NEWS

Author: Don Carroll

There was cold, wind, and a lot of warm-hearted people who showed up on the Davidson Town Green to hear speakers and to light candles to honor the memory of Renee Nicole Good.

How can we place this incredible tragedy of state violence into a larger context of understanding how to honor her life? How do we live now?

Historians tell us that most fascist autocrats govern by what is called “the propaganda of spectacle” or “tyranny by the trance of tragedy.”

Today, companies spend billions of dollars on what is often called the new gold: data to capture and control our attention. Long before social media’s unquenchable thirst for our attention, autocrats were mastering this technique.

For the past hundred years, they have used spectacles that so fill people’s attention that people despair and lose any sense of being able to right tragic wrongs.

Here’s an example. I listened to an interview recently of a journalist who grew up in Putin’s Russia. Every week during his childhood there was a spectacle, a dissident unfairly being thrown in jail, a large military parade, intimidation of another country, and then the biggest daily spectacle of all -- war. First in Chechnya, then Ukraine. The journalist, while living in Russia, was overwhelmed, filled with despair. Putin stays in power by controlling the spectacle.

Russia is an electoral autocracy -- that is, it has the facade of elections, but people are so tyrannized by autocratic propaganda spectacles that there is no real democracy, and elections simply give Putin the opportunity to identify his enemies.

Today we are living in a time of propaganda by spectacle and the tyranny of control (that steals - by stealing) our attention, daily seeking to enmesh us in a trance of despair and to overwhelm us by robbing each of us of our optimism and faith. 

So, the question becomes: How do we break the trance of the tyranny of spectacle? First and foremost, we must not let our attention be stolen by the tyranny of spectacle that in our time is exponentially magnified by social media. What this means is that we must each take responsibility for not falling into spectacles’ default trap of overwhelment. Yes, stay abreast of the news weekly from a trusted source, e.g. The New York Times, the BBC, but don’t succumb to the addictive algorithms of media and doom scrolling.

Secondly, focus your attention on where you can take action in community. The key antidotes to the trance of despair, overwhelment, and inaction are community, action, and awe.

Over sixty local charities were given the opportunity by the Davidson Rotary Club to raise funds during “Christmas in Davidson.” Find one that you are passionate about and join in to support and participate in its goals. Choose a mission opportunity at your place of worship and go all in.

Or work against the trance of despair in the political arena -- choose an esteemed local neighbor in Davidson like Beth Helfrich and help her continue to represent our district, or George Guise to become the next local Superior Court Judge from our district. And choose one national or state race: for example, Roy Cooper to be our next U.S. Senator or Anita Earls to keep her seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Whomever you choose, be in community with those helping in the effort and take action.

In other words, don’t try to respond to all, or even many, of the relentless spectacles of injustice, but do find what you have a passion for and build community and be in action there.

Science has recently made in-depth studies of the experience of awe. Turns out experiences of awe are what make us more open to others, less defined by personal ideas and beliefs, less likely to despair, more curious, more joyful -- at bottom, experiences of awe make us more human. Researchers have defined different contexts that open up opportunities for experiences of awe -- some of my favorites are being in nature, music, beautiful visual design, embodied spiritual practices, and moral courage.

Find the contexts that most open you to experiences of awe and be in those experiences more often with curiosity and full attention. Tyranny cannot stand people full of joy, wonder, and awe.

None of us individually can stop the spirit-crushing impact of propaganda by spectacle. But we can let Renee’s legacy be our commitment to undermine its effect on us and others by creating and spending more time in community, by taking action, and by opening ourselves every day to experiences of awe and wonder.