Beyond Good And Evil — Why Public Discourse Today’s So Coarse & 3 Things You Absolutely Need To Know!
Well, it has very little to do with truth or logic, but a lot to do with language. And if it isn’t the intention, it very much is the impact!
The use of catastrophising language impacts on mental health and the aftershocks from the resulting trauma may be felt for some months, if not years to come.
In normal times traumatic events can leave a broad and lasting mark and not just on those directly affected by events. After 9/11, people who were not directly exposed to trauma, but spent many hours in front of a television or looking at their smart devices were at high risk for psychopathology, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
We know this, yet in 2022 here we are, and no-one, not even Lewis Carroll, saw identity politics coming, and the impact of the attendant psychosocial intolerance between individuals and on-line social media warriors.
Words now speak louder than actions. Sticks and stones still break our bones, but the idea that words can’t hurt us has been found wanting and proved to be false.
People are being hurt by words and in reaction are picking up sticks and stones, in the form of hounding those they feel are transgressing out of their livelihood
It is all too easy to feel under siege by a constant online onslaught and the volatility, uncertainty, and confusion this throws-up, flattens our purpose, zaps our sap, and eats away at our compassion, leaving us with a “compassion deficit.”
And so we go round and round the cycle: Rinse. Wash. Repeat!
First Then A Note To Self
“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.” Eric Hoffer
So, we need a bigger boat and to understand these three things:
- Choices are not binary
- Nature abhors a vacuum; &
- We are hardwired with bias.
We will come back and unpack these three things at the end of this piece, but it’s going to be a rough ride getting there, because with little accountability or risk of punishment online, there has never been a reason to behave, and personal responsibility and blame have seemingly fallen by the wayside.
We are now living in a Greek Tragedy, and we shouldn’t be too surprised.
Equipped with a smartphone, we have become the centre of our universe, faux celebrities starring in the biopic of our own lives.
Curators of our own existence, we are living through a parallel pandemic of narcissism, creating a humungous existential angst over identity, and exacerbating cultural divisions.
Yet courtesy isn’t, nor should it ever be an optional extra; it’s the mortar of civilisation.
Civil society emerged from the inculcation of codes of civility between opposing tribes and later, political classes, which encouraged debate and permitted the sharing of opinions.
Courtesy creates good faith in relationships, it strengthens social bonds and historically it encouraged and allowed the establishment of guilds, associations, and political networks.
So, how did we get here?
The Way We Were
In 1711, the poet, Alexander Pope, wrote in ‘An Essay on Criticism’,
“And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line, While they ring round the same unvary’d Chimes…”
Pope’s contemporary Jonathan Swift and author of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ was also widely regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He wrote essays, poetry, pamphlets, and often published anonymously or under pseudonyms, including Isaac Bickerstaff.
Both were plying their trade in satire and holding a mirror up to the establishment and the behaviour of others using the written word
Contemporaneously, the painter, printer and cartoonist, William Hogarth, also known as the grandfather of satire, was holding his mirror up as a pictorial satirist and social critic.
The 18th Century gave birth to the Enlightenment — the great ‘Age of Reason’. It was a century where scrutiny, challenge and bold enquiry became the norm.
Traditional authority was called into question and the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change was embraced.
It was also a period of rigorous scientific, political, and philosophical discourse, that produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars, and revolutions, including both the American and French!
But it was also as far removed from the wild west of social media and today’s cancel culture as it would be possible to imagine and,
“My friends, there is no boldness in a Twitter Pile-On.” [Tweet This]
In his novel Emile, first published in 1762, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote,
“There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered.”
This optimistic assessment of the human condition did not chime with the sentiments of the time though and was enough to get the book publicly burnt and author arrested.
Whilst a hundred years before, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes set the bar when he described life as “nasty, brutish & short” — A description which could so aptly apply to what today takes place every second on Twitter.
It Wasn’t Always Like This
If you’d have joined Twitter in 2007, the site was all about harmless fun. Full of jokes and silliness — stuff like ‘Replace a word in a film title with cheese’.
A decade later it had become a tense and divisive moonscape, patrolled by angry people ready to jump on any stray comment.
And now the social media equivalent of la passiggiata takes place, but without the polite observance, decorum, or respect for convention, or place. Creating a Wild West of very public messages up to 280 characters in length, being sent more often or not between different factions, or tribes.
Psychologists find that we’re drawn to people who represent our tribe or group, and the Twitter model amplifies this, acting as the ultimate tribal echo chamber.
In the vacuum created by Twitterisation, users become segmented into smaller & smaller sub-divisions as they collocate around an identity and associated beliefs, and these become a prerequisite for thriving online as everything you believe in your tribe must be believed stridently, broadcast widely, and your allegiance to your ideology be all encompassing!
Whilst online discourse has become gamified, by giving immediate and quantified evaluations of conversational transactions.
In short, communication is scored, and if a nasty or aggressive tweet is shared and liked more our reward instinct is triggered.
So, we’ll tweet more of the same, putting even more words of moral outrage into a tweet to give it greater impact, traction, and influence.
It is the concept of social proof made flesh, and woe betide if you find yourself in a tribe that is on the wrong side of any virtuous signalling from the Hashtag — #BeKind brigade!
In fact, kindness be damned!
Negative emotions and negative news spread faster than positive emotions & positive news, and a 24-hour blitzkrieg of current affairs from multiple media channels, purposefully uses a business model designed to keep us glued to their websites with clickbait headlines that can make us fear both for our safety and our sanity.
And this catastrophising language can become highly addictive as