Monday Dispatch: Cognitive Dissonance

We all have more power than we think. How we use it is up to us.

Sometimes, the cognitive dissonance runs quietly in the background. But other times, it screams.

I was just reading an article with this headline: "Teen and Stepfather Die on Hike in Near-Record Texas Heat." A 31-year old man was hiking with his two stepsons in Texas, ages 14 and 21. The younger boy died, as did the stepdad.

Four paragraphs into the news story, an ad for an electric indoor-outdoor pizza oven, with the tagline, "Extreme heat = Better crust."

I get that probably there are just keywords that determine what ads go where. But it was so jarring to see these two things juxtaposed, and I couldn't help but make a connection in my mind between the extreme heat itself and the extreme consumerism our country runs on that exacerbates climate change and will stop at nothing with few exceptions.

Capitalism and White supremacy are killing us.

I hesitate to share this without something uplifting, hopeful, or actionable attached to it, since it's nothing we don't already know, see, and experience every day. But honestly, I think I am sharing out of a desire to bear witness.

People are dying in the heat. People are dying crossing bodies of water seeking safety.

The night of the NBA finals, there was a commercial for a self-driving car. I felt a wave of sadness as I watched. There is no shortage of resources or knowledge or ingenuity in the world. But how we apply it, what disasters we're looking to mitigate and what problems we're aiming to solve, these matter. And at this moment in history, if they don't in some way center the increased health and sustainability of the planet and its vastly brilliant array of ecosystems and cultures and species, what are they for? What will it matter?

And then I think about farmers' markets and artists and musicians and activists and educators and lawmakers on the right side of things (and yes, I believe there is a right side and it's not the right), I think about parents of queer kiddos leaving their whole lives behind to live somewhere safe, and we wonder if anywhere is safe, and I think about the NAACP issuing a warning to Black Americans not to travel to Florida if at all possible, I think about neo-Nazis giving the Heil Hitler salute outside a drag story hour at a public library in a little town in New Hampshire, I think about all the people in this country who don't think any of this has anything to do with them and also about all of the people in this country who work their asses off just to keep the lights on, navigating punishing health care systems and exorbitant medical bills, I think about bureaucracy and fake news and the tide going in and out on beaches everywhere, I think about a child running towards the water, screaming in delight, I think about newborns in the NICU and nurses on the night shift and self-driving cars and the dystopia of this moment, and I think about all the people who die trying to get here or die having arrived, and I think about the sanctuary cities and places of worship who deliver meals and hold space for grieving, and all of it just fills my whole circulatory system with love and rage and devotion and a renewed commitment to being here as well as I can, doing what I can as well as I can, and hopefully making some kind of difference.

So maybe that's the hopeful part: The planet may be on fire, but that doesn't mean what we do and who we are doesn't matter. If anything, it means it matters even more.

We all have more power than we think. How we use it is up to us.

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