The shitstorm over Trump’s shit hole remark is remarkable because of its predictability. No, I don’t speak of the vulgarian-in-chief’s routinely intemperate ways. I refer to the reactions and counter-reactions, which have become as predictable as the tide.
Trump says something boorish, or crass, or polarizing. The people who feel he should be impeached merely because he got elected dial their react-o-meters up to 11, with school-girl “OMG DID YOU HEAR WHAT HE SAID!!” hyperventilation. The people who voted for him react to that by affirming his intent or echoing his sentiment, with “OMG THOSE COUNTRIES ARE SHITHOLES!!” affirmations. Both sides harden up, with each accusing the other of blind adherence to an agenda, and the name calling continues.
Meanwhile, policy making grinds to a halt, because neither side dare appear weak and risk the wrath of its base’s loudest voices.
Those loudest voices, the ones that think they’re speaking truth to power, are destroying the last vestiges of humanity and civility in our society. And, they are abetted by the outlets and tools that are supposed to advance our society. Yes, I’m speaking of social media, but I’m also speaking of the town square, the university campus, and the information sources that technology enables us to tap into with ever-greater ease.
Facebook and Twitter are under increased scrutiny over assertions that they’re breeding grounds for hate and “fake news.” College campuses are under increased scrutiny over assertions that they’ve become toxic (verbally, emotionally, and physically) to any thinking that doesn’t conform to a particular orthodoxy. The Left’s identity politics diminish our humanity by reducing us to demographic check boxes and a grievance hierarchy. The Right’s desire to deport Dreamers ignores the fact that they are children and young people who’ve known no home other than America. Liberal loathing of conservatives and conservative loathing of liberals ignores the fact that each and every one of us is a human being, a wholly-formed person living a life as best we can.
Because we interact so much more via the separation that technology provides, we find it easier to treat each other as not-human, as lesser entities not deserving of the basic civility we exhibit in actual, physical, face-to-face interaction every day. And, since younger people grow up with more of this separation and commensurately less face-to-face, the civility that’s the essential lubricant of a functioning society goes unlearned.
Just as someone in a car is far more apt to make a rude gesture at another than were he face-to-face, without the separation of steel and the safety of locked doors, many on the Internet will say the vilest things to or about another, things they’d never even think to utter face-to-face, even in moments of hot disagreement. Worse, they’ll do horrific things, like swatting, doxing, revenge porn, spreading lies, or making malicious accusations, sometimes with horrific results. The Internet, of course, makes all this much easier to do and much harder to undo.
The loudest voices and most entrenched opinions tend to frustrate the rest of us, and attempts at moderation, reason, compromise, civility, or courtesy can be frustrating to the point of abandonment. Who among us has not walked away from an Internet exchange in frustration, after witnessing it devolve into ugliness? How much more often does that happen, vs real-life? Whereas social pressure works against overheating conversations, the ways of social media interaction often reward the most confrontational by giving them the victory of the “last word” as those who won’t go as far get drowned out or walk away in disgust. Certainly, we sometimes fight against those loud voices, in order to expose them for what they are, but that’s a wearying and endless battle, and in a war of attrition, the hate-filled, the obstinate, and the hard-liners seem to have more endurance.
We have a greater ability than ever to self-select, and the enormous range of choices we have in media and on-line content allow us to granulize ever more finely in our associations. The devolvement of the mainstream media into rank partisanship tells us that market forces support this granulizing and self-selection, as more and more people choose not to expend emotional energy dealing with the worst of those who have different viewpoints. It is those “worst” that drive the conversations and the narratives, because they’re comfortable with lower standards of civility than the rest of us. It’s akin to a prison yard, where the people most apt to commit violence routinely cow everyone else into defensive mindsets and like-minded clustering.
Civility, amity, and rationality are fundamental elements of a functioning society. They are, to my great dismay, disappearing, thanks in no small part to the technologies that we had hoped would strengthen our society. Our greater interconnectivity exposes us to much more of each other’s humanity, and that should serve to knock down traditional prejudices, suspicions, and tribalism. We are each and every one of us a human being, with a full and complex history and a fully formed personality/identity, and the ability to share that around the world should make us realize this more. Unfortunately, it turns out that technology is a far more powerful divider than it is a uniter. Technology has enabled our tribalistic instincts to reign supreme, it has insulated anti-social behavior from normal feedback mechanisms, and it has granted the greatest power to those who behave the worst.
I ran a restaurant for 20 years, and interacted with the public every day. Certainly, there were the bad actors, the selfish, the rude, the crude, the intolerant, and the aggressive, but they were the exception that faced the powerful counterforce of social shunning. Shunning on the Internet, however, doesn’t work. People can very easily find others who defend and support their worst behaviors, and all it takes is a few people to “have your back” to justify anything. I’m sure the swatter who got a man killed has his regrets, now that he’s facing jail time, but I’m also sure that many other swatters find absolutely nothing wrong with sending armed police to storm someone’s house over a disagreement in a video game.
The horror of that callousness is obvious to many of us, especially those of us who are a little older. I greatly fear, however, for young people, who aren’t receiving the same amount of face-to-face social education that those of us who grew up before the Internet did. Sure, I sound like one of those old codgers screaming about how the evils of rock music are destroying society, but I don’t think I’m overreacting.
We tend to forget that every person on this planet started his or her life arc via a simple “accident of birth.” We tend to diminish the humanity of those who live far away, who think differently, who behave differently, who have different needs or wants, or who are simply “not us.” This isn’t new. It is not in human nature to fully comprehend how many people live on this planet, how varied the human experience can be, or that every other person in existence is as fully formed as each of us is. Indeed consider this quote:
A single death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic. – Josef Stalin
And this sentiment, which I paraphrase from memory:
The farther away people are, and the browner they are, the less we care about them. – Anthony Cumia
This is reality, as horrible as it sounds. Our humanity tends to be immediate and local, because we can see, hear, and touch those who are immediate and local. Even people we consider “friends” on the Internet, people with whom we’ve built a good rapport but have never met, tend to feel less real and “human” than those with whom we’ve actually broken bread.
Social media and the Internet are destroying our humanity, even as they connect us to more and more humans around the globe. Society and technology evolve at a far greater pace than biology, and our biological hard-wiring has run into a major incompatibility with modern society. Yes, this is another “social media is dehumanizing” lament, but the commonness of such doesn’t automatically diminish their validity.
What’s the solution? Since we are each and every one individuals, the solution must start with each of us. Allowing the loudest and crassest voices to dominate, even when those voices are ostensibly on “our side,” diminishes the traditional role of tribal shunning in managing behavior. Unfortunately, no one wants to be the first to “clean his own house,” lest he “lose” what’s perceived to be a zero-sum battle. Still, if we don’t try, our humanity will continue to degrade, and our society will continue to fracture. We must, must, strive to remember each other’s humanity, and we must stop viewing others as less-than-human, lest we lose our own.
Loading ...
Trackbacks/Pingbacks