Stolen Focus by Johann Hari Thoughts #2

In Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, the chapters are separated by the various ways in which humanity’s lost focus is negatively affecting our lives. The two covered this round: Sustained reading and mind wandering. What struck me the most though was the discussion surrounding reading fiction and the expansion of empathy. There’s a question proposed that is never really answered in the chapter or the one after that made me have yet another crisis of sorts:

I think I could make a guess to what social media may be doing, at least in regards to how we handle politics.

I’m invested in politics more than the average person I believe, and while my recent new commitments have made it so I’m not as up-to-date as I used to be, I think I surround myself more with it than is common. I remember there was a point in time where younger progressives like me, usually not from the region of course, were saying things along the lines of on social media, “I hope Florida sinks into the ocean” and, “The South is a lost cause” among other things of that ilk. It always rubbed me the wrong way, since in my understanding of history a lot of major movements for civil and human rights originated in the south, so I initially saw it as misguided. But the more I observed and pondered it and noticed patterns, I realized that it came from not just a place of misguidance, but also from a place of elitism and classism, influenced by various stereotypes perpetuated about the region, and not taking into consideration the intense amount of struggle primarily red states have in enacting any sort of liberal or progressive change on a large scale. There are plenty of progressives that come from the South that are currently active in politics today, from Justin Jones and Pearson, Greg Casar, Maxwell Frost, and many more. There are unique struggles that progressives in the South and red states in general face that us in blue states do not, which causes their states to not be as far along in the pursuit of our collective goals for this country. Just because they have not progressed as far along as we have, and at times the conservative majorities in their states send them in the opposite direction, we should not relegate southern progressives to a lesser status given what their states have done, which they most of the time vehemently fight against. All regions of this nation deserve an equal seat at the table within all the ideologies that encompass its political structure.\