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Somebody to lean on

by Hannah North

Sometimes, memories have a way of coming out through your sub-conscious. As I started writing this blog on distressing content we all seem to experience through social media, I began with the line “every human on this planet has experienced pain and sorrow.” A colleague pointed out to me that these words echo the opening lyrics to a song that was important to me in a time that seemed simple yet was so impactful to my childhood.

I grew up in a family of addicts, which could seem like a tragedy to those who know my story. However, it opened me up to a supportive community that I would have never had otherwise.

I spent the majority of my childhood in Alateen, a program for children affected by addiction. It felt like everyone in the program was always there when I needed advice, a friend or just someone to talk to. At the end of my favorite convention we would sing a farewell song. We grabbed hands, the music started, and we sang together,

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there’s always tomorrow
—Bill Withers, opening lyrics to “Lean On Me,” 1972

In those moments, I knew it was true. I would always have somebody to lean on.

Through addiction, war, death, rejection, oppression and many other hardships, we have a place to come together and to lean on one another. We have an opportunity to share, to listen, to ask and to answer. An opportunity to help heal one another. This place is social media. Social media, as I have described it here, may sound unfamiliar as it seems to me that it is rarely used for these purposes.

Through the internet, we have nearly everything and everyone at our fingertips. With just a few clicks, we have the potential to reach billions of people. Social media has changed our relationships with others, images of others’ pain and has made all sorts of interpersonal exchanges with family, friends and strangers around the world instantly possible. But, instead of using this tool for good, some of us use it to hurt, dismiss, and attack each other. Why? Is it easier to hurt instead of help? Does it make us feel better to make others feel worse?

An essay by BUREAU’s founder, Margot Herster, “Regarding the Pain of Others in the Age of Social Media” seeks to reverse the flow of vitriol so common in contemporary social media exchange. Authored in the wake of the police shooting of Alton Sterling and the retaliatory targeting of police in Baton Rouge, Herster’s piece, first jotted on Facebook as a personal reflection to her online friends, contemplates the spread of online hate and misinformation is not destiny.

Herster, a media artist and educator, suggests that we are all individually thus collectively empowered to reimagine our online relationships toward building community, challenging indifference and avoiding amplification of caustic commentary. Her message of consciousness and conscience is borderless. First conceived as a response to a Baton Rouge local then national story of grief and protest, it was published in the Dhaka Tribune for international distribution following a mass shooting in Dhaka, Bangladesh termed by the media as 7/16.

We can choose if we want to expose ourselves to a public forum or become a poster child or hashtag. We can respect others’ privacy and ways of grieving. We can learn more about what another feels is at least semi-acceptable to say or do. We can read the comments and be the one to add a thoughtful, factual, caring comment because someone who needs to hear it might read it. We may reach a friend of a victim, a judge, a police officer, a politician, a power broker. Or an isolated could-be copycat or would-be abuser. Or another might-be abused or lost life. —Margot Herster, “Regarding the Pain of Others in the Age of Social Media,” 2016

In 2003, in part spurred by her reaction to 9/11 and its aftermath, Susan Sontag published Regarding The Pain of Others, a book on how we use photographs to portray violence and react to images of war and torture. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag discusses society’s absorption and rationalization of images of others’ suffering and how viewing this imagery can ultimately make the viewer complicit in that suffering. Digitalization of such imagery, she says, fosters a ‘globalization of suffering,’ in which society seems to increasingly distance itself from, glorify, or react with impotent empathy or paralyzation.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do — but who is that ‘we’? — and nothing ‘they’ can do either — and who are ‘they’ — then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.
—Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003

Although we may not know someone’s background or feel another person’s pain, we can accept and respect our differences. We can try to make other people feel heard and valued. Instead of impulsively responding with hateful comments or pictures, we can come together and help to heal each other of our pains. We can have compassion.

Who or what we choose to ignore because we don’t agree, don’t want to be seen liking or commenting on, or are unsure how to react to, can ignite and propel anxieties. We don’t know every person in our network or the experiences that color their views. We can start conversations with “what do you think, “what do you want, ‘why?’ We can invite people we assume are on the wrong side of history, or who support Trump or whoever we’re against. We can take the time to explain what we think we know and why. We can stop shaming, slamming, and unfriending people because we don’t agree with them.” —Margot Herster, “Regarding the Pain of Others in the Age of Social Media,” 2016

The next time you find yourself scrolling through the world of social media, remind yourself that the other people there are real. They have real lives, emotions, problems, and pains. A few keystrokes can carry weight. What you say or don’t say can impact someone else’s life.

Hannah North is a freshman at Delgado Community College and participant in BUREAU’s interdisciplinary apprenticeship program in partnership with New Orleans colleges. More information on how we work here.