How Facebook Showed Me That We're Doomed
The world is doomed. Spend some time on Facebook and you’ll understand what I mean. This is especially true if you have a diverse range of Facebook friends, as I do. I don’t know most of these people, never met them, couldn’t recognize them if they were standing right in front of me, but they’re friends, anyway. Some of these friends aren’t really people, but are political sites, others are musical. There are also a few random film or MMA sites, all of which form the basis for my preferred reading list. Others still are actual people.
The breadth and depth of my Facebook buddies grows, yet again, by having access to comments by friends of friends—people who aren’t actually friends—but I can still get a dose of what they think about a whole range of topics. This gives me a fair sampling of what’s out there in the Facebook-o-sphere. This may not represent a scientific sampling, but it's close enough.
What I found was simple, people, regardless of their individual preferences, behave more or less the same. Most are passionate about their particular ideas and affiliations, whether they’re silent film buffs, Film Noir lovers, political conservatives, liberals or libertarians, each has an ideology which they hold dear. Religious groups of every kind tend to break down into tribes of mostly like-minded folk. Atheists have their own preferences and biases that they see as truths, much like scientifically oriented Christians or former fundamentalists, who see the world through their own personally prioritized beliefs.
Make no mistake, each has a faith in something—or nothing—which can take a whole lot of faith. Some have faith in science, with others its progressive politics, or the constitution and the founders, but faith abounds, wherever you look, leading me to an obvious conclusion; that faith alone is never enough.
In days past, before the internet, when there were actual newspapers, a story about a politician, for instance, would have to be sourced. This didn’t make it true. It did, however, restrain most slander and wild conjecture. But no more. The enormous amount of information available on the internet is simply too diffused, making slander suits tough to prosecute and conjecture, no matter how ridiculous, difficult to respond too. The only alternative to this has been to create an alternative press, one that presents the opposite perspective. In other words, the faithful build one site, and we, the opposing faithful, build one. They build two. We build three. They bring a knife. We bring a gun, to keep the metaphor going. This becomes the primary method for debate, with a thousand opinions for every opinion. That is the order of the day. Choose the news that you prefer and stake you claim.
This is how scientists and scholars have plied their trades for centuries, knowing that whatever was said would be challenged by other scholars and scientists.
Today, however, we live in an age where every opinion is of equal weight. No one needs to be specialized or have a background in the subject at hand. If Joe the car mechanic is eloquent enough and has a popular blog, he can challenge the prevailing orthodoxy like never before. Whether he should, is beside the point. It’s the readership that matters. Meaning, Joe and his audience are our new truth- tellers, the new political power players. It is egalitarianism run amok. Or, its democracy unleashed in its fullest form. Take your pick. Time alone will tell whether it’s good or bad. Where a line in the sand should be drawn, if at all.
We may, in the end, find that democracy is a farce. That our rulers should rule and the proletariat should fall in line behind them to be ruled. That has been the norm throughout most of history. Today, however, it isn’t possible to simply tell people that you’re going to take their freedom. At least, not without offering something in exchange. Even then, the language that’s used can’t reflect the truth. So words have to be managed carefully, that and what can be politely described as the willful indifference of the people will do the rest.
There is another possibility, though. That we finally learn that people cannot remain free unless they have a strong moral foundation, both as individuals and collectively. Without morality acting as a governor over our worst impulses, we can’t hope to survive. Moreover, it is the tiny crack in the façade of morality that causes the eventual collapse, making the small moral issues just as important as the seemingly big ones. In that way, America might be just one more experiment that began well and then stumbled and broke apart down the stretch. Its memory a warning to the future saying “Do not pass this way if you hope to survive.” But, with thousands of years of recorded history as a reminder, you'd think we might learn. The fact that we haven’t, is the best or worst indicator for our future. Bringing me back to my first statement “We’re doomed.” It may take a while, a hundred years or so, but it will happen. How do I know this? Because it is written—over and over and over again.
As the poet, philosopher and essayist George Santayana wrote, “Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.”
Need I say more? Probably. But, for the time being, I’ll leave it there.
Mark Magula
The breadth and depth of my Facebook buddies grows, yet again, by having access to comments by friends of friends—people who aren’t actually friends—but I can still get a dose of what they think about a whole range of topics. This gives me a fair sampling of what’s out there in the Facebook-o-sphere. This may not represent a scientific sampling, but it's close enough.
What I found was simple, people, regardless of their individual preferences, behave more or less the same. Most are passionate about their particular ideas and affiliations, whether they’re silent film buffs, Film Noir lovers, political conservatives, liberals or libertarians, each has an ideology which they hold dear. Religious groups of every kind tend to break down into tribes of mostly like-minded folk. Atheists have their own preferences and biases that they see as truths, much like scientifically oriented Christians or former fundamentalists, who see the world through their own personally prioritized beliefs.
Make no mistake, each has a faith in something—or nothing—which can take a whole lot of faith. Some have faith in science, with others its progressive politics, or the constitution and the founders, but faith abounds, wherever you look, leading me to an obvious conclusion; that faith alone is never enough.
In days past, before the internet, when there were actual newspapers, a story about a politician, for instance, would have to be sourced. This didn’t make it true. It did, however, restrain most slander and wild conjecture. But no more. The enormous amount of information available on the internet is simply too diffused, making slander suits tough to prosecute and conjecture, no matter how ridiculous, difficult to respond too. The only alternative to this has been to create an alternative press, one that presents the opposite perspective. In other words, the faithful build one site, and we, the opposing faithful, build one. They build two. We build three. They bring a knife. We bring a gun, to keep the metaphor going. This becomes the primary method for debate, with a thousand opinions for every opinion. That is the order of the day. Choose the news that you prefer and stake you claim.
This is how scientists and scholars have plied their trades for centuries, knowing that whatever was said would be challenged by other scholars and scientists.
Today, however, we live in an age where every opinion is of equal weight. No one needs to be specialized or have a background in the subject at hand. If Joe the car mechanic is eloquent enough and has a popular blog, he can challenge the prevailing orthodoxy like never before. Whether he should, is beside the point. It’s the readership that matters. Meaning, Joe and his audience are our new truth- tellers, the new political power players. It is egalitarianism run amok. Or, its democracy unleashed in its fullest form. Take your pick. Time alone will tell whether it’s good or bad. Where a line in the sand should be drawn, if at all.
We may, in the end, find that democracy is a farce. That our rulers should rule and the proletariat should fall in line behind them to be ruled. That has been the norm throughout most of history. Today, however, it isn’t possible to simply tell people that you’re going to take their freedom. At least, not without offering something in exchange. Even then, the language that’s used can’t reflect the truth. So words have to be managed carefully, that and what can be politely described as the willful indifference of the people will do the rest.
There is another possibility, though. That we finally learn that people cannot remain free unless they have a strong moral foundation, both as individuals and collectively. Without morality acting as a governor over our worst impulses, we can’t hope to survive. Moreover, it is the tiny crack in the façade of morality that causes the eventual collapse, making the small moral issues just as important as the seemingly big ones. In that way, America might be just one more experiment that began well and then stumbled and broke apart down the stretch. Its memory a warning to the future saying “Do not pass this way if you hope to survive.” But, with thousands of years of recorded history as a reminder, you'd think we might learn. The fact that we haven’t, is the best or worst indicator for our future. Bringing me back to my first statement “We’re doomed.” It may take a while, a hundred years or so, but it will happen. How do I know this? Because it is written—over and over and over again.
As the poet, philosopher and essayist George Santayana wrote, “Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.”
Need I say more? Probably. But, for the time being, I’ll leave it there.
Mark Magula