Render Unto Caesar

Building an ethic of consumption

With my new book coming out in May, I need to engage in social media more than I have up to this point. I know about marketing. I need to market the book to the best of my abilities. I have a publisher who has offered extensive and useful guidelines and assistance to show me how to use social effectively.

And yet I balked.

The balking is complex. I would like to say that it is solely a result of my moral compunction about acting on platforms that further enrich and empower amoral oligarchs. That is certainly a part of it, the convenient high horse excuse.

But I also know myself. I get sucked into the appreciation from the ether, eagerly monitoring the harvest of symbols of approval, the hearts, thumbs ups, reposts and other accoutrements of affirmation.

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I understand the appeal of the dictum “If a little is good, more is better.” The old muscle memory of the relief of getting annihilated by a sensation to the exclusion of all worry and trouble lingers still, and plenty of activities get me checked out besides alcohol or drugs.

I don’t spend time in bars unless I have a very good reason. Other venues also have emotional yellow caution tape around them. I need to be clear about why I am going in, know what I have to do there, and then get the hell out.

Since I worked in advertising for so long, I have always been an early adopter of social media and its precursors. I was active on message boards in the early 90s before social media existed, reading the extensive and lively posts by this guy named Mark Cuban who was doing some cool tech stuff in Texas.

Because of this, I’ve had many opportunities to watch my attention shift away from the good - engaging with various viewpoints, joining conversations, posting things I like, using words in this specific way – into another arena, the yellow caution tape area. Posting and then obsessively checking engagement. Wanting to respond to trolls or outrage bait, fuming in judgement, wanting to opine on issues I know little about. The digital peer pressure, the yearning to be one of the cool kids in any social playground is hard wired into me.

I understand that most of you can go into a bar, enjoy a cocktail and not end up puking in the parking lot or blacking out. But plenty of people who are not alcoholics keep an eye on their alcohol consumption, checking in with a Dry January, or staying accountable with a friend when their nightly glass of wine turns into half a bottle. They have an ethic of consumption around alcohol or drugs, just as many people have an ethic of consumption about what they eat or buy or how much debt they carry or how often they fly for pleasure in planes that contribute to global warming.

For those of you who might be interested in considering an ethic of consumption around social media here’s what I did to get to my rules of engagement. Yours will, of course, be different.

First, I dealt with my moral objections, and tried to decide what and where I want to be. Given that Elon Musk is wreaking unconstitutional destruction as an unelected oligarch, participating on Twitter is a hard no for me.

I got some advice. I talked with my spiritual director about the fact that Meta and Zuckerberg are also amoral vehicles. She suggested I consider the Biblical verse – often misused, btw – “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:20-24). In what ways do I need to participate in social media in order to do my job? Marketing myself as an executive coach and building awareness of a new book means I need to engage. I need to walk into that bar. What are my guidelines? What is my ethic of consumption.

I took some space to write down the answers to the following questions, for me. Others may come to mind for you.

· What is my purpose in engaging with this content? Why am I here?

· What am I bringing that is positive? What knowledge, perspective, expertise or joy can I contribute? How can I stay focused on that?

· How much time do I want to spend creating and consuming content? Do I need accountability tools, like a timer?

· Where is my yellow caution tape, the behavior or attitude that I want to avoid? Doomscrolling? Arguing with sexist trolls on LinkedIn? Posting and commenting in a tone and manner I would never use in a face-to-face conversation? How do I know I’m getting into dangerous territory? I decided to not buy any products advertised to me on Meta social platforms, since that is the engine of profit. It’s a small thing, but it feels right to me.

· What will I not post about? My children? My sex life? Other people’s stories? I don’t write about things my clients tell me in executive coaching, for example. What is off limits for you?

· What do I want my experience to be? There are neighborhoods on social media that can be joyful collaborations around shared interests, be it books, social justice, dance, adorable pets or baking. Am I in the right neighborhoods?

One of my first posts on Blue Sky, which I’m new to, was about needing to be on social for my book. “My publisher says do more on social media before my book comes out. They are right. But I feel like I baked a lovely cake and now am being told the job’s not done until I swim the English Channel holding it aloft. In the dark. And there are jellyfish.”

But then I realized than an intentional ethic of engagement could change that. I could try and build a boat to ferry me forward and help me avoid the underwater peril, and light my way to other waterways, other boats. I get to steer the boat, and now I have a map.