In today’s NYT, Sudhir Venkatesh (author and Sociology professor at Columbia) contributes an op-ed entitled Too Down To Rise Up, In it he posits the intriguing, and depressing, theory that perhaps too many of us are too preoccupied to rise up in any real (i.e., compelling) fashion. Preoccupied, as opposed to distracted; it’s not that people are uninformed, it is, perhaps, that a great many people are too engaged. The only explanation for this seeming dichotomy is the electronic machine you are reading (and I am composing) this text on. Venkatesh points out that, between our blogging, online news surfing and (mostly) innocuous navel gazing, we are firing on all intellectual cylinders, including ones we couldn’t conceive pre-Internet, but what we are lacking is a primal, collective forum for expressing that awareness and those feelings. Despite the well-documented populist rage, albeit a white collar rage, that we’re reading about (in mostly staid reports inside mostly staid mainstream publications), most of the ire, directed outward, dissolves in the ether. Put another way, is it pretty much impossible to rage against the machine when you are plugged into the machine? Hardcore bloggers would bristle at the suggestion that their concerted efforts to absorb and disseminate information and affect change can ultimately be shrugged off as inaction. Certainly, they could correctly point to the recent election to illustrate the ways in which online organization paid undeniable dividends in terms of galvanizing and directing energy for a common cause. There are millions of other minor examples that one could accurately invoke. Nevertheless, where the Internet has radically democratized, and advanced the retrieval and dispersal of information, and it obviously serves as a powerful organizing tool, does it not, by its nature, necessarily mute and muffle a more unmitigated, more human response?
But if American anger remains corralled on the Internet, into e-mail messages to Congress and in sporadic small-group protests, it is unlikely that the Obama administration will do much to assuage the anger of taxpayers. Administration officials certainly don’t seem concerned that rage will heat up and overflow; after all, anticipating unrest would mean a broad and intensive campaign to shore up housing, food and welfare safety nets. The proposed budget contains a few such line items, but a comprehensive, coordinated program to prevent violence and defuse anger would need sustained commitments from mayors, service providers and civic leaders.
That we are too smart, or soft, or satiated for our own good is debatable, and there is probably a refreshing amount of gray straddling the extreme of either being aggressive or supine. But perhaps a more disconcerting possibility is that our collective reticence is already accounted for in the eyes (and intentions) of our politicians and the still-resurgent masters of the universe. Maybe it’s an intrinsically understood (and eagerly embraced) condition of our contemporary status quo that the people making the Big Decisions recognize that our capacity for outrage is several degrees more docile than it was a few generations ago. Oh we rant, we rage, we howl; but the sound of a million citizens tweeting is not going to shake, much less raze, the foundations of the temple.
But these days, technology separates us and makes more of our communication indirect, impersonal and emotionally flat. With headsets on and our hands busily texting, we are less aware of one another’s behavior in public space. Count the number of people with cellphones and personal entertainment devices when you walk down a street. Self-involved bloggers, readers of niche news, all of us listening to our personal playlists: we narrowly miss each other. Effective rebellions require that we sing in unison.
It would not seem especially effective, or intelligent, to make a case that what we need most is more anger, or the type of unified uprising that (invariably) results in violence. But it does seem fair to propose that in our current state of affairs, when the usually (take your pick) quaint or radical word populist has again gained cachet, it would be to our considerable detriment if we failed to harness some of this outrage in a productive way. It wasn’t until people let their voices be heard, in a tone that conveyed genuine indignation, that Obama began to acknowledge the inconsistency (or, worse, the consistency) with which the AIG bonuses had been handled. The point being: without any vocal demand for accountability, we can remain certain that our elected officials won’t feel unduly obliged to be accountable. Venkatesh’s piece today is a timely and invaluable reminder that even while our inboxes glow and our ire is evident, we may still be acting in accordance to the script that was already written for us.
