“Do something”

I work in tech. The morning after two mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso within 24 hours, I woke up with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. This is what I wrote and decided to do after.

Facts #

In America, 100 people die from a gun-related fatality every day. The likelihood of getting killed in a mass shooting is greater than ever before.

In America, suicide rates of teenage girls between 10-14 are increasing by over 12% every year.

In America, over 40 people die related to drug abuse for every 100,000; and this number is growing.

The life expectancy of the average American is falling for the third year in a row, for the first time in our country’s history.

You may not know these exact numbers, but you recognize them, they’re familiar.

I grew up the only child of two immigrants, in the middle of Columbus, Ohio, who came to the United States for a better life, like so many others. (They did so legally, via student visas in the late 80s; then green card and citizenship.) To this day, my parents still believe that the United States is the best country on earth. I still believe we have that opportunity. Yet that opportunity is not sheer destiny, and as I would describe with no snark, we are not trending in the right direction.


Productivity ≠ Meaning #

Our smartphones are 120 million times more powerful than the computers that guided Apollo 11. That has enabled us to progress from moon landings to cat videos. – William Easterly

We live in a complicated time, where bright colors of multi-sized screens bring joy, delight, connection; the idiosyncratic, the brilliant, the childlike. I often wake early, reflexively open Twitter, tap a heart icon to express my silent approval of several dozen other humans I don’t know recording their cats doing ridiculous things, and go back to sleep. It’s my 2-4 am cycle. Then, at 5 or 6 in the morning, I wake again to the calendar’s blue blocks, wall to wall, and literally starred notes in my inbox. Articles await me, proffering tips on how I can increase productivity for the coming morning.

Tomorrow morning, like any other Monday, I will be one of many millions of Americans heading to work in a tech company.

Tomorrow morning, like every Monday, I have a team meeting. Our agenda includes talk of clicks, customers, conversions.

I have a leadership meeting on Tuesday, like every Tuesday. We’ll discuss revenue. No one will mention the shootings in Dayton, in El Paso, or the hundreds others that have happened this year alone.

No one would ever mention the shootings, unless someone we knew were affected.

We’ll be productive, but the work we do won’t be meaningful to America, at least not in the same magnitude our country requires of us at this moment in history.

And why should we mention anything? Is there anything we could even do that would change the outcome? It is easier to talk about memes, weather, money, the business in front of us.


Too much noise, too little awareness #

I don’t blame the company I work at – or the tech I use – for this pattern. To the extent blame is justified, I’m complicit in and responsible for my part in it.

All of us are human. (Obvi.) Life is hard enough, and wading through it, let alone making progress in it, can even feel like climbing a quicksand-filled dune, where the unclear path’s depth may sink you at any moment. Even when things are going well, life is swift to humble.

People of all ages, backgrounds, cultures are juggling the financial quagmires of adulthood; the realities of ailing parents; the sudden sicknesses our children; our own addictions, skeletons, fears, depressions. Very few if any of us are equipped to make sense of the velocity of change taking shape beneath and around us.

Which is what I’m thinking about, today, as the US reaches its 250th mass shooting of the year with no end in sight – as I toggle between tabs of memes, chat boxes, flowcharts, news articles, and baby animal photos…

How can I help productively on issues that are meaningful to our time?


Awareness #

The water is clear all the way down.
Nothing ever polished it. That is the way it is. – W.S.M.

In the next month I’m going to start a personal project around increasing awareness programs in tech companies to three social and political issues that are relatively under-represented in the work being discussed and solved among them:

I’m still only beginning to explore what this project might look like, or even what it’s named, but a few early ideas might be:

I’ll be doing this on the side, in addition to my full-time job or other projects.


Post-script – why some issues and not others… #

I’ve suffered from depression and addiction personally, and I don’t want to wait until someone I know has died from a mass shooting to do something.

It’s as simple as that.


Housekeeping #

If you’re reading this and it resonates, please share it.

Please vote, no matter where you stand on these individual topics.

Get involved in or donate to a number of great organizations: Moms Demand Action, Mental Health America, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. (If you recommend others not listed here, please send them to me.)

If you are interested in working on this with me, I can be reached on Twitter via DM (@xix1sh) or over email at hey@underheard.co.

 
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