I was at the coffee shop yesterday. One thing I like doing in between work sessions is to look around and observe people around me, and try to guess what their lives must be like. In this particular case though, I was looking at them within the context of the latest NSA scandal.
There was a mother nursing her baby while trying to get some work done on her laptop. Did she care if the NSA is watching her? Probably not. She just had too much shit to think about. She was worried that her baby seemed to be getting sick. She was worried about being able to finish the report that was due the next day at work. She was worried about what she was going to cook for dinner that night, and whether her husband was able to catch his connecting flight in Chicago earlier.
There was the overworked barrista, who was really busy trying to process the orders from a long line of customers. Did she care if the NSA was watching her? Probably not. She had been working non-stop for the past six hours, and half an hour before the end of her shift she suddenly had to deal with a large group of new customers, each of whom was cranky because they needed their fix of caffeine. She was thinking about whether the guy she gave her number to at the bar the previous night was going to text/call her soon, because he was really cute. She was thinking about whether she would be able to make it home in time to catch the latest episode of her favorite TV show.
There were two guys sharing the table next to mine. One of them was wearing a full suit, and the other was in business casual. Judging by the bits of conversation I overheard, it was an informal job interview. Did the interviewee care if the NSA was watching him? Probably not. He was worried about a ton of other things, like being under-dressed for the interview and his growing need to use the restroom really badly. He was worried about whether the interviewer would hire him, because his bills were at serious risk of running overdue. His wife had also been texting him for the past half hour complaining about the dishwasher that stopped working.
Now, these were just my guesses about these people, and they were most likely wrong. But in the grand scheme of things, I think my point stands: people are so fucking obsessed with their own little lives that they cannot raise their heads and look at - much less critically think about and analyze - what is going on around them. They don't have the type of mental bandwidth to even try to process the big picture. Their own piece of the puzzle and the immediate surrounding pieces are what demand their attention.
I was talking to my roommate this past weekend as the NSA scandal was unfolding, and I asked her if she had heard. She said no. I was appalled. I wanted to scream at her "ARE YOU LIVING UNDER A ROCK?!?" But I couldn't. She works 12+ hour days, plus a 2 hour commute, and the rest of her time is taken up by volunteer projects she's leading in our neighborhood. How can I blame her for not having heard of some invisible party listening in on all her emails and phone calls and social media conversations? How can I blame her for not being worried about the insane implications of this surveillance and what it means for her country?