We admitted we were powerless over our algorithms

and our lives had become unmanagable

The Yorkshire Dales. No algorithm here to tell us what to think and feel about the world, there is just the world.

Step One.

Last month, as Eric and I were making our way across the Yorkshire Dales at 2-3 miles an hour, I told him about something I’d seen on Facebook: a woman who was struggling to reconcile her feelings toward a friend who was publicly mourning the killing of Charlie Kirk. She decided to meet her friend for coffee to express how sad she was that her friend would think so highly of someone who said such horrible things about Black women and queer folks. When she showed her friend all the quotes and videos that demonstrate why she loathed Kirk her friend said “What in the world? I’ve never seen any of that!” and proceeded to show her what of Kirk HAD come across her own screens during the very same time.

The images of Kirk the two women saw over the years were eerily dissimilar.

(To this point - reportedly her friend had also not even heard about the political assassinations of the Minnesota lawmakers gunned down in their homes.)

Each woman had been served a different portrait of the same man, and each was sure hers was the real one — two realities, both utterly convincing, both incomplete.

We know this is what happens. I know this is what happens, and I still fall for it. I still take in highly mediated content fed to me (for profit) by algorithms. And before my more rational brain processes take over, my brain chemistry has already decided it’s all TOTALLY ACCURATE. Why? Because it spikes my dopamine and cortisol.

But it’s not just that I believe what these algorithms tell me about the world, I believe what these algorithms tell me about other people: How stupid they are. How gullible. How hateful. How worthless.

And those people in turn, are fed images and words by the algorithm that tell them how stupid I am. How gullible. How hateful. How worthless.

But remember the days before Facebook?
When we disagreed and voted differently, but didn’t revile each other?
When we weren’t mainlining a daily drip of memes and headlines designed to make us believe that those people are dangerous, insufferable idiots—and that we’re the only sane ones left?

I keep wondering where the curiosity went that we used to have about each other’s views and opinions.

Well, the algorithms ate it.

One reason it’s hard to lift our heads out of the ideological sand is in part, because it feels good to think the worst of others and the best of ourselves. Not to mention, there is a built in mechanism to keep us addicted: namely the pressure from everyone else who is equally addicted, screaming “but you HAVE to take it all in because the WORLD IS HORRIBLE and if you are not continually taking in content about that, it means you DON’T CARE THAT THE WORLD IS HORRIBLE”.

But my God, look at the cost of it all.

As I watch people who once loved each other now refuse to speak (based not on who they really are, based not on how they have really treated one another, but based on what their glowing screens have told them to believe about each other), I despair and wonder how the hell are we going to get out of this?

Anyhow, I said all of this to Eric as we walked through endless rolling pastures last month and he was silent for a moment, then said “we admitted we were powerless over our algorithms and our lives had become unmanageable”, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it ever since.

Step 1 of the 12 Steps of AA: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable.

Powerless.

I do not have any ideas for how to extricate ourselves from the ideas and ideology and self righteousness and contempt for others that we’ve been fed a steady stream of and which our neurochemicals have responded to over the last 20 years of social media other than to just fucking admit how deeply affected we really are by it all…..

…and then to just ask for help.

Steps 2 and 3 of the 12 Steps:

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Became willing to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

I am not all I need.

Richard Rohr once claimed that the 12 steps are “America’s single, yet very important contribution to human spirituality.”

In so many ways, the 12-steps are counter-cultural right now. Mainly because they suggest that maybe as individuals we do not, in fact, have the power it takes to interrupt and recover from our addictive behaviors. But there IS power to do so, it just comes from God (or as it is put in AA, a higher power), AND we can’t do it alone.

We heal together—through honesty, surrender, and community.
That’s what makes it spiritual.

For such a time as this

We absolutely insist on enjoying life. We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world’s troubles on our shoulders. - p132 Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

The Big Book of AA was written in the aftermath of The Great Depression, when Hitler was annexing Austria and invading Poland, fascism was spreading, and refugees were fleeing en maase.

In that climate, a small, ragtag community of alcoholics meeting in kitchens and church basements began to speak a different kind of language — not of power, conquest, or ideology, but of humility, surrender, and shared weakness as the doorway to strength.

It’s almost scandalous, really — to write about grace and honesty when the headlines were about violence and fear. But maybe every age of despair needs people who quietly build something sane, gentle, and healing while the world burns.

I wonder, given the current events of their day, if there were people criticizing them for “not paying attention to how horrible to world is”. Thank God they just went on with their work, because the result was a book and a program that saved my life and the lives of countless others.

This is also the world.

While on that long walk last month, I’d look out over the beautiful landscapes and say to myself, “this is the world”. As a reminder, a admonition, a benediction. What is happening politically in my country right now is horrific, and is one square inch of the world. But most of what I see on my phone, tries to convince me that what is happening politically in my country is the world and everything else is maybe one square inch.

So that’s my mantra right now. Walking to the market I say, “this is the world”, seeing the smiles of my neighbors I say “this is the world”, hearing about the concerns of my friends, feeling the 25 years of love I’ve shared with my conservative sister-in-law, smiling at the humor of the women in the prison, texting my mom about my dad’s doctor’s appt today, feeling the touch of my husband, feeling angry about the traffic on my drive to Boulder, luxuriating in the sound of sacred harp singing tonight, seeing the leaves falling, hearing the annoying leaf blowers blowing, watching the sun rising: This is the world. These are the real things in my life. Everytime I remember, “this is the world” I am coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.

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If you’ve never heard Maria Ressa (the Filipino journalist who was targeted and imprisoned by her government) talk about this, please do. In a short clip—from 8:25 to 11:25—she explains, better than anyone, how all this works.
Her story is a masterclass in how content can overwrite reality itself.