Pulp’s “Common People” is a song I think about often. In it, the narrator of the song meets a well-heeled socialite who is fascinated with the poors and wants to play anthropologist because it’s a life that’s separate from her own. The singer tries to disavow her from her misconception that it will be a fun little romp and explains, “When you’re laid in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, if you called your Dad he could stop it all.” The message of the song being that money is no substitute for soul, and the abundance of money and those who have it are so insulated as to be unable to let go of those safeguards and experience a life that has cruel tragedies and beautiful serendipities.
One reason this song has been top of mind for me is I think there is another tool present in our lives that, like money, is a pale substitute for our lived sense of purpose and that’s social media. ‘Influencer’ culture convinces us that our needs are not being fulfilled, and there’s a substantial FOMO (fear of missing out) so we stare into a small black glass rectangle to find validation and ultimately that’s mimicking someone else’s life and chasing someone else’s shadow. And yet there is a real absence in this world for authentically lived experiences.
Maybe I am jumping the gun but I feel we are in the twilight days of social media. The companies that run it have been under fire for everything from harmful self-image, harassment, and exploitation of children and teenagers, promoting radicalization and genocidal ideology, and just increasingly becoming a tepid slop of unsolicited advertisement and AI-generated clickbait. All of this is a valid concern, but I also think there’s a more insidious and erosive problem where we’ve created a society of doom-scrollers who drag through photos of Bali or the Segrada Familia, endless recipes, things to buy and festivals they’re missing out on, deeply unfulfilled at the paucity of their own condition.
It does not have to be this way. The cliché “Touch grass” is having a moment in the sun, but doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the vibrancy of the world around us that we’re missing out on, that we’ve made ourselves unlearn. One of the things that deeply disappoints me is when people tell me they don’t like the Midwest, presumably because they have been through the constant dull patchwork of rural corn and soy along the highway. I enjoy hiking as a means of collecting my thoughts and the natural beauty of the Midwest offers everything from sand dunes to hemlock glades to sandstone cliffs, secret gardens and earthen ruins, but you’d never know about it because it generally doesn’t filter up an algorithm or sell ads.
Visit the mom and pop restaurants and shops you drive by instead of just driving by them. Support your local artists, musicians, writers, artisans, craftspeople, and hobbyists. Talk with people in your neighborhood, find out what their concerns are, find places you agree, find out why you disagree but do it with patience, good faith, and a willingness to accept you might not have much in common or anything in common. Be genuinely curious in the minutiae of the world around you. The experience you have in these moments may not be life-changing but it will be supremely, indelibly your own.
As a wise man once told me, “Be somebody, or be somebody else’s fool.”