Mother, Mother, What’s STILL Going On?

In 1971, Marvin Gaye asked a question that struck with such profound simplicity it could not be ignored: What’s going on? The world he saw was brimming with violence and division, fractured by war and inequality. Mothers were crying. Brothers were dying. The streets teemed with protests demanding a better world.

His plea was not simply a question—it was an indictment, a reckoning, a challenge. And yet, it was also suffused with hope, as if the act of asking might stir us toward answers. Gaye believed in humanity’s capacity to stop, to listen, and to heal. He believed in love—not as a soft sentiment but as an urgent, active force capable of confronting hate.

More than 50 years later, Gaye’s song lingers, and the question remains painfully unanswered. If anything, it has only grown louder. The mothers are still crying. The brothers are still dying. The world continues to fracture. But now, it does so in the chaos of a digital age where connection has been redefined and escalation is a default setting.

The Digital Tempest

In 2024, we live in the swirl of what could only be described as a digital tempest. News cycles spin faster than our capacity to process them. A single headline, tweet, or video can ignite global outrage in minutes, only to fade into obscurity as the next crisis takes center stage. Social media platforms amplify anger and division, their algorithms rewarding our basest instincts: outrage over understanding, reaction over reflection.

We are inundated with information—pummeled by it, really—but understanding remains elusive. Conversations that once required time and nuance are compressed into character counts. Complexity is stripped away, leaving behind sound bites that masquerade as truths. It is a world where the cacophony of competing voices drowns out the quiet urgency of Gaye’s question: What’s going on?

The effects are disorienting. The velocity of digital communication creates the illusion of progress, but more often, it breeds chaos. Problems escalate without resolution, leaving us caught in a relentless churn of crises. Love, the force Gaye so beautifully championed, struggles to gain traction in a landscape that prioritizes volume over connection.

Noise Without Substance

Escalation, of course, is not new. Gaye understood it all too well. In his time, it came in the form of violent protests and entrenched resistance to change. But today, escalation is different—faster, more fragmented, more performative. The noise has become deafening, and in its intensity, we’ve mistaken it for progress.

Social media, once heralded as a democratizing force, has evolved into an engine of distraction. It enables us to shout but not to listen, to broadcast but not to connect. We participate in a cycle of virtual picket lines, where hashtags trend and fade, where engagement is measured in likes and shares but rarely in substantive action. We feel busy, even virtuous, but the needle doesn’t move.

Gaye’s question cuts through this noise with chilling precision. What’s going on? Not “what are we yelling about today” or “what’s trending now,” but what is truly happening? What lies beneath the hashtags and headlines? What remains unspoken, unresolved, unseen?

Love in the Time of Fracture

Gaye’s answer to the chaos was deceptively simple: “Only love can conquer hate.” But in 2024, love feels like a radical proposition. Not the love of greeting cards or pop songs, but the love Gaye envisioned: demanding, transformative, restorative. The kind of love that requires us to step out of the tempest, to slow down long enough to see one another fully and act with intention.

This kind of love feels ill-suited to the digital world. It is slow where the internet is fast, deliberate where social media is impulsive. It requires us to resist the dopamine rush of likes and shares, to turn away from the seductive immediacy of outrage, and instead choose connection over performance.

But Gaye’s love is also our only way forward. It calls us to stop mistaking noise for action and start building bridges in a fractured world. It calls us to ask the hard questions: What are we doing? What are we truly building? And are we leaving space for love to do its work?

Marvin’s Mirror

Gaye didn’t just give us a song; he gave us a mirror. In What’s Going On, he invited us to look at ourselves—not just our actions but our inaction, our complicity, our capacity for both harm and healing. That mirror is still here, reflecting back a world both weary and hopeful, still caught in the tension between escalation and love.

The mirror demands that we confront not only the brokenness around us but also within us. It asks whether we can slow down long enough to truly see one another. It asks whether we can love in a way that requires us to act—not in the performative theater of digital outrage, but in the quiet, sustained work of connection and repair.

What’s Next?

If Gaye’s question remains unanswered, it is not because we lack the tools to respond. It is because we have been too busy spinning in the tempest to pause and try. The world is louder now than it was in 1971, but it is not more hopeless. The noise can still be quieted. The fractures can still be mended.

The challenge is ours to take up. To step out of the whirlwind, to resist the pull of endless escalation, and to choose something harder and more enduring. To ask not just what’s going on but what can we do to make it right?

Marvin Gaye’s song was both an invitation and a demand. It is up to us, fifty years later, to finally respond.