CODA
CODA
At the end of 2016, following the U.S. election, it became clear that the Internet played a very significant influence over the news that people received about issues and candidates, supposedly information used to determine their vote. We learned of incendiary websites created in Eastern Europe by young people to make money; of bots (robots) programmed to phone millions with lies and misinformation. We learned that nearly half of Americans got their news from Facebook (for Millennials, it was over 60 percent) and that those news feeds did not distinguish between what came from actual newsrooms or from friends. What was fake news, what was real? Did it matter?
The term echo chamber became popular to describe how we are fed “news” that we like, from people we like, determined by algorithms on Facebook and Google too complex for any one person to understand.1
Personal interests and preferences solidify into narrow, rock-hard positions as we are fed only news that we like. Facebook research had already proven that if we receive news that pleases us, happy emotions cause us to buy more things advertised online.
It will never be known how much influence this manufactured environment of willful distortions had on the election or what will happen in future elections in the United States and other countries, or to public interest in government behavior and policy decisions. But one thing is clear: we are witnessing the death of reality.
As a Buddhist, I’ve spent long years training my mind to not be deceived by appearances, to experience the illusory nature of everything. I was taught early on that nothing is what I think it is. Nothing that appears is its own independent self. What appears to be solid will soon be gone. Everything changes.
But this is different. We cannot live in this world without a commonly shared sense of what is important, what is of value, what is “real.” The Internet has enabled global groundlessness unparalleled in human history because of its scale and penetration.2
Our senses are bombarded with lies, rumors, conspiracies, out of which we make sense according to which group we choose to affiliate with. How do we make sense of the larger world beyond our group? We don’t. We contract inward, we seek self-protection, and the world becomes ever more hostile and frightening.
And then, as is true throughout history, someone comes along and gives our battered selves something to hold onto. His promises do not need to be based on reality; they don’t have to make sense. They only need to offer people the prospect of relief from fear. In a world so wildly out of control, people are promised a place to ground. And others are here, just like me, who’ve found the same ground. Nothing else matters. Here is where we can feel secure. Here we will be taken care of. Here we feel rescued from the awful chaos.
Humans cannot live without meaning. The greater the uncertainty, the more our desperate grasp for a handhold, a shred of meaning. Is our meaning found in the realization that we are the chosen ones? The realization that everyone else is inferior? The hope that our former way of life will be restored? The promise that someone will end the sickening fear and noise in our heads?
When there is no shared reality and people are flailing for ground, whoever declares a reality that promises to reduce fear becomes the leader. It is always this way, and this is where we are now.
This is the reality that summons us to be Warriors for the Human Spirit.
Humans have a responsibility to find themselves where they are, in their own proper time and place, in the history to which they belong and to which they must inevitably contribute either their response or their evasions, either truth and act, or mere slogan and gesture.
Thomas Merton, Catholic monk, author, activist
CODA: NOTES
1 See Kartenk Hosanagar, “Blame the Echo Chamber on Facebook, but Blame Yourself Too,” wired.com, November 25, 2016; and David Lee, “Facebook Fake News Row: Mark Zuckerberg Is a Politician Now,” bbc.com, November 19, 2016. I’m sure there’s been much more written since then.
2 “Truth and Lies in the Age of Trump” by The Editorial Board, nytimes.com, December 12, 2016.