Under the Clamor of Crows

The morning has barely opened its eyes and little birds are singing praises to a new day. Until raucous crows gather. Density of big bodies and sound drive little birds and their songs into hiding and silence. The discordant caws paired with bully behaviors create an unsettled and unsafe sense. Even within their convoy, no crow is safe. Beaks snatch food from beaks whether on ground or midflight. For drink or a bath, bodies shove aside bodies to get to the water.

Crows’ discordant noise and bully behaviors claim all in a show of power not unlike the social and political trolls who control the tone, volume, and targets of public messaging. And, like the songbirds, positive messages lose presence. Name calling, disgruntled views, and hate messages dominate public discourse until the public feels unsafe and unsure. In such an environment, work for positive impacts at individual, community, and geographic levels remains in the background or becomes a troll target.

While our media tout statistics of declining trust, disengagement, and increasing violence, they are complicit in supporting troll behavior creating a self-fulfilling situation – a form of Catch 22. Robert Cialdini in Influence: Psychology of Persuasion notes “…widely publicized aggression has the nasty tendency to spread to similar victims, no matter whether the aggression is inflicted on the self or another.” So, we - the public – despair amid stories of wrack and ruin and poisonous rhetoric.

Hope and resilience lie in finding, creating, and telling stories of gratitude for what is working for the benefit of self and others – our neighbors, our friends, our community. We need the magic antidote of good work and supportive language to counter discord and threat. We can be like the little birds singing praise. After all, there is a reason they are called songbirds and crows are not.