The Rise of Emotional Divestment
We are here to connect deeply, and to feel everything together. Trusting that, believing in it, and spreading love and compassion: That’s our solemn duty, today and every day.
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or... See more
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
Nevertheless, we need to keep showing our vulnerable hearts to each other. The stakes are enormous. We need more chances to connect and bond with each other in public. We need reminders that total control and complete divestment from others isn’t possible and it certainly isn’t desirable. We need to learn how to forgive each other and reassure each... See more
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
Under these conditions, in which strategy is constantly privileged over passionate feelings and deeply felt principles are constantly misread as strategy, emotional divestment from public life becomes not just tempting but unavoidable.
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
No one wants to take the risk of caring deeply.
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
widespread, insidious shifts in how we experience each other face to face, not just in our most intimate relationships but also in our communities and public spaces
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
These phenomena aren’t matters of indifference or bad taste. This is what arises from our increasingly unnatural experience of community, of culture, of public life, of identity, of bodies in space.
Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
The negative side effects from this new way of living are too countless to list. We don’t have the patience for anything, let alone the slow unfolding of human emotion. Ask anyone on a dating app how that looks up close, how it plays out over time. Pundits lament that the global populace is enduring a plague of psychobabble that adds up to
... See moreHeather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment
This state of affairs goes beyond compassion fatigue. Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain
... See more