Update Those Mute Filters

This weekend, I built Hokusai’s Great Wave LEGO set. It’s a beautiful set and a very fun 4-5 hour build. I started building while watching Lost in Translation for the first time in a long time.

Lost in Translation was released at a pivotal time for me. I was still in college, trying to figure out what life was about. I related with Charlotte (played by Scarlett Johannson), who had her life in front of her and didn’t want to be placed into a box. This left her stuck, with no sense of direction.

Some twenty years later, I naturally relate more to Bob (played by Bill Murray). He is equally suck, balancing the expectations of family and career while also trying to figure it all out as he goes. While Bob and Charlotte are lost in Tokyo’s culture, they find themselves through the journey.

While watching Lost in Translation, I started thinking about Garden State. Both films were released about a year apart, have fantastic soundtracks, and had significant impacts on young adult me. Instead of watching the presidential inauguration or any of its coverage, I watched Garden State.

While parts of Garden State did not age well (I’m looking at you, manic pixie dream girl), the overall story is about waking up to life and experiencing all it has to offer, be that pain, pleasure, joy, or sadness. I guess, in a way, Garden State is my generation’s Inside Out.

In the movie, Andrew (played by Zach Braff), numbs his life with drugs (both pharmaceutical and recreational). He runs from his feelings and hides from any emotion. As he comes off his medication, Andrew begins seeing the world differently. This is not a commentary on psychological medication. Instead, it’s a commentary on numbing.

Brené Brown puts it this way in The Gifts of Imperfection:

You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other effects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

There will be a lot of things that will drive us to numb over the next few years. Frankly, I think the administration wants us numb. They want us to doomscroll on corporate social media, get worked up, and turn to our vices. It’s easier to control a population when they’re collectively numb and placated by tiny screens.

Life is meant to be felt. Unfortunately, in our always-connected digital age, it’s very easy to overfeel. I don’t think our brains were wired to handle these complex emotions on an unrelenting daily basis, yet they are the cards we’ve been dealt. The question is, how do we play these cards?

Well, we avoid numbing behavior, for one. We need to avoid doomscrolling by getting off corporate social media, which leads to over-consumption and numbing.

What Musk did to Twitter, what Zuck is doing to Facebook, and what Trump likely wants to do with TikTok shows that social media is really just a propaganda tool. The algorithm is not our friend. It is a tool used by the oligarchy to distract and divide us.

Instead, independent tools like Mastodon allow us to take ownership of our feeds and engage with news and updates on our terms.

One of the greatest features of Mastodon is the ability to mute terms. I have a Clown Filter to keep the noise out. It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the clowns, I’m just not being bombarded by them day in and day out.

This week’s Saturday Night Live cold open mocked our obsession with the insane things our new president says. That nonsense is just noise. What matters is the insane things he will do. That’s why I have a Clown Filter. It’s not a matter of avoiding; it’s a matter of not being distracted. It’s a way to prevent needing to numb.

Once we start to thaw out, we need to take a cue from Garden State and scream into the infinite abyss. We’ve got to let it all out and then decide what we do next.

What that means will be different for everyone. We also need to be sure we don’t try to engage in every issue because that, too, will lead to overwhelm and numbing. We’ve got to pick our battles and figure out our lives as we go.

I don’t know what the next four years hold for any of us, but I know that we can figure this out together. We just have to be awake for it, feeling our feelings enough to act.