Now that I’m a blogger, I wanted to understand the digital world I’m stepping into from a new angle, and what I learned about myself and my reactions to this narrative has left me a little stuck. So I’m going to let you know now, this is me working out my own thoughts…and I’m sure I’ll keep picking at this topic in posts to come. But for now, let me share from a very complicated place I discovered in my heart.
The other night, I watched a documentary on Netflix called The American Meme.
The documentary was pretty much about how social media has made celebrities out of people who are willing to go to extremes to post things about their so-called lives. After only watching the first 25 minutes, I knew I could probably write five blog entries based on the things I observed in that short time about the whole circus and spectacle that social media facilitates in our world. But I won’t.
Instead, I want to write about Paris Hilton.
She’s featured a lot in this doc — mostly because I think she might be the official queen of social media influencers, and she even has a massive group of devotees she calls the “Little Hiltons.” But none of that is what I want to write about. Rather, I want to write about how I reacted when Paris said in a super somber interview segment, “I’ve just been through so much in my life…”
My first reaction was to roll my eyes.
She’s Paris Hilton… And she’s a very privileged hotel heiress. She’s also a stunning blonde girl who has an iconic image, and according to the documentary, she has more than 50 million followers on all of her social media platforms who literally worship her. It seems from an outside perspective, she’s built up quite a life for herself, and it’s difficult to imagine she could be that unhappy, right?
So when Paris looks into the camera with her perfectly glossy, nude lips and reveals that the life she leads leaves her “lonely,” and she doesn’t trust people because she’s so tired of being used, it’s kind of easy to dismiss all of that because she appears to have so much. That was my first reaction, at least.
What does Paris Hilton have to complain about? I thought to myself.
But then it hit me: I don’t know what it’s like to be her! And just because my first reaction to her confession is to file her struggles under the category of “Rich People Problems” — with a secondary cross-referenced file category labeled “Famous People Problems” — doesn’t mean my filing system is the best way to sort things. In fact, comparing my life story to the life story of someone like Paris Hilton (or anyone else, for that matter) is an incredibly flawed effort. Yet…in our voyeuristically driven culture, it’s so easy for me to let unfair comparisons be my measure for who is and who isn’t worthy of my empathy.
Even as I write this, I have a sliding scale inside of my head that’s willing to concede that Paris may be worthy of “some” of my empathy, but I’m careful not to over do it or offer her “more than she deserves.” I mean…much of the drama and pain of her life seems self-inflicted, right? She willingly puts herself out there for public consumption. And, she’s made herself into an idol for her Little Hilton’s to worship, so you really can’t give her all that much sympathy or feel too sad for her…
Right?
I’m not going to be able to square up all of the answer for myself in this blog entry — and even if I worked out my thoughts on this topic for weeks, I still know I’m too flawed to be the arbiter of fairness when it comes to how we as fellow humans should distribute empathy and concern for others. I’m a citizen of this idol-numbed world, too, and I’ve been lulled into thinking someone with a life of poverty and a super sad story of abuse and victimization is far more deserving of my empathy than someone like Paris Hilton. (Even while I was writing that statement, I felt myself agreeing with my words!)
But in that statement, I also see how much the economy of empathy and grace for others is tanking — especially in my own heart. In my opinion, our culture is overly sensitive about all sorts of things, yet that sensitivity seems synthetic and agenda-driven to me, and, in my opinion, truly void of real empathy and honest concern for others.
In our culture, we don’t seem to know how to identify with anyone else’s authentic pain — we only identify with packaged and branded categories of pain and victimization. These categories “help us” organize people into these little boxes so that we can decide how much attention, concern, and sympathy each person deserves. And then, we can demand that “people” acknowledge the pain of others by shaming one another while attempting to lift up the oppressed with named movements and polarizing dogma.
Ugh. I’m sorry…
I feel like I started a series of thoughts here that I don’t know how to finish… I don’t know how to “package” or “brand” my perspectives into something people will respond to or apply in a useful way to help them do a “better job” (according to me) of judging each other! But if I can be 100% transparent here… I do believe the answer to all of this resides in my faith in Jesus — and, I know by saying that, I’ve just provided people with a new way to package and process me! And let’s be blatantly honest with each other here.
My admission of my faith probably just kicked me out of the larger conversations when it comes to the most heated topics being propagated in our culture!
But if I could just say one last thing: I feel deeply compelled in my life to work on finding empathy in my heart for others… Even for Paris Hilton. Pain is pain…and I think we all feel it, albeit, for so many different reasons. But the spectrum of human feelings doesn’t skip over some people because they have more, or because they set themselves up for drama. Everyone in this world is going through something, and that something is very real to them… And, everyone deserves at least my most sincere attempt at finding empathy for their side of their own story…
Clearly, I need to keep working on these thoughts. But for now, I want to declare this:
