David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

What if world is becoming a place where you no longer want to live?

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Many of my friends are having meltdowns about the increasingly depressing news they see on television and read online. Their social media posts are full of anguish and hurt and anger.

“I’ve been watching CNN and I’m so angry about what’s going on at the border,” writes a friend in a typical post. “Is anyone else feeling this helpless? I was screaming at the TV until I started crying. I don’t know what to do, but something has to change. I’m depressed most of the time lately about what this lunatic is doing to our country. What can we do?!”

Do you really want to know? I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like the answer.

The best thing you can do for the world — and for yourself — is to disconnect from the “news” and other hyperbolic media. Then you can get busy living your life and making your community what you want it to be. You can focus on your own life and the people around you — things that are within your own control — and you can take your attention away from things you can’t change or control.

If you hate the world in which you live, redefine your world — and create a personal world where it’s healthy and safe to live.

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I fear nobody will come with me as I start down a difficult path

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One of the first lessons we learn in life is to follow the crowd.

Nobody has to tell us this. The cruelty of group dynamics — frequently not examined consciously — pull us and prod us to conform. And because we like the praise of the crowd and fear the crowd’s ridicule, we innocently become sheep — following the herd almost anywhere it goes.

The crowd isn’t very smart or deep. The crowd isn’t very reflective. The crowd follows whatever shiny new thing comes along. For many reasons, following the crowd takes us further and further away from becoming the individuals we were born to be. But because most people are so busy following the crowd — and pursuing the pleasure which the crowd glorifies — they almost never notice this.

I was never a complete crowd-follower. I was proud of being more independent than most. But I eventually realized I was suffocating without meaning. I had accepted too much of what the world — the crowd, really — had given me.

And now that I’ve slowly started asking more and more questions — and finding answers which might as well be unknown tongues to the crowd — I fear that I’m on a path on which nobody I care about will follow.

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Why do people who say they love each other cause mutual harm?

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When I came out of my front door with Lucy a few moments ago for a walk, I saw a car coming down the street, so we waited for it to pass. Instead, it stopped at a house across the street.

As Lucy and I stepped into the street to start our walk, the doors of the car sprang open — and the angry screaming of a man and woman hit us full force.

I haven’t heard this sort of angry confrontation in years. The vicious words and repeated profanity seemed even more jarring because the street was otherwise quiet and still and beautiful in the warm night air.

He kept calling her a “hoe” and said whatever she had allegedly done was the same thing she had done to someone else. She screamed right back at him. He was throwing her belonging out of the car into the street and yard — as he kept hurling vicious insults and profane words.

As Lucy and I walked in the other direction, I kept asking myself, “Why do we humans have to keep hurting each other like this?”

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