Maybe it's because people are trying to appeal to emotion rather than actually say anything real.
Maybe it is just me.
But almost everything everyone said by everyone [saying anything] online seems to be...wrong.
Back in my youth--and even by the time I was in college, this was still something that was no big deal. Society wasn't so mediated by the internet that being wrong on the internet mattered. This was still funny:
The internet even seemed to be something, per the Cyberpunks' thinking, that would spread true gnosisf, verification and checking, and open-up the frontiers for human flourishing in facts and truth, rather than narrative lies.[1] Perhaps the Cyberpunks were, instead, rather too optimistic--idealistic--about human nature and potential not just on average, but under the dynamics that occur en mass. [They] thought [people were] just like [themselves].
+ + +
But now, however, I repeat myself: it seems like everything said online is...wrong.
There are exceptions--but you have to really look.
The exceptions aren't ideologically monolithic or non-diverse. Anything but.
But you really have to look!
Oftentimes people talk of algorithms, censorship, suppression...even without the political fears of speech leading to censorship, I think there generally is a case to be made that businesses find tickling ears and keeping real things from the marketplace is generally valuable to them.
I'm not certain most people truly want or care for "truth" or anything near it. Whether they are right or left, in-between, at another level, or in another dimension altogether.
+ + +
Given that civilization is, however, determined ultimately by averages...
What happens when all of society (1) communications online where (2) all communications are noise?
Where they are marketing, disinformation, emotionalism--dragnets for emotions and praise and approval?
When everyone is a politician, a "performer", and nobody a producer: when all the world truly is a stage...
and nobody is getting anything done, saying anything, etc., unless perhaps you're an Elona Musk?
+ + +
What happens when the effective are tyrannized by the masses, who are empowered and enabled via internetworking?
Sure, the right is happy about this when it's the left-establishment getting panned...but when you actually need people to mask or something worse than the cooph is actually spreading?
+ + +
What happens when "education" is ideologically conformed to "concepts not facts" rather than "concepts from facts [and circumstances [and contingencies]]"?
When interpersonal relationships are subjugated to parameters of highly socially conformist tyrannies and the superficial, shallow demands and expectations pulled right out of the pages of "How to Win Friends and..."?
When (due to the corruption of education--ironically, in origin often for formerly "conservative" corporate firms' own bottom-line needs rather than just by the supposedly "fringe radical lefties!"),
the remainder of people who aren't just too dumb to "read the room", but who are actually too skeptical to sniff the air and conform to the supposed ideological bent of "the right kind of people" or "of the better schools" or "who have power" or "of dominant society" (various ways this gets described sociologically and by observers)...the people, that is, who are society's "out" back to a sane road, are themselves ill-equipped and without preparation to champion truth, sanity, and decency--that is, in more than rhetoric for more than sound bites on a campaign trail against a crassly perceived opponent--and lead that charge out of mass hysterics, panics, delusions, and madness?
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
―
+ + +
I'm not certain these are hypotheticals, or thought experiments.
I think the vast bulk of humanity--whether in "western liberal democracy" or under "eastern despotism" (to use the current and classical phraseology)--is stewing in this kind of toxic mess.
A nihilism, but not a nihlism of no belief--a nihilism of socially imposed avoidance and appeals for approvals...so any beliefs left themselves become[2] nonsense?
= NOTES
[1] Maybe I was just lucky, to have such prescient teachers. I somehow passed, as I was moved from school to school (single family household, following opportunities), through one program after another with rather insightful, thoughtful technical educators. We were taught about reviewing and comparing sources, being suspect, being aware, minimizing (as children, at least) giving-out personal info... And though we couldn't have enough experience to be critical or understand, coached to eventually become suspect and circumspect about infosources: we could look at anything, but suspect it all, and believe nobody too certainly.
[2] --like the new-evangelicals (in their dearth of theology) parroting words orthodox perhaps in form, but sans definitions--
Posts
When you don't need an expensive office suite, just a program that meets your basic needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment