Almost Composed

What would Marcus Aurelius tweet?

October 6, 2021

For my sins, I recently stumbled back onto Twitter. The first casualty of social media is peace of mind—but since I’m also reading about stoicism, which places tranquility as the highest good, I’ve resolved not to use social media to amplify messages of distress and outrage. And boosting these messages is something I used to do quite a lot. It’s not that I’m suddenly indifferent to social and political causes. I passionately believe in many of them. However, it’s not clear that constant fear, worry, and anger are helping us.

For example, in the case of the climate crisis, significant warming seems like a fait accompli. That doesn’t mean we should roll over and let emissions skyrocket but there’s a difference between writing to raise awareness and hosing people down with rage and anxiety. I’m trying to find a way to think and write clearly about these issues, without adding fuel to the fires of grief and anger that are so destructive and counterproductive. This means honesty about a reality that may be bleak at times but it does mean not melting down or abetting emotional contagion. This, to me, seems like an aspect of the Buddhist commitment to Right Speech, samma vaca.

After all, if you want to succeed on “social” platforms, it helps to stoke a little fury or despair. My fledgling tweets about things that interest me or are wholesome, such as Buddhism and Stoicism, are not exactly catnip to our ruler, The Algorithm, but that’s OK. Outrage gets one hundredfold the attention of tranquility. Dopamine is our drug of choice, likes and retweets the variable boons bestowed by our fickle mathematical gods. The result is my timeline veering wildly from being filled with lovely people doing lovely things to a white hot drip feed of toxic rage and worry.

It’s true that emotional rhetoric commands more attention; it’s debatable whether it galvanises people into action. But even if outrage guaranteed action, we must ask ourselves whether that action is worth the price of our mental composure and tranquility. I believe it may not be. Additionally, we must consider the nature of any change rooted in anger. Better to seek change rooted in clarity and calm. Revolutions that start with blood, end with blood.

This isn’t a criticism of people I follow. By and large it’s not normal folk who cause the problem: it’s social megastars who have consistently (perhaps knowingly) played the outrage game. Their furious missives get surfaced disproportionately compared to healthy messages. Perhaps I’m partly to blame, the algorithm has learnt that this is what I engage with. Well, no more. What I’ve read of the stoics inclines me not to allow anger to disturb my tranquility. Likewise, it’s incumbent on me not to needlessly infuriate and distress others, as far as that’s in my power. What would Marcus Aurelius tweet?

Original photo by Eddy Billard on Unsplash.
Marcus’ head: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.