The UnSocial Media
It seems to me that once upon a time I would spend my time writing 'humorous' 'work'! I use inverted commas because a) whether it was actually received as humorous or not is open to debate, although a debate I don't really wish to engage in so please keep it amongst yourselves and b) work is a relative term for writing/typing stuff but difficult to call it work, unless of course i have to stop every five minutes to check something or reconsider what I have written. Which I probably am not going to do today.
Today I thought, which makes a pleasant change, that I would write a blog entry because every day since I last wrote a blog entry I thought I really should! Then finally I found the keyboard in front of me and the book I am reading (FDR and the New Deal by Leuchtenberg) was starting to wear thin in terms of interest and depressing in terms of the striking similarities with recent events and portents of potentially coming events. So, here I am writing overly long sentences about something you have no interest in.
My intention to retire and write a book have so far come to nought! Still, what's five years between friends! The least I can do is start by writing some nonsense on a daily basis to at least get the thought processes working again.
Considering how often it was that I was cautioned during my career for overly long emails this really should be a doddle but thus far, if you are still there, this is getting a little dull!
I was thinking yesterday, and then coincidentally briefly discussed with a friend, how social media is getting rather clogged up with hateful thoughts and attacks.
I find myself thinking about why that might be and further find that I am going to write down my thoughts, if not for you, if indeed 'you' are there at all, then for me! After all, once I have written down my thoughts then maybe I can free up that part of my memory to think about something else and leave this particular set of thoughts in this version of 'offline' storage. Offline from me of course, not from everybody else!
I guess somewhere a renowned psychologist has written at length on this subject and it might be a good idea for mt to start reading that particular work once I find it. But my sense of this is along the lines of...
Most of us have internal conversations or dialogues or indeed, monologues. And sometimes we have a thought that, for one reason or another, is politically incorrect. Or to put it simply, is morally wrong, possibly even abhorrent. To much of liberal society such thoughts shock the individual thinking them. And the internal dialogue cuts in with such helpful counter thoughts as 'what the f*** were you thinking?' or 'what the f*** is wrong with you!' And the thought process corrects itself, feels suitably chastened and disgusted with itself and goes back to thinking about whether that use by date on the chicken in the fridge is just overly cautious or whether a week after said date is just a little too far. After all, the chicken is not green yet and no new forms of penicillin appear to have started growing on the surface so it'll probably be safe between two slices of bread!
But as for these immoral thoughts. I suspect that lots of people have them. Or, I have just opened myself up to being a closet {insert your own ist in here} and will be yet further shunned by polite society (that said, where I live now, not so much in the way of polite society!)
So, assuming that several other people have these internal dialogues that sometimes stray into areas that are unacceptable in real life or real words. We have internal police that not just correct and admonish these thoughts but ask useful questions of the thought process itself. Like, why do you feel that way, what logical reason do you have for feeling that way etc and these internal processes act as checks and balances in regard of an internal dialogue and a spoken dialogue and all is good in the world.
Sometimes, the checks and balances go wrong. In a heated argument or when drunk, people can and do say things that they would not normally say or do. They, let down their guard, so to speak. Most people will, at some point later, feel repentant for allowing anger or drink to bypass the internal controls and be profusely embarrassed and apologetic... generally speaking!
At least that was how the world would work before social media. Social media in all its forms appears to have bypassed the internal controls. It allows, if not encourages, some people (quite a lot it seems) to ignore the internal process that helps internally admonish and correct abhorrent internal dialogue behaviour and their unfiltered and unedited thoughts appear online within seconds of the thought having formed in their brain and before the internal dialogue processes have had time to intervene.
My thinking is that this has a number of 'real world' consequences. After one individual starts on a certain subject others will be sure to follow on the basis that if it were ok for X to say this then it must be ok for me to say it too. This form of thinking can not simply disable the internal processes that try to prevent this but they even rewrite the internal coding which then stops future internal corrections about where the boundary between right and wrong actually is.
This then acts to perpetuate itself in some form of weird atomic reaction encompassing ever greater numbers of people and at some point, having felt reassured that there is sufficient mass of like minded people, this online diatribe can and does make it to the street.
We could reassure ourselves that at least on the street there are laws and controls that act as a moral check to these things and people could find themselves in court being judged and admonished against what society has deemed to be 'the line'. But we cannot take such things for granted and just reassure ourselves that these societal defences will take care of things because these laws only exist because they were fought for with strong moral argument and agreed and set in statute because a majority of the people forming our society agreed. But... what happens when sufficient number of people decide that it is ok to say things that are currently considered unacceptable? Should that happen, leaders will be elected and statutes will be changed. And before you start thinking that such things cannot happen, you might not only be advised to check out some European history books but you might also want to look around at some of the governments and politicians we have elected in recent years.
So, it is important to fight back against hateful speech when we see it online or indeed when we encounter it on the street. I would simply caution on the approach. The worst possible approach, in my view, is open hostility towards the perpetrators. It does not advance the argument to simply call those that advance a negative attack on parts of society as being 'idiots' (or worse!) The argument can only be won by a logical approach to the position. My personal suggestion would be simply to question 'why?' as often as possible.
