Bad reactions

We’ve seen a few tragedies. I usually don’t write about things until long after they are done, because it takes me a while to sort everything out, but then there’s always the next one. So maybe it seems like I am writing because of the Boston Marathon bombings, but I am really writing about Sandy Hook, and it all flows together.

It also goes back to the web harassment issue though, and many other things, where the point is that sometimes we make things worse without meaning to. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The issue I am going to spend the least time on is ideologically driven abuse. If you need to believe that a school shooting is a government conspiracy to steal your guns, so you will harass witnesses, and people who were trying to help, or if, without any proof, you start Muslim-baiting, I doubt my abilities to make a dent in your twisted motivations. I’m not actually into lost causes, though I can see how that impression could be given.

There are two other ways we make things worse, though, and I am very sympathetic to these issues, so I want to talk about it non-judgmentally, and maybe we can get somewhere.

The first issue is spreading rumors and misinformation. I get it. We point and click and find things instantaneously when we’re just mildly curious, so when we are shocked, and hurting, and worried, and we feel that more information will help us make sense of it all, we scramble for any scraps we can get.

Don’t think there aren’t people who take advantage of that. Whether it is from a desire to feel important, or a twisted enjoyment of misleading people, false reports are put out all the time. Some are almost true. A child really was one of the first dead, but the child was not one of the runners, and the picture of the little girl running and the little boy running were both not of the child who actually did die. They both got re-tweeted a lot though.

It takes time to get good information. Disaster leads to confusion, and doctors and police and mayors know this, and they try and double-check and get it right, because they don’t want people to be grieving or relieved, and then have it be wrong. They try to contact families first, so you don’t have your heart ripped out by a newscaster. Good information takes time.

Because we can’t manage waiting, we spread rumors that tend to sound worse, and make people feel more fearful. Suddenly there are shadowy figures on building tops, and Arabs are in custody, and there’s a woman whose boyfriend will never be able to propose to her. If someone really has footage, getting that image to investigators will be a lot more effective than endlessly re-tweeting it. For the human interest stories, aren’t there enough real problems to deal with? We don’t need the fake ones.

 The news knows that we are only interested in that story, so they play the same footage over and over again, and we watch it on that loop, and that is not good for us either. It just fuels our sense of outrage and helplessness, and that increases the odds of us making things worse. In the case of shootings, that endless news feed may influence the next shooter. We may not be able to change how the news is covered, but we can turn it off.

One of the things that really bothered me in the wake of Sandy Hook was that day multiple hate pages were put up for the shooter’s brother, after he was incorrectly identified as the shooter. That’s someone who was having a really bad day, and maybe he’s barely even noticing, honestly, but it seems cruel, as well as pointless. Even if they had the name right, what does hate-posting accomplish?

It’s very common when there is a case of animal cruelty for people to desire the same thing to be done to the perpetrator. I get it. I love animals, and cruelty to them makes me physically ill. I know the person who does it is a risk for taking that abuse to humans further down the line. I still know that wanting to beat them with a baseball bat, or ram them or blind them or any of the things they did doesn’t help the animal and it doesn’t help us.

I am very sympathetic to the desire to lash out. I have felt it before. I am also not at my best when I am feeling that, and not productive, and the lack of a clear target is only going to make that worse. Again, this may be a time to unplug.

So much of handling life is maintaining perspective, and that’s tricky. Yes, less people died in Boston than in Iraq that day. The news cares about one, and not the other. Some of that may be racism or nationalism, some of that may be proximity, and some of that may be shock because we are used to bombings happening in war zones but not at finish lines. And there were cameras in Boston. Don’t think that doesn’t affect it.

So to be able to be sad for the three, and for the thirty-three, and then to not be overwhelmed by the sadness, where caring for all the pain in the world leaves you curled up in the fetal position in bed, is a tricky thing. I have better days and worse days, and days when I see articles that I feel like I should read, because the subjects are important,  and that day I just can’t. Okay, my mental health is important too.

Part of that perspective is also being alive to the good. There were people who ran towards the explosion, and gave blood, and comforted those who were crying and opened their homes. That is good. Part of it is remember all of the non-tragic things that are still happening, even though they don’t make news. There are families and friends and birthdays and completed goals and spring flowers. That is good.

There are three other pieces of advice that I would give though.

1. Read The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin DeBecker. We notice and understand more than we realize, and learning to pay attention to that, and listen to that inner voice, could help us to prevent future problems.
2. Read The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why, by Amanda Ripley. Then, for when something can’t be prevented, having a better understanding of what physical and psychological factors are in play may help us better help ourselves and help others.
3. Learn first aid. Take a Red Cross class where you learn first and and CPR. Join your local Community Emergency Response Team, where you learn other skills, like triage and fire suppression. Have that knowledge ready an on hand for whenever it comes up.

Okay, my coping methods are always trying to read and learn as much as possible, but you know, sometimes it helps.