Is "Tending Your Own Garden" the Key to Staying Sane in the Internet Age?

Help! Someone is doing something wrong somewhere!

Photo by Discover Savsat on Unsplash

The drizzly Saturday morning after Donald Trump was elected, my husband and I dragged our toddler and preschooler to a picnic shelter for a meetup of concerned citizens. The mood was fearful and bewildered—many of these same people had cheered when Trump won the Republican nomination, because surely it meant Hillary’s election would be a slam dunk. Now we asked ourselves whether we understand our fellow Americans at all. Strangers took turns talking about rumored Trump orders against Muslims, immigrants, attacks on the environment and women’s rights, and what we could possibly do about it. Most seemed to have only vague ideas about how we could be helpful—they talked about theoretical protests against theoretical executive orders and recommended books on fascism. The one piece of advice everyone seemed to agree on: calling our senators, early and often.

When my husband followed through on that advice, an exhausted-sounding staffer asked, “Are you calling about obstructing the Trump agenda?” When I heard that, I didn’t bother making my own phone call.

One of the biggest moral dilemmas of our internet age seems to be an ever-growing awareness of the world’s problems without any real means of affecting change. In her brilliant essay, “The I in Internet,” Jia Tolentino writes, “The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems you have no reasonable hope of solving.”

We want to be good people who care just as much about human suffering across the world as we do more localize suffering. If you were walking through a park and saw a child drowning, I’m guessing you would intervene. But when the internet was flooded with photos of drowned Syrian child, Alan Kurdi, what could we do besides despair? Make a small donation? Call a senator?

The modern response to far-off misery is often “awareness spreading,” as if awareness itself were tantamount to action. Choruses of “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” and “Why is no one talking about this?!” flood Twitter regularly. Indeed, in many liberal social circles, a virtuous response to the question, “How are you?” is to sigh warily and gesture at the state of the world.

I’ve been there. Once, when my therapist asked me how I was, I made some angsty declaration wondering how I could be happy given the state of things. And, she laughed at me! “How has your day-to-day life actually changed since Trump was elected?” she prodded. I was, at first, inclined to find her response lacking in solidarity with the oppressed, but later I did realize she had a point. How was me wallowing in misery helping families separated by Trump’s immigration policies? Answer: it wasn’t!

As we’ve talked about community this month, I’ve thought about how the internet has, in many ways, supplanted real, flesh-and-blood communities. It’s now possible to be more aware of what’s happening on the other side of the world than what’s going on down the street. And this knowledge makes us feel like we ought to do something when we hear of something bad happening, whether it’s tweeting a certain hashtag or posting a supportive profile photo filter. (Then the inevitable backlash: “Why do you show solidarity for them but not for x, y, or z?”)

It brings to mind Sociology 101’s concept of in-groups and out-groups. It’s human nature to want to care for people in your group or tribe, whether that’s your family, your neighborhood, your church, or those who share something in common with you. An English study found that football fans were more likely to help a fallen person if he was wearing a jersey supporting the same team as the subjects. In-group bias may be natural, but it can also be harmful, leading to prejudice against out-groups and all the attendant -isms. It’s a moral imperative that we extend empathy and dignity to those who are different from us.

At the same point, I don’t think we can escape the in-group/out-group binary. It’s simply true that I would lend money to my brother-in-law but not a total stranger. Social ties, trust, and an expectation of reciprocity play a large role in what we’re willing to do for others; I don’t think it’s possible to be a Good Samaritan 24/7 and have any kind of life.

Which brings me back to the problem of far-flung evil. The simple fact is that we can’t do much to affect these problems. The things we can do (such as vote and sometimes protest), we should. Other than that, we have to let things go. “Touch some grass,” as the Zoomers say. If you, like me, are an overly responsible person, that can feel difficult. But we have to understand our own limitations—as much as I might wish to, I’m never going to save the world.

That doesn’t mean giving into despair, though. Instead, I recommend a riff on Voltaire’s idea of “tending your own garden”: instead of getting caught up in things you can’t control (such as politics), focus on a few things you can do.

After the disorganized post-election meeting, my husband and I decided to each pick one local cause to focus on supporting. First, we’d try to learn about the topics and then we’d get involved. He chose homelessness, I chose school segregation. Ryan has attended city council meetings, read about solutions, and donated money to charities working on solving homelessness. I researched school segregation, wrote a blog about it, and got involved with the Integrated Schools organization before sending our kids to a minority-majority school, where I try to support the school without turning into a “nice, white parent.”

Have we solved anything major? No. Do I still feel sad when I read the news? Yes. But, there is power in seeing what change you can affect locally by focusing on one issue at a time. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

Journal/Discussion Questions:

• What do you think about the idea of “tending your own garden?” Where do you draw lines around what you can and cannot do to make the world a better place?

• How are your internet habits? Would spending less time online make you happier?

• What is the dumbest internet controversy you’ve ever seen?