I’m often slow in sorting out how I feel about Major World Events. The events are often hugely complicated and far outside areas of my expertise.
I typically try on a few emotional reactions internally. “I’m outraged!” I’ll attempt to tell myself, only to have it not fit. “This is how these things go.” I’ll consider until I realize I don’t know how these things go.
Publicly sharing anything during this time feels disingenuous. Why would I share a half-baked opinion?
What I always want to do is learn every single detail of the Major World Event and master the surrounding fields of study. But then I feel overwhelmed and realize I have far too much going on already.
By the time I’ve landed on an opinion that feels right and true to myself, it’s not timely anymore and sharing it feels like dredging up a river that doesn’t need it.
The result, my guess, is that I can seem apathetic, but I think I’m just emotionally slow.
It’s often enough to just spend some time thinking about what’s happened, deciding whether it should make us act any differently now on in the future, and whether the event might be a forewarning of something bigger nationally, globally, universally or not. No-one is required to ‘react’.
Maybe you are “emotionally careful?” It sounds like you want to form a solid stance before putting it out into the world. Words matter and you know that. So it sounds to me like you don’t want to be “emotionally reckless” by putting something out there before you’ve completely thought it through and researched it. Or maybe that’s just how I feel and I’m projecting :) Either way, I can relate.
I am outraged by this post!
Actually I often relate to such things in a similar way. In an environment where we are constantly bombarded by highly reactive and often inflammatory headlines and opinions, I think its appropriate to try and let the dust settle a bit before marrying some opinion. Seldom do we make sound decisions under stress. And even more strange is how I don’t feel the urge to comment on things outside my monkeysphere. Take the untimely death of Robin Williams. I really loved much of his work, and I am sure he’s touched many people’s lives. Still, I find it odd when I see a post containing languange similar to: “shocked and deeply saddend, he was like a father to me.”
Really? To me, words like these are reserved for deep, personal circumstances. It appears that people often don’t pause to really reflect on how they feel, but feel compelled to throw their opinion-hat into the ring. It makes emotion seem somewhat diluted to me.
Anyways, this is just ramblings from anither non-expert and I welcome any ither thoughts on the matter.
Really thoughtful post. I think we are often far too quick to offer our opinions, when careful reflection and gradual change offer a more lasting effect.
The world is infinitely complex. Quick, strong, bite size opinions siding with one party often lack awareness and compassion with all the issues at hand. I’ll take a slow, well constructed, nuanced opinion over a quick half baked blast any day.
If you lack an opinion, maybe the problem are your sources.
If you talk about Israel-Palestine, Rusia-Ukraine or any other world event and you don’t trust your own opinion or are sure it’s weak I think what you need is spend some time in searching new and fresh sources, because the sources that you get information from aren’t reliable for you, so maybe you only need to read that newspaper or listen that program.
On the Web there are people smarter and better informed than us about World Events, and a small group of they explain it without external pressures.
So if you spend enough time you can find one of them and later another…
If I have a problem with CSS I search on the Web without being too selective, most of the time I solve it, but in cases I’m not sure about the answers I go to the gurus or to people who solved my doubts in the past with other problems.
But it’s good to be insecure