Antidote to Neotoddlerism: Listening and Growing Up 🗣️
Why we need to stop complaining about HOW people protest and what gets reported, and instead, start listening to WHAT's being protested, and look in the mirror. (audio; 2:44)
Today I discovered this post on “Neotoddlerism” by
, thanks to a Note by .Although the piece makes some good points, it reminds me of the observation that we shouldn’t let our dismay over HOW someone is protesting take priority over WHAT they are protesting. This neotoddlerism piece is all about the HOWs, and mostly ignores the more important WHATs - as if they’re all equally unimportant. The WHATs deserve more of our attention.
Example (original source unknown 1):
“You keep saying, “It’s horrible that an innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop”.
Try saying, “lt’s horrible that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop.”
You’re prioritizing the wrong part.”
When an adult isn’t listening to a child, and the child gets frustrated and acts out, instead of whining about HOW the child is misbehaving (or punishing the child), the better solution is for the adult to listen to WHAT the child is upset about and address it.
When it comes to reporting on protests, that’s on the media - which means it’s on all of us. They are publicizing what we reward with our clicks and our comments.
As
so aptly commented:“Here is the first step to what ails us - stop feeding the black wolf that lives in us all. We are attracted to these shock stories because it appeals to our own inner toddler. And every click feeds the beast. The only way to move forward is to learn to grow up ourselves and to join the strong, silent majority who are actually engaged in making the world function at all.”
We the people are “the system” that rewards this type of pandering by the media. We need to own growing up (ourselves) and fixing the system. We can start by paying more attention to real issues that protestors are raising than we do to the forms of their protests.
If you know who originated this quote, please let me know and I’ll be glad to credit them. The closest source I’ve found is this Facebook post by Steve Marmel which shares a post from Twitter.