INFORMATION: FACING REALITY
Information Makes a Difference
It’s disturbing for me to notice how information has changed so dramatically since the first time I wrote about it in Leadership and the New Science. This was 1991, before the Internet, before smartphones, before we had begun to communicate at digital speed. I had just discovered that order was available without control, that information was the source of newness and creativity, that living systems were capable of ordering themselves into higher functioning if they remained open to information. Even chaos felt rich with possibilities. Leaders needed to understand these incredible opportunities and relax their grip on information. They needed to open the organizational channels, share information freely, and become friends with the ambiguity and chaos that breed new information. If they did all these things without fear or restraint, the self-ordering capacities of the Universe would kick in, and we would be given the “gift of a living universe, the gift of evolution, growth into new forms. Life goes on, richer, more creative than before.”5
Wow.
I don’t regret writing any of that; it was an accurate description that felt true at the time. Now my words are most useful as a before and after perspective. Those possibilities were real until information changed from communications among people to high speed transmissions delivered in cyberspace. Information still is a difference that makes a difference, but it is its mode of delivery that has made the most significant difference in reshaping, in-forming global culture.
If you’re old enough, you may remember life before the Internet. If you’re very old, never mind.
You may remember reading newspapers, articles, and books to get your information. You may remember being able to read for more than a few minutes and to remember what you read. You may remember conversations where you leisurely discussed ideas with friends and family over a meal. You may remember gathering with work colleagues for hours or even days to think about plans and strategies. You may remember the esteem in which we held science as the source of important factual information. You may remember when there were facts. And evidence that was used in making decisions.
That way of life vanished with high-speed delivery, universal access, and social media. This combination has created more than information overload. Social media servers may transmit information without error, but messages still deteriorate—into feelings, opinions, rumors, and conspiracies.
The clear transmission of facts and evidence becomes irrelevant in the hyperemotional space of social media.
Facts come from a world external to ourselves—namely, reality. Actually, that’s the whole point. But in the social media world, they are either meaningless or threatening to the self we’re constructing and protecting. The world can’t help but degrade into “It’s all about me.” Deluged with information filtered through the lens of popular self, our internal monitoring causes the world to shrink: Did the news make me feel bad? Turn it off. Did that comment upset me? Blast the messenger. Did that criticism hurt me? Get depressed or strike back. This is the tragedy of self-reference where, instead of responding to information from the external environment to create an orderly system of relationships, the narrow band of information obsessively processed creates isolation, stress, and self-defense.6 Focused internally, the outside world where facts reside doesn’t have meaning.
Our communication with one another via the Web generates extreme reactions. Think about how small events take over the Internet because people get upset from a photo and minimal information. There doesn’t have to be any basis in fact or any understanding of more complex reasons for why this event happened. People see the visual, comment on it, and viral hysteria takes over. Even when more context is given later that could help people understand the event, it doesn’t change their minds. People go back to scanning and posting, and soon there is another misperceived event to get hysterical about. One commentator calls this “infectious insanity.”7
When there is real information (facts and evidence), it can be used deliberately to misinform, arouse anger, and generate support. The phrase is “weaponized information.” It describes the intentional use of lies, fabricated data, and half-truths to win people over. This has always been true in brand management and marketing—we expect to hear false claims about a product. But it is increasingly used by formal leaders and politicians as a strategy to deceive the opposition, win approval ratings and influence decisions. They know what they’re saying is not true, but if it furthers their power, they do more of it. This is the post-truth era.
No longer is information a source of order; it is used intentionally to create disorder to benefit the leader. This is an ages-old practice that the Web facilitates beyond a leader’s wildest dreams.
Of course, leaders have always manipulated information and lied to us. But the Internet changes the power of this practice by adding speed and intensity. The velocity of the message changes how the content is perceived and this intensifies the emotional response. There’s no time to think, only to react. In the midst of battle, who can stop to consider facts? You might get killed if you get distracted for a minute by accurate information. (Of course, if you had accurate information, you wouldn’t be on the battlefield to begin with.)
Evidence of the Web’s impact on factual information is also obvious in investigative reporting. I’ve personally seen many instances where younger reporters go after a public figure or organization, creating a scandal where there is none just to get ahead. When their newsroom bosses are called to account for the lack of facts in a report, for the promulgation of rumors and misinformation, they usually brush it off by mumbling something about free speech. No one is holding these reporters accountable for accuracy and factual evidence; they have carte blanche to destroy good leaders if this makes a name for themselves. What is judged as “newsworthy” is the attention your piece gets. And the number of Tweets you do each day.8
Other journalists still determined to do in-depth reporting of important issues draw our attention to the fact that in-depth means time. Thorough investigations require time and money and the support of editors.
The Panama Papers, a devastating report on how political leaders and politicians hid billions in personal wealth offshore, was the product of one year’s dedicated work among the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters; nearly 400 reporters from 80 countries assessed the content of 11 million documents.9 Surely this is one of the great examples of collaborative investigative reporting. And the sheer volume of documents from so many countries required such collaboration.
Many people have commented on media bias, a valid, serious concern with the growth of media conglomerates led by owners who arrogantly publicize their bias. Their manipulation of facts and deliberately constructed ignorance of issues has contributed mightily to public cynicism about facts. And now we need to pay attention to Facebook since it’s becomes the major news source for millions.10
In people’s confusion about what is real, what is bias, what is fact, what is misinformation, combined with their indifference to discern one from another, it becomes easier to label everything as bogus, false, rigged.
It takes effort to discern what’s really going on—it’s easier to be cynical. This attitude is alarmingly evident among younger people who grew up in the Internet age and have no other frame of reference or experience in assessing the validity of information.
I believe that what has happened to information explains what has happened to science.11
People feel free to dismiss any scientific research as bias, mere opinion like everything else. Once labeled as opinion, people feel free to dismiss it if it conflicts with their already formed personal views.
They casually push it aside or label it as conspiracy—if they even take notice of it at all. Or companies pay a few greedy scientists to falsely refute the work of the majority of scientists. And Congress persecutes climate scientists.12
If we were still behaving as rational, information-seeking humans, as living systems intent on survival, there would be no question about climate change. Or the destructive environmental and health impacts from toxic products and polluted air. Or the massive amounts of evidence about the issues most affecting our survival: social, political, environmental.
But we’re not acting rationally. We’re myopically focused on the petty conflicts that keep a waning civilization from noticing the destructive forces already occupying their doorstep.
Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
Did Neurochemicals Cause the Crash of 2008?
Psychology is a well-attested way of displacing attention from social causes. After the economic crash of 2008, some psychologists concluded that the problem was not the banks but the brain. Wall Street had been afflicted by the wrong kind of neurochemicals. There was too much testosterone among traders, and too many bankers were high on cocaine. A drug was accordingly developed based on brain scans of traders that promised better decision making. What matters in the narcissistic world of late capitalism is not what you think or do but how you feel. And since how you feel can’t be argued against, it is conveniently insulated from all debate. Men and women can now stroll around in continuous self-monitoring mode, using apps to track their changes of mood. The brutal, domineering ego of an older style of capitalism has given way to the tender self-obsession of the new.13
William Davies