I started tweeting back in 2009 (!).
I loved sharing my quick thoughts about life, nerd culture, and living better. I made internet friends and loved connecting with people directly.
However, over the past 7 years, long before Elon took over, I started to notice something alarming: rather than keeping me informed and entertained, Twitter/X just made me angry.
Just five minutes on the platform was enough for me to feel like humanity was #done. Which is alarming. I’m a happy person. I don’t want to hate humanity! I like humans!
But I couldn’t help myself. As Hugh Howey, author of the Silo series put it:
“We are poisoned by our own love of bad news. It’s our fault they feed us bad news, because it’s what attracts our attention.”
I recently signed up for Meta’s Threads (I’m @stevekamb), which currently feels like Twitter did in 2009. It’s been fun to talk about my favorite shows (I talk a lot about “The Bear”) and nerd out. The best compliment I can give it is that it doesn’t make me hate humanity …yet.
This brings me to today’s big thought.
I recently revisited one of my favorite books, Lois Lowry’s The Giver.
In The Giver, humans don’t have emotions. They don’t feel sadness or hunger or famine or war or jealousy, but there’s no joy or love or hope or family or music or art either.
That’s because they’ve chosen one person, The “Receiver of Memories,” to hold all of humanity’s feelings and emotions, good and bad, for the community.
This Receiver of Memories carries a heavy burden.
“I received all of those [memories and feelings], when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.”
He rested for a moment, breathing deeply. “I am so weighted with them,” he said.
Of course this dude is weighed down! He has to carry all of the knowledge of all the terrible things that have happened throughout history. And no human is capable of bearing the burden of knowledge of every horrible thing that has ever happened.
Then I realized something:
We all voluntarily act as a Receiver of Memories, every single day!
We might go on social media to check in on our friends or family or for some fun distraction. But then we also hear about every injustice and awful thing that happens in every city, state, and country around the world. We see people “owning” other people and demonizing others. It’s overwhelming, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s delivered into our eyeballs and ears every minute of every day. Twitter. Social media. Our favorite news channel.
It’s been weighing us down for so long that we don’t even realize it.
Here’s my challenge to you: if we’re more selective with our inputs, we’ll become more effective with our outputs.
It’s time to opt out of being a Receiver of Memories.
I hear you: “But Steve, I love social media. Also, being able to ‘opt out’ of the news and social media is an unbelievably privileged position, and I will miss important news and powerful social movements that speak truth to power!”
I don’t disagree!
However, I propose a different theory: unless we are able to take concrete action on the news that we are bombarded with all day, being a voluntary Receiver of Memory isn’t serving us in the way that we are led to believe.
We’re literally not equipped as a human to be up to date on everything everywhere all at once. It’s impossible to help everybody, be part of every cause, and make meaningful progress on these causes. We’re not designed to process the ideas of 7 billion humans.
By “staying up to date” on everything, we’re NOT making significant, impactful progress on the causes that are really important to us. We ping pong from outrage to outrage, social cause to social cause, news story to news story, and don’t make any progress on areas of our life that are important to us.
In addition, being a Receiver of Memory is causing us continuous mental harm and giving us a warped sense of reality outside of our screens.
It’s causing us to hate “the other” – and social media and the news loves to serve us these stories to keep our outraged eyeballs viewing their ad-supported stories.
For my own sanity, happiness, and experience, I’ve chosen to limit my inputs so that I can increase my outputs more effectively: I give directly to a handful of charities that are important to me, enact more change locally, and try to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people around me.
Here’s how I personally limit my inputs but still stay up to date:
- I limit my social media to specific platforms (Instagram, Threads) for 15 minutes.
- I don’t follow people who negatively impact my mental health.
- I sign up for newsletters from the causes that are important to me.
- I automatically donate to causes I support each month.
- I set aside money to donate to any cause any of my friends are supporting.
There will always be more causes than we can meaningfully contribute to.
There will always be more injustices than we can handle mentally.
There will always be awful news in some part of the world today, and tomorrow, and for every day until the robot apocalypse or aliens take over.
If you find yourself overwhelmed as a Receiver of Memory, reduce your inputs, narrow your focus, and prioritize the things that you can actually help with:
- Volunteer at local animal shelters.
- Pick a cause and stick with that cause.
- Donate money/time/resources to organizations your friends are supporting.
- Don’t engage with rage-bait news stories designed to make us angry.
- Don’t follow accounts that focus on making you outraged.
I’ll bring things back around to Hugh Howey:
“Don’t trust screens to tell you how things are. Go out and see the world for yourself.”
Where are you unnecessarily carrying a burden that is paralyzing you from taking action?
-Steve
