A Bone of Contention
Facebook is an agent of our ancient impulses: the trend of Unfriending with the simple click of a button (an act that’s easier than confronting an imminent former friend face-to-face) is further evidence of an ever-evolving political tribalism, where virtual comfort zones are demanded by surrounding oneself with like-minded people.
The cursor glides like a steely machete to decapitate someone from the opposite spectrum, under the guise that friendship is predicated on believing the same thing. This blurring of the lines between ideas and action satisfies a primitive urge to stay safe within one’s own non-binary bubble.
Hence, we see an emergence also of safe zones at institutions of higher learning, where thought police cancel speakers with alternative views. For those who embrace this as an acceptable cultural ritual, they are complicit with a swelling intolerance that is sweeping and consuming the country, penetrating into young minds that should be exhaustively searching and absorbing ideas, instead of squelching them.
This same intolerance that we see in college campuses manifests itself online, where free speech is self-adjudicated as hate speech, often as a result of a post that might be accurate, satirical, or just simply alternative to one’s perspective: this is the nexus of conflating an idea with an action. In fact, the Unfriending act is perceived as a righteous tactic, because an opposing view collapses into the realm of hatred. In reality, clouding ideas and actions together affords any eruptive response its legitimacy. But the truth is that tolerating alternative views is the cornerstone of free speech. Friends are supposed to respect one another. But in today’s cycle of contemporaneous and too-timely postings of emergent events, truth dissolves into agenda, rhetoric stirs emotions, and common sense evaporates into the ether. One reads an opposing view and the conclusion is often that the message is hateful. It should be self-evident that it’s not hate speech simply because one hates the message.
The ubiquitous social tool of Facebook provides immediate satisfaction to our visceral sense: we happily use the Like button to swiftly grunt our approval of a friend’s like-minded post, and move on to the next thrill. If we disengage from diametric commentary, then we will see more posts that espouse only what we like. That’s the dynamic of the notorious algorithm — it gives us what engages us. So if we unfriend foes because they believe contrary points of view, and we only engage in giving thumbs up and post supportive missives to those who believe as we do, then we fall prey to the primal instincts of tribalism. We create a reality out of the fiction of our isolation; our choices of what to like are minimized to those posts in our feed that we already know we like. And worst of all: we render the angry face emoticon useless.
Our news feeds are smart and ignore posts that disengage us. Facebook’s platform caters to this impulse, too, with tools like Hide post, Unfollow, Hide all from this Page, and Report post. By replying only to this, we never know about that. Our world closes in, instead of opening up. Ironically, the great promise of social media was that it was supposed to bring the world together: The technology of linking us all up, globalizing us like never before, restoring old friendships, and kindling the spirit of a Utopia of understanding and connections.
Indeed, social media is just a tool for the way we’ve always behaved as humans. Early on, in the nascent days of Facebook, we were excited to search, find friends and family, connect and share. But that paradigm is changing as we slide into the stuff that makes us human. As we get more comfortable with how the medium works, and as information is fed to us realtime, with video, with agenda, with perspective, with psychological sophistication, we are compelled to cherry pick what suits us, what makes us comfortable.
Both sides of the political spectrum are culpable: the left shuts down the so-called hateful right wing nut jobs, using every negativ-ism in history, while the right shuts down the left for being hyper-reactive morons. Ad hominem attacks abound, straw men arguments are erected and dismantled willy-nilly, and no one ends up convincing anyone of anything. So it becomes much easier to just Unfollow or Unfriend, and look for photo and video postings of cute frolicking puppies and cuddly hopping bunnies.
Now, in this virtual world where ideas are congruent with our feelings, if we suddenly see something we disagree with, we can instantaneously bash a warring tribe member over his digital head by Unfriending him, then casually move on to the next kill. The only repercussion is our walk backwards, into our own cozy camps, and away from the American dream of creating a multi-tribal soup that grows humanity. If we are all righteous all the time, we are doomed as a society. We thrive only when we effectively challenge one another with good ideas. Hyperbole and inciting fear over other people’s viewpoints does nothing to forestall the other person’s idea from becoming policy. In fact, it may very well fuel and compel the idea forward, since the reaction to it was forged from outrage, instead of built from rational thought.
Next time someone disagrees with you, instead of destroying your relationship with that person, and doing so coldly online, dare to understand your friend’s opposing views, and find hope in making a good neighbor by building a good fence that respects the lines that divide us.
If bones were the weapons during the dawn of man, let us not end our evolution with the click of a button. Let’s at least be bold enough to say, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” If we disengage from dialogue, we will only drift further into an untenable intolerance. The intent for all of us should be to pass from the Innocence of our own ideas into the realm of Experience, where those ideas are put to test by the scrutiny of others. We will as a society get much further, faster, if we accept humility over obstinacy.
The path across the rubicon toward great ideas is not a solitary journey. Nor does it come from walking the same direction with unanimous thinkers guiding the way. The road to Harmony is neither straight nor narrow; it courses, winds, and meanders through tangents and obstacles. It is littered with the bones of contention, colored by discordance, and tempered from engagement. The greatest ideas are born at the crossroads of opposition and the intersection of insight. Indeed, one of our strongest ancient impulses is to dream. And to attain imaginative transcendence, we must challenge one another with rational and passionate discourse.