Oh well, that's enough for today :)
Today I thought, which makes a pleasant change, that I would write a blog entry because every day since I last wrote a blog entry I thought I really should! Then finally I found the keyboard in front of me and the book I am reading (FDR and the New Deal by Leuchtenberg) was starting to wear thin in terms of interest and depressing in terms of the striking similarities with recent events and portents of potentially coming events. So, here I am writing overly long sentences about something you have no interest in.
My intention to retire and write a book have so far come to nought! Still, what's five years between friends! The least I can do is start by writing some nonsense on a daily basis to at least get the thought processes working again.
Considering how often it was that I was cautioned during my career for overly long emails this really should be a doddle but thus far, if you are still there, this is getting a little dull!
I was thinking yesterday, and then coincidentally briefly discussed with a friend, how social media is getting rather clogged up with hateful thoughts and attacks.
I find myself thinking about why that might be and further find that I am going to write down my thoughts, if not for you, if indeed 'you' are there at all, then for me! After all, once I have written down my thoughts then maybe I can free up that part of my memory to think about something else and leave this particular set of thoughts in this version of 'offline' storage. Offline from me of course, not from everybody else!
I guess somewhere a renowned psychologist has written at length on this subject and it might be a good idea for mt to start reading that particular work once I find it. But my sense of this is along the lines of...
Most of us have internal conversations or dialogues or indeed, monologues. And sometimes we have a thought that, for one reason or another, is politically incorrect. Or to put it simply, is morally wrong, possibly even abhorrent. To much of liberal society such thoughts shock the individual thinking them. And the internal dialogue cuts in with such helpful counter thoughts as 'what the f*** were you thinking?' or 'what the f*** is wrong with you!' And the thought process corrects itself, feels suitably chastened and disgusted with itself and goes back to thinking about whether that use by date on the chicken in the fridge is just overly cautious or whether a week after said date is just a little too far. After all, the chicken is not green yet and no new forms of penicillin appear to have started growing on the surface so it'll probably be safe between two slices of bread!
But as for these immoral thoughts. I suspect that lots of people have them. Or, I have just opened myself up to being a closet {insert your own ist in here} and will be yet further shunned by polite society (that said, where I live now, not so much in the way of polite society!)
So, assuming that several other people have these internal dialogues that sometimes stray into areas that are unacceptable in real life or real words. We have internal police that not just correct and admonish these thoughts but ask useful questions of the thought process itself. Like, why do you feel that way, what logical reason do you have for feeling that way etc and these internal processes act as checks and balances in regard of an internal dialogue and a spoken dialogue and all is good in the world.
Sometimes, the checks and balances go wrong. In a heated argument or when drunk, people can and do say things that they would not normally say or do. They, let down their guard, so to speak. Most people will, at some point later, feel repentant for allowing anger or drink to bypass the internal controls and be profusely embarrassed and apologetic... generally speaking!
At least that was how the world would work before social media. Social media in all its forms appears to have bypassed the internal controls. It allows, if not encourages, some people (quite a lot it seems) to ignore the internal process that helps internally admonish and correct abhorrent internal dialogue behaviour and their unfiltered and unedited thoughts appear online within seconds of the thought having formed in their brain and before the internal dialogue processes have had time to intervene.
My thinking is that this has a number of 'real world' consequences. After one individual starts on a certain subject others will be sure to follow on the basis that if it were ok for X to say this then it must be ok for me to say it too. This form of thinking can not simply disable the internal processes that try to prevent this but they even rewrite the internal coding which then stops future internal corrections about where the boundary between right and wrong actually is.
This then acts to perpetuate itself in some form of weird atomic reaction encompassing ever greater numbers of people and at some point, having felt reassured that there is sufficient mass of like minded people, this online diatribe can and does make it to the street.
We could reassure ourselves that at least on the street there are laws and controls that act as a moral check to these things and people could find themselves in court being judged and admonished against what society has deemed to be 'the line'. But we cannot take such things for granted and just reassure ourselves that these societal defences will take care of things because these laws only exist because they were fought for with strong moral argument and agreed and set in statute because a majority of the people forming our society agreed. But... what happens when sufficient number of people decide that it is ok to say things that are currently considered unacceptable? Should that happen, leaders will be elected and statutes will be changed. And before you start thinking that such things cannot happen, you might not only be advised to check out some European history books but you might also want to look around at some of the governments and politicians we have elected in recent years.
So, it is important to fight back against hateful speech when we see it online or indeed when we encounter it on the street. I would simply caution on the approach. The worst possible approach, in my view, is open hostility towards the perpetrators. It does not advance the argument to simply call those that advance a negative attack on parts of society as being 'idiots' (or worse!) The argument can only be won by a logical approach to the position. My personal suggestion would be simply to question 'why?' as often as possible.
Oh well, that's enough for today :)
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