Good morning, Monday. It was a lazy weekend for me- interspersed with lots of writing up and drafting and thinking about what's next. And one can't help but feel a little bit of anxiety over the recent Brexit and its much deeper implications for all of us.
As you know, I live in Brooklyn, the borough that has become a non-reluctant poster child for all things local. And though the indie spirit and entrepreurial endeavors here are beyond inspiring, I thought a bit about what all of this love of local has done to all of us, in this social age and beyond. I can't help but feel that our farmers market, made in Brooklyn vibes, and rising real estate through the well heeled roof may be bringing us together as a community, but is it also indicative of a greater problem? That problem is a xenophobia that is causing things like Brexit to happen, and a surge in popularity for lunatic fringe brands like Donald Trump. It's hard to imagine a country could not think about the implications of such acts on the rest of their people, the future generations, and moreover, the entire world.
And as we all sit horrified as Trump wants to build walls, I can't help but wonder if we are all contributing to this fervor somehow? We're living in custom made communities of people just like "us"- we dress the same, we eat the same organic foods, and we shelter ourselves from the rest of the country, and moreover, the world. I know it's not conscious in any way, but it's worth considering. Is all of this localism feeding this newfangled version of separation anxiety?
When I was in my 20s, globalism was very much top of mind. The Internet opened up the realm of possibility, and suddenly, the world was at our very click-ish fingertips. We rejoiced in McDonald's offering local fast food to feed the masses in India, and we loved that Starbucks was somehow available wherever we went around the world. True we turned our nose up at corporate colonialism but suddenly, we were all living in a very global world. But cut to now. Because clicking has led to far too many cliques.
Now we seek unity that separates us from others, because only want what's in our own backyards. We may want to visit other places but we are so obsessed with our own community building that we often forget about the rest of the world. And maybe for us, it feels comfortable, but it's this same obsession with ourselves vs. others that is leading to a culture of local gone way, way wrong. Nationalism could bring us together in some ways, but as we've seen from the news in recent weeks and months, it's doing anything but.
Last night I watched the wonderful documentary "I Am", about a former big-time Hollywood movie director who suffered a brain injury and ended up walking away from a life that no longer felt fulfilling. It's not a story you haven't heard- we all know things don't bring us happiness, that big houses and fancy cars are not the way to true contentment. But the film goes much deeper and talks about how all of those things are so very isolating, and how, in a scientific sense, we really are more "one" than we are led to make ourselves believe. We are connected by matter, by atoms, by air. Yet we do everything in our power to separate from one another. And with social media monitoring our every meal, event, and breath, we're fooled into a false sense of connection- we "like" each other's pictures and we swipe left and right with abandon in the hopes of finding true love. But how can we do that when we do so many things that force us to break away? Isolationism is alive and well, even if Facebook has you believing otherwise.
To me, a liberal Democrat living in New York, the Brexit vote was horrifying. Donald Trump was and is horrifying. Mass murder is horrifying. But what's even more horrifying is that the vote passed, seemingly to the shock of millions of British people who didn't see it coming. Because we're so busy sheltering ourselves from people like Trump, we forgot the vast amounts that want to keep out others and protect themselves. And as I sit here eating a kale salad from my local juice place, can I do more to open my eyes and contribute to the notion that we are really just one?
My main point is this- if we continue to live in a bubble, we're going to continually get rocked off our asses every time a move towards a more nationalistic and new fangled fascism takes hold. We're doing nothing to come together, and doing everything to only align with those whose views are most closely aligned with our own. It's true that we listen to Obama talk about a country that relishes the notion that we are all immigrants, but what are we doing to embrace that in the best way we can? We all say we want that, but we need to think and act long and hard on how to protect that amidst so much fear and disruption.
I don't know about you, but hoping that vote was a serious wake up call. We have drawn so many lines in the sand in this election year- the Bernie people, the Hillary people, the Trump people. Maybe it's more than a bit idealistic, but can we try and embrace something that speaks more to the fact that people are people? Instead of thinking about all the things that pull us apart shouldn't we focus a bit more on what brings us together? I believe in finding one's tribe, but maybe that tribe needs a bigger point of view. That's my brand of Kool Aid, friends. Cause that's what's up this come together kind of Monday in the 718. Yours, in drinking up. XO