The Presumptuousness of “You’ll Be Fine”

How much do you really know about my life… or anybody else’s?

In the earliest weeks of the Trump presidency, actress Lena Dunham appeared on a February 2017 episode of The View. While alluding to her American citizenship and white privilege and class privilege, Dunham expressed she was more worried about how immigrants and transgender people would fare under the Trump/Pence administration than she was worried about her own well-being. To punctuate her point, she then uttered something that I found to be rather triggering…

“The fact is, I’ll be fine,” Dunham said, alluding to how she didn’t view herself as being in physical danger or at risk of destitution in the short term.

More than four years later — with Trump now out of office — I find myself asking: why exactly did her words trigger me so badly?

And I realized… it’s because such rhetoric isn’t unique to Lena Dunham. Legions of privileged people spit out this flavor of rhetoric, continuously, year-in and year-out. They say it to other people who usually share similar attributes of privilege as theirs, ostensibly as a way to convey to them the message of Count your blessings!

But should we be so “unselfish” in our thinking? While every person possesses some combination of characteristics that cause us to benefit from unearned privilege, none of us are safe from exploitation. If we could just learn to stick up for one another — even when we aren’t individually the one under assault — the world could become a much better place. This means that, when it seems as though no one is defending us, we must not hesitate to demand respect, consideration, and a fair hearing.

Yes, even if the harm inflicted upon us appears — when compared to that inflicted against others — to be merely a form of “microharm.”

Because “microharm” eventually snowballs.

Donald Trump may be out of office (for now), but his brainwashed sycophants are alive and well. Their retributive illiberal counterparts are also here, walking amongst the rest of us. Amidst this binary food fight, the armchair doomsday prophets continue to blazon their Dystopian Porn: permanent supply-chain gaps, endless hyperinflation, destructive climate disasters, American electoral fascism, and the overall collapse of human civilization.

How much of what they say is hyperbolic? How much of it requires immediate action? How much necessitates long-term planning, but not to the extent of us being in crisis mode?

Why should we shape our mindsets in a certain way, when it comes to our collective future? ’Cuz Lena Dunham said so?

We can’t afford to accept a low bar for what is sufficient. “Not that bad” shouldn’t suddenly become permissible just because, purportedly, “It used to be so much worse” or “This isn’t nearly as bad as something else is.”

Not all of us have the luxury of assuming “We’ll be fine,” Lena, even if we possess albino skin and/or penises. There are multiple reasons for this.

Trauma Comes in All Shapes, Sizes, and Colors

My mental state is perhaps “in crisis” more than that of 80%-90% of the general population, at any given point in time. I wrote about this in my op-ed entitled “Autistic Every Day of My Life.”

This doesn’t exempt me from treating others with civility and kindness. It still requires me to consciously be a part of solutions to our global problems.

Anyone who isn’t Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latino/a, female, effeminate-presenting, LGBT+, poor, disabled, a freethinker, or a critical analyst needs to make an effort to hear the voices of those who are reporting patterns of adversity directed toward them.

But, on the other side of the coin, it also comes from an immense place of privilege (yes, I said it!) for somebody else to take one glance at me and jump to the conclusion of:

“Oh, well, he appears to be White, and he’s probably male, and I don’t see any outward physical handicaps on his person — so ‘he’ll be fine’…”

No, I won’t be. Not if we don’t deal with the worldwide atrocities that keep accumulating.

My vices of anxiety and mania aren’t solely due to my autism. As a longtime survivor of sexual violence, childhood bullying, and low self-esteem, the sensation of being discarded is all too familiar to me. So, with that in mind, please know that…

Chalking up my perspective to “hurt feelings” or “fragility” isn’t going to help me.

Publicly “canceling” me isn’t going to help me.

Telling me I need to individually “work through” suicidal or infuriated emotions isn’t going to help me.

And it isn’t going to help the millions of other people who struggle with all other variations of this shame, anger, and internalized inadequacy.

You can remind me that I’m not “average,” so, apparently, that makes me an exception to a lot of society’s unwritten rules.

But why should I aspire to be “average” in the first place? How far has mediocrity really advanced our society?

Are only “unicorns” entitled to being treated decently?

Fascism…Meet Dystopia!

Certain people have been taking a year-long breath of relief now that Donald Trump is out of office. I’m not sure that these people truly realize how dangerously close to fascism America keeps inching.

