly support the ecology in your community, over the easy route of reposting an infographic on rainforest loss or homelessness and calling it a job well done. One where you make a sensible plan for the future, and reel back to the present to actually act on it. One where you keep online spaces under control, and use them as tools to coordinate our real-world, tangible efforts.

This can feel like a heavy burden, and it is a standard I am not living up to. I am challenging myself as much as anyone else. Doing good work is hard, otherwise someone would have done it already. With that in mind, changing the world means community action and leaning on each other. Each one of us, individually, cannot bear the weight of our communities problems. I encourage you to get your friends involved in making changes. Communicate why you care about a problem and why they should care too:

Find someone excluded or forgotten and connect with them, show them someone cares. Bring positivity to your workplace and heal any toxic conflict that festers there. Let your lawn grow weeds and wildflowers so pollinators can flourish. Clear the gunk and garbage from the stream down at the park, scrub away the graffiti on the playground there so families feel welcome. Talk to people in real life, and don’t trust the internet to show you the truth of the world, for it is a twisted mirror. Advocate, donate and volunteer however you are able, and encourage your friends to come with you.

We have the power to create change, real change, that we can see and feel and touch, but it requires working together, as friends, as family, as community, and the safeguarding of our empathy so we can direct it where it will actually be felt. If we do this, I know we can put all of our little shards of paradise together, bit by bit, like the broken pieces of a windowpane, and make a better world for all.

It’s possible, if we start today.