Oh my, oh my! I have been so tempted this week to slide down the slippery slope of snark, vitriol, incivility, and sticking out my tongue while shaking my head back-and-forth, in bewilderment.
You get the picture, right? I’ve spent too much time reading the news online. My us vs. them dynamics have been stirred up. Snark, and its near-kin, are rampant in most everything I read. Should I be happy that snark and vitriol have morphed into equal opportunity behaviors? At least no one seems left out….
Not happy, at all. Social contagion seems to reign supreme.
If you’re referring to Covid and contagion, let’s discuss something else. I’ve had more than enough!
Not Covid, I promise.
So what are we talking about?
Social contagion. The manner in which peoples’s specific behaviors spread spontaneously through a community, just like a contagion. (Well, OK, kind of like Covid.) Constructive and destructive emotions are propelled by social contagion. Spreading joy. Spreading anger. Both are contagious to others. (Always something new, right?)
How the heck does this social contagion spread work?
In all honesty, like the flu. Person-to-person contagion smooths the path for the wide spread of flu. Right? Ah, but did you know our angry, negative, and positive emotions spread person-to-person as well? (At the moment, there appear to be no vaccines available for slowing the spread of negative toxicity from person to person. Well, except for intent…)
Here’s the story. I make an angry or pejorative comment to you and, likely, the next person with whom you come in contact receives a reverberation from the anger I so kindly shared with you. We become unwitting carriers of snark, anger, and its many assorted cousins, even though that might not have been our original behavioral intent. Oh, geez, another communicable virus!
Just a few minutes ago, a nonprofit I support called asking for MORE support. Grrrr. I was very abrupt (OK, abrasive) with the solicitor. Felt ashamed of myself when I hung up. I make every effort to avoid treating others with incivility. Why? Because I scare easily. Frightened by the research showing how, without much effort, incivility spreads from one person to another (even over the phone), often poisoning the next person’s behavior and on and on. No, no! My mother taught me better! But you know those falling dominos….one goes down, and the next, and the next…
Sure, I’m easily subject to incivility scampering through my mind. (I’m human, just a frail ol’ human)) But yay, for me, and you, since we’re the ones who can make the choices concerning the outward expression of that snark. The idea of being a superspreader of incivility and insults leaves me feeling “yucky,” as a friend’s daughter is wont to describe herself when feeling unwell. (Kids have such a wonderful way of summing things up, don’t they?)
Who would have ever considered that climate control (climate control, for heavens sake!) would include snark mitigation? No, no, I’m not searching for human perfection, just lowering the particulates of verbal toxicity in the air we all breathe. Don’t we deserve that?
I look at it this way... way too many people taking things way too personally. The trick is to know when it's all about them--the snarks, or all about you or me--the snarkees. LOL!
I find it I take nothing personally, as Don Miguel Ruiz tells me in his 4-agreements book, then I cannot be offended. Same goes, do I want to be right, or do I want to be at peace?
Outwardly, I am at peace, but I reserve the cartoon cloud bubble over my head to give back the snark where it may so deservedly need to be shoveled. A win/ win. I think of it like gardening-- putting on compost as a top dressing. Weeds, snarks, all the same. LOL!
What a wonderful look at social contagion and how it spreads its ugly or beautiful viruses/bacteria through our lives. It explains so well the psychic pain I'm sure we have all felt in this country in recent years, and especially how we NC-inians have felt during the months building up toward the recent primary election and again now as we move toward the general elections. Snark has been omnipresent in the politicaverse, and I for one have felt it entering into my deepest innards everyday as I've read the newspapers. But we can choose to spread non-pain, too, through letting love and respect spread through our social contagion. Thanks for reminding us of this, Jan.