Look at how we rarely hear a peep about taking proactive measures to stop state legislatures from unilaterally overturning future election results — even amongst activists on the Left who want to eliminate the U.S. Senate filibuster (and I agree with them as far as the filibuster being relaxed) while enacting H.R.1…despite the fact that H.R.1, as it’s currently written, does nothing to prohibit lawmakers from getting together and outright annulling a final vote tally.

People rightfully rail against political correctness, but nobody seems to want to actually make a good-faith effort to solve the Critical Race Theory miscommunications that persist. Too many voices are griping about how people are behaving/speaking/thinking in the “wrong” ways — but they themselves fail to put forward any thoughtful alternatives.

We whine about millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share of taxes — yet, how many critics of the uberwealthy put forth any digestible, marketable, fair-minded new tax plans? We complain about food shortages and inflation arising from supply-chain disruptions — yet, nobody seems to be paying attention to the next Farm Bill… or even persuading the masses to care about agriculture in the first place.

And the doomsday town-criers still continue heckling the rest of us — pounding it into our heads that a Mad Max-style future is “right around the corner.”

Several summers ago, I was video-chatting with two of my longtime ORG (Online Reality Gaming) friends, David and Tom. I was telling them about my worst fear: global and localized collapses of civilization and our grid. I tried to help them understand how I literally WOULD NOT SURVIVE in such a world.

And what was their response?

Tom asked me if I was a diabetic. I said no.

And then David brushed off my fears about my inability to survive in such a hypothetical world with that same shortsighted “go-to” phrasing that Lena Dunham used:

“You’ll be fine.”

Terraforming: Not Just For Scientists, Anymore

Recently, Christyl Rivers, Phd. authored a piece where she applies this concept to Earth rather than to homo sapien individuals. Ms. Rivers points out how, although many misanthropes claim our planet will survive even if we, as humans, keep decimating one another in large quantities — the question we should be asking ourselves is: at whose expense?

To quote her:

What do you mean by “fine?” Fine, like the billions of shellfish that cooked in their shells in the heat dome of 2021 in the Pacific Northwest? Fine, as in the millions of dead, burned[-]up forests and grasslands and all of their ecosystems? Fine, like the billion-plus animals that suffered and perished in Australia through the Black Summer?

Burned paws and skin, starvation, choking, and dying do not sound fine. I challenge you to set yourself on fire and tell me that it feels “fine” to you. We have bee colony collapse, an insect apocalypse, die-offs of birds in alarming numbers, and a vast disappearance of all wildlife biodiversity since the 1970s. Floods, famines, habitat loss, over-hunting, poaching, agricultural degradation, and invasives are rampant.

More than 2.7 million pangolins are poached and trafficked for meat and “medicine;” please don’t try to convince anyone that such an animal — in this case just one of many mammals — is fine, and that individual suffering does not count upon an interactive planet of collective resiliency.

The point she is making, here, is that even if you don’t care about the human species surviving as a whole because you view us as being collectively selfish and evil, you still shouldn’t be cheering on our collective destruction — because you’d be enabling the extinction of countless innocent species.

Even if you are taking the position that nefarious humans deserve to perish… espousing that worldview means you are aiding-and-abetting the agony of those individually-magnificent members of the human species who shouldn’t be forced to suffer in these cruel and inhumane ways.

A lot of the global threats out there are beyond our control. We can mitigate climate change, but, in the long run, the planet is still going to get hotter. We can practice international diplomacy, but that doesn’t erase the possibilities of nuclear war or biowarfare. The worst of these outcomes could happen, but that doesn’t mean they’re preordained guarantees. We have to do the best we can, to the best of our ability.

This isn’t to say we should ignore members of marginalized groups. On the contrary, it’s crucial that our society try to meet the needs of anybody who is experiencing various forms of oppression. What I’m advocating is that we also look at our common interests. If we do that, humanity’s superficial differences will ultimately pale in comparison to our shared solidarity.

We Aren’t Powerless, If We Take Back Our Power

Lena Dunham’s comments are indicative of a “Hollywood bubble” that exists amongst celebrities with prominent platforms. Too often, too many of them take those platforms for granted.

This mentality extends to many academics who toil away up in their ivory towers. And many politicians who argue within their marble echo chambers.

Our differences in skin tone or genitalia tell a lot of the story, some of the time… but not the full story, all of the time.

So, before you hop aboard the Dystopian Porn steam engine of addiction, ask yourself…

What can I do to help solve a problem or be part of the solution, even if the problem doesn’t appear to directly affect me?

That’s called nourishing a global community. No one single person can solve everything. But, if we demand a vivid path to prosperity — and then strengthen our numbers to communicate that — a new narrative can be written that doesn’t result in our unavoidable downfall.