Last week I took a mental health break from writing this newsletter — and from my usual social media activity. I wanted to write something uplifting about the many life-changing relationships I’ve developed in digital spaces; a Social Media Day follow up to my last Substack about my positive experiences with Twitter.
But a lot of gut-wrenching things sapped my spirit and my energy. I felt compelled to say something about the many Supreme Court decisions upending decades of settled law and creating oppressive and unsafe conditions for all sorts of people regarding everything from gun violence to healthcare to religious freedom to indigenous sovereignty to environmental protections.
The problem, of course, is that every one of those issues are conflict-laden and difficult to comment on in neat and simple sound bites. It takes time to write a thoughtful response, especially when, for me, the kind of thorough and responsible commentary I want to put into the world requires careful legal analysis coupled with vulnerable personal reflection.
Even after taking the time to write a 2,800 word detailed response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a separate 1,000 word personal reflection about my own difficult pregnancy — and having several people proofread both for me — I couldn’t bring myself to push publish. I knew I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to defend my opinions, expertise, and especially my lived experience from those who are more interested in arguing than in listening.
It was a reminder of how challenging it can be to engage in meaningful, complex discourse online. Much of what comes across our feeds is reactionary and incendiary. I found it faster and easier to craft short, snarky zingers than to share my deeply considered thoughts and heartfelt vulnerability. While the snark accurately depicted my frustration, it didn’t reflect my commitment to having hard conversations, searching for common ground, and making it safe for people to change their minds.
I hit delete a lot.
In Digital Grace: Pouring Benevolence into an Outraged World, I wrote:
When we don’t have the capacity to conduct healthy conversations and relationships in digital spaces, we need to honor our fatigue and frustration. We need to give ourselves time and space to recharge, to identify and set boundaries that allow us to engage in healthy online discourse, and to re-enter digital spaces with grace toward all (ourselves included).
So I took my own advice and gave myself the time I needed to recharge and define my boundaries for the conversations I’m willing to have in digital spaces and the kinds of responses I’m willing to allow on my own posts.
During that recharge time, a friend posted about Simon & Schuster giving away two digital or audio books about conflict resolution. One of them, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley, is a book I frequently reference in this newsletter and also in Digital Grace.
Here’s what the publisher says about High Conflict:
When we are baffled by the insanity of the “other side”—in our politics, at work, or at home—it’s because we aren’t seeing how the conflict itself has taken over…
High conflict is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority, and everything we do to try to end the conflict, usually makes it worse. Eventually, we can start to mimic the behavior of our adversaries, harming what we hold most dear.
In this “compulsively readable” (Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author) book, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.
The book is packed with vibrant examples of people falling into and getting out of high conflict, as well as several actionable suggestions about how to avoid, diffuse, and transform high conflict. According to the publisher’s website, the free downloads are available in the US and Canada until July 31, 2022. I highly recommend getting a copy.
Ripley, however, doesn’t hold out much hope for transforming conflict in online spaces. Many digital platforms are “designed to play into our worst conflict instincts,” she writes, describing social media networks as part of “a vast conflict-industrial complex” that includes cable television news, our adversarial legal system, and the American winner-take-all political system. She warns against using any form of text-based digital communication if we have anything sensitive to say. In her opinion, “there is always a better way.”
While I acknowledge there are significant challenges to engaging in courageous discourse in digital spaces, I believe we have an obligation to at least try to transform online conflict. As I said a few weeks ago in my June 9, 2022 newsletter:
It’s become increasingly clear … social media plays an outsized role in the dissemination of ideas and in influencing behavior change locally and globally. Like it or not, leaders can no longer afford to opt out of digital discourse because, as international relations scholar P.W. Singer and digital forensic researcher Emerson T. Brooking say in LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, it’s where “battles for not just every issue you care about, but for the future itself,” are playing out.
That’s why I wrote Digital Grace. It’s my attempt to translate conflict transformation principles to digital interactions. The book contains suggestions for:
approaching online spaces with an attitude of generosity, seeking out ways to proactively give rather than passively consume or react
creating and maintaining welcoming digital spaces
forgiving people for what they post and remembering everyone is more than their social media activty
allowing people to move beyond past versions of themselves or mistakes they’ve made
using social media as a tool for our own discovery and growth, increasing our understanding of humanity and empathy for those we may consider “others.”
It also addresses considerations for when to speak up about issues versus when to listen, including tips on how to disagree well.
Following the lead of Simon & Schuster, I’m making Digital Grace and it’s companion book Digital Kindness: Being Human in a Hyper-Connected World free for digital download July 12 through July 16, 2022. Aside from the urgent need to change the way we interact in digital spaces, these dates happen to correspond with the 10-year anniversary of me starting a new life in Colorado and changing the focus of my business to embracing the upsides of our digital world.
Please share all of these books and this newsletter with anyone you think might benefit from a more optimistic, purposeful approach to social media activity. Together we can transform digital spaces into places where compassionate, courageous dialogue helps us find new ways of co-creating a world where everyone thrives.
We are already seeing an increasingly fractured and divided world. We see it in our economy, in our politics, in our discourse. We see it at home and at work and on every form of digital space. But grace. It is it's own gospel. It has all that has ever healed. And it is the root of our hope that your thoughts and your blogs and your books teach us all to be better tomorrow than we were today. Edit as you will. Delete as you see fit. What remains is valuable, it is not invisible, and it embodies what is good and right. I guess your next book should be called Digital Shalom......