Drinking from the firehose of doom
Strategies for surviving the polycrisis in an age of info overload.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the world: It is not you; it's the world. It's also not just you struggling; it's all of us who are paying attention.
Many of us have been struggling in particular with what I am calling "the firehose of doom" which is the near-constant stream of catastrophic and violent information that is being blasted at us from all angles but especially via social media and those digital devices in our pockets.
It IS a lot.
BUT if you are still continuing to engage with these stories and are horrified by what you see, this is a good sign: you have not lost your humanity.
Our situation is as real and brutal as it seems.
The polycrisis is real. There are in fact multiple, intricately and inseparably connected crises - from Congo and Sudan to climate chaos and reproductive justice - not just converging but amplifying each other.
In some ways this violence is not new. This world has always had monsters. It has always had violence. What's new is not simply that there are more monsters or violence; it's that the veil is lifting and we can see these things for what they are.
Much of our new awareness is a result of the digital age and more specifically social media. We are no longer dependent on mainstream media. Instead of getting information from a foreign bureau correspondent who shares a carefully crafted story with an editor in New York who shapes it to fit their Eurocentric view of the world, we are livestreaming a genocide.
No one would ever suggest that the violence of bearing witness is greater than the violence on the ground. We must continually maintain perspective on the relative privilege of watching many of the events of the polycrisis unfold from a distance. However, there is a perverse psychological terror being enacted on those of us witnessing from afar. Many of us have experienced this terror in full technicolor over the last year: the images of bodies without heads, heads without bodies, body parts in bags measured out by weight, the imprint of tank treads on a body that has a leg in a cast, the people being pulled from wreckage, and the screams. So. Many. Screams.
It's enough to paralyze any reasonable person's nervous system. And there is jarring casualness to the violence of seeing all these horrific images as you fold laundry, commute to work or school, sit comfortably on your living room couch. These images are beamed to us via these small devices that keep us constantly connected to the world (notably made with minerals mined by children in Congo assembled by exploited workers in China). The firehose of doom does not stop.
The psychological terror perpetuated on witnesses is absolutely intentional. And the goal of this terror is to overwhelm, horrify, demoralize and ultimately lead us to paralysis and despair. I don't know about others but personally nothing strengthens my resolve more than an opponent who tells me I can't do something.
So if we refuse to turn away, what can we do? If we know we must stay in this fight, continue to witness in the ways asked of us by those on the ground, how?
Slowing the flow.
The firehose is not going to stop. There is going to continue to be a world of violence and it will continue to be beamed to our digital devices. The solution is not simply to turn away or disengage.
If we are in this fight, we need information. We need to know what we are fighting and for whom we are fighting. We need to be responsive to their calls to action. We need stories. We need the analysis that helps us untangle the intricate connections between day disability justice and climate chaos. This is an invitation to stay in the struggle, but in a way that allows those of us to actively and effectively work in solidarity with those directly impacted.
The following are options for managing and slowing the flow of the firehose of doom. Please treat this like a buffet and take what you need and leave the rest.
Pick your moments. The news, your social feeds, etc are going to have violence. Assume that as soon as you open one of these sites or apps you will be confronted with disturbing info and images. While in the past you might have reflexively scrolled first thing in the morning, as you were between appointments, etc, you will now have to be more intentional about when you engage. If it is not a moment when you are prepared to handle this disturbing content, it is not the moment to open the app. If you are someone who has a lot of push notifications it may be worthwhile to silence them during certain days/hours or even turn them off so you are not pulled in at moments when you are not fully prepared to handle what you will see.
Prepare your nervous system to engage. If you've decided you are going to read the article or open the app, take a breath and ground yourself first. Put your feet of the ground. Drop your shoulders. Relax your tongue.
Selectively view and engage. If that blurred out image is not going to change the way you advocate, ask "is it necessary for you to view it?" If you saw the headline and/or understand the latest developments, ask yourself "do I need to scroll through the carousel or view that full video?" Get the actionable info you need and manage the supporting info, stories and images according to what your own system can handle.
Know your own limits. Make an intentional choice about how much you will engage. For some people setting a time limit in advance (e.g., I will only scroll for 20 min) may be helpful. For others, it may be content-driven (e.g., once I've seen three violent or disturbing stories I need to get off). For still others, you may need to tune into your body to know when it is time (e.g., my jaw is getting tight, my breathing is shallow). For me personally, I know it is time to log off when the only comment I can offer is the deeply unconstructive "I hate it here."
Take info intake breaks and then resume. I'm going to tread extra lightly here. Last year only days after October 7th, we saw a large creator suggest to their massive audience that folks should take the weekend and turn off their phones. It was a blithe and blanket statement offered to the relatively privileged masses at a moment when awareness and mass mobilization was critical. I am not advocating for everyone to turn away. However, we need time to rest, reflect and digest the massive quantities of information available to us through digital media. This is important for our nervous systems. Downtime also allows us to sit with the information, make connections, deepen our analysis, etc. You will have to be the judge of what is right for you and your body. But if you are doing all the things (you know who you are) take what you need without guilt or shame.
Note: This guidance is offered to those people who are ACTIVELY and consistently working in solidarity with others. This is primarily geared toward people who are in community with people directly impacted, creating and distributing content, directly working to support projects on the ground, actively protesting and disrupting business as usual. If your solidarity is more inconsistent or mainly arms-length interactions (e.g., sending funds or good vibes, boosting stories), you may use some of the strategies above but the burden of bearing witness is going to weigh more heavily on you.
The goal here is to move from a place where we feel like the content is consuming us toward a place where we are consuming useful and actionable information.
Act with focus and intention.
Part of what makes drinking from the firehose of doom so overwhelming is that it calls us to act. Often with urgency.
There is a differentiation between the urgency of White culture that demands attention and unreasonable timelines when it suits and drags its heels when it does not vs the urgency of multiple crises that are rapidly killing, disabling and displacing people. This begs the question of…
What does it mean to 'unlearn' urgency when there are in fact multiple time-sensitive crises happening simultaneously?
This is an especially hard lesson to learn when there is an abundance of information. Keep in mind though that you can continue to take in an abundance of information but you will be far more limited in the amount of information you can act on. Your attention matters but your actions matter more.
Focus. Focus means prioritizing the information that directly relates to the work you are engaged in. Focus does not mean ignoring intersecting struggles. Focus means understanding your role in the resistance and feeding yourself the relevant information you need to execute that role. Finding your role can take time but a quick gut check on whether you engage with a seeming "urgent" situation might look like asking yourself:
What is needed? Who else is in this work? What gaps exist in the current system? What am I uniquely good at? What resources do I have? What is my capacity at this moment?
If you know that the situation calls for you to act, you can start to focus on the information you need to be most effective and impactful. For instance, if you are trying to mobilize hurricane emergency relief efforts, you need to know who is doing what and will naturally seek out this information. It's helpful to have some awareness of other movements and developments while you are actively engaged in this focused work. But do you need to give the same level of diligent attention to stories coming out of Brazzaville that you do Asheville?
There is strong argument for understanding the connections between various struggles, but this does not mean you must understand all struggles with the same level of depth or intimacy, especially if devoting yourself to consuming information diverts time and energy from taking action. If you are having trouble deciding where to focus because of the seemingly endless number of crises, know they are all connected so pick a thread that is close to you and pull on it. Making progress on one will help make progress on all.
Intention. Acting with intention requires differentiating between reactive urgency and appropriate timely, intentional action. Reactive urgency looks like White people flooding the streets thinking we can solve generations of systemic and institutional racism in a summer. In contrast, an appropriately time-sensitive intentional action might look like providing daily or even more frequent updates on emergency relief efforts in your area.
A consistent gut check I employ looks something like:
Is this crisis new or simply new-to-me? Is there a time sensitivity in the call to action? If so, do my actions impact the timeline or outcome?
There are numerous pressing struggles that demand our attention but some of these are fights that have spanned and will span decades and lifetimes. We need to actively engage in these long-term struggles. However, we can also be more effective (and more mindful of our nervous systems) if we release ourselves from a false sense of urgency. Releasing ourselves from urgency also helps us set more reasonable expectations about how and when we will see the impact of our work.
Individual Limits
Limits are the boundaries we set with ourselves. In order to set limits we need to start with the recognition each of us is one person, most of us have less than 24 hours in a day and we need to make space for our own needs.
If you are one of the folks doing all the things (you know who you are) and still feel like you are not doing enough, please recognize that is not a reflection of your work or effort; it is a reflection of the pace of progress. Bombs are still dropping. Global CO2 level are still rising. Basic reproductive freedoms are still beyond reach for many and being eroded further daily. But those are collective fights that will take coordinated, mass action and unfortunately time.
It’s tempting to want to do as much as possible. And lots of us are working at a pace that we cannot continue indefinitely or even for much longer without burning ourselves out. It is absolutely possible you can be doing the most you possibly can and still feel as though you are not doing enough. Collectively we have never been more powerful but for many we have never felt like bigger failures.
You are one person who is part of a greater collective. Release yourself from the egoism that says you always have to be the one to do the thing. Take rest. Ask for support. Build community and trust them to step in when you hit your limit (and ideally even before you get to that point).
Take the time to actively define your limits. For me, it looks like doing the majority of my IRL work during school hours when my kids are occupied. It means recognizing I am already supporting and boosting and communicating with close to 30 Palestinian families (something that has been among the most rewarding and draining work I've done in the last year) and so cannot take on more. If I go to a direct action, I build in time for rest that day and the next. If I am part of an action in which the police become violent, I will take time to process, get aftercare and reset before hitting the streets again. These are just some of my limits and they need not be yours but I am offering them as an example of the type of limits I set to proactively avoid burn out.
If you need to, write your limits down. If you need to, ask a trusted person in your life to help you stay true to your limits. Do what you need to set and maintain limits that allow you to continue to stay in the work. We need all our fighters rested, ready and whole.
But set limits because you deserve it.
Be the fractal you want to see in the world.
This week adrienne marie brown reminded me of the importance of fractals. If you don't recall fractals from math class: Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. A fractal is made of smaller patterns/shapes that replicates itself in a larger part (think microcosm: the part is a smaller representation of the whole).
Fractals are important in nature. A leaf looks like a branch which in turn looks like a tree. Fractals are also important in social systems. Many African villages - once thought by European colonizers to look haphazardly chaotic accustomed to linear streets and patterns - were actually designed as fractals. Houses were designed in a way that mirrored the family circles that made up the larger village.
Fractals are a useful way to think of ourselves as agents of change. If we are building a better world, that can and first must manifest is how we show up for ourselves and in how we interact through our relationships.
Prompted by the wisdom and example of adrienne marie brown, I invite you to think of yourself as a fractal of the world you want to see and ask yourself:
How do I practice care for myself in the ways I want to see care practiced in community? How do I embody what I want to see in the larger system?
This is a particularly useful exercise for those of us who will neglect our own needs or perhaps tend to our needs minimally while feeling guilty for tending them at all. For my part I have struggled to find joy and rest. But I can absolutely reason that both joy and rest are necessary parts of revolution AND a future world I want to live in. I would tell you unequivocally that I want these things for others.
I can also say that I will unequivocally continue to struggle to get this balance right - possibly for the rest of my days here on Earth. But hopefully we are all moving closer and closer to practicing for ourselves what we preach for others.
Redefine "success"
The firehose of doom is going to keep delivering more violence and new crises. It is intentionally designed to have us give up or spread us so thin as to be ineffective. It is also working to undermine any sense or press or accomplishment - which is admittedly in short supply to begin with.
Success, victory, winning are all amorphous concepts when it comes to social progress. Any veteran activist will tell you that big wins take years and decades and even lifetimes. For that reason many will honor and celebrate the smaller wins along the way -- the seeds that we plant that will help to grow a future world.
It takes incredible faith to believe that the seed you have planted will eventually bloom and be a part of that future world. Many of us are planting seeds that will not even sprout - let alone bloom - within our lifetimes. As a result, progress remains difficult to observe or measure.
We are making progress though! If we take Palestine for instance, we can see enormous shifts in the global view of Israel. The Zionist state is well on the way to being a pariah state and we've seen substantial evidence of this in the last year. We are seeing countries de-normalize relations with the occupation. We are seeing the impact of boycotts on bottom lines. If you have been in liberatory struggles for years or decades, it is easier to see how these shifts are manifesting. If you have not been in liberatory struggles for long, then your very presence here right now is the evidence that progress is happening.
Instead of looking for indicators of "success" in the world I am turning inward. Everyday there are a million and one reasons not to focus on liberation. Besides the pressures of capitalism, demands of friends/family, and more that keep us so so busy, there is pressure to conform. To be "less."
Every day that we stand firm in our values is a victory. Every day that we don't give up is a victory. Every day that we refuse to be drowned by the firehose of doom is a victory.
If you are still in the fight despite everything, you have succeeded. We have succeeded. And collectively we will eventually prevail.
Progress will come too late
There are signs of progress everywhere. But for many progress is coming too slow. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in just the last year in just Palestine. Many more will be lost before the occupation falls for good. The same could be said of Sudan, Congo, Haiti and numerous other anticolonial fights. For these people and those that love them "progress" will come too late. This is an unalterable truth. And it's one we must accept, though not in the callous "it is what it is" way. We must accept that progress is always going to be too slow in the way that we must accept that death is a part of life, meaning that we must reconcile with this cosmic truth and we must grieve what it means for us and the people we belong to.
So I offer you the words of Vito Russo of ACT UP in his 1988 speech "Why We Fight":
Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes -- when that day has come and gone, there'll be people alive on this earth -- gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free.
We must grieve our martyrs, channel our rage and continue to fight.
Credit where credit is due: I had the privilege of hearing adrienne marie brown in conversation with Kimberly Drew this week as part of her book launch for “Loving Corrections” which I haven’t read yet but can already wholeheartedly recommend to any/everyone. The section of fractals here leans heavily on that conversation but it probably informs the general tone of this piece. This piece is also a reflection of healers and somatic workers such as Ismatu Gwendolyn and Care (@eroticsofliberation) among others. I am also indebted to a multitude of friends and comrades who, through their support and struggles, have shown me how to stay in the fight even when it hurts.
In an effort to give you a moment of joy I would like to share some draft visuals. I couldn’t find the exact image I wanted to explain what I meant by the “firehose of doom” so I tried some experiments in generative AI. It is safe to say that AI will not be replacing most graphic artists in the near future…
I found this yesterday and I've already read it 3 times. Thank you for sharing ♥️
Needed this. Thank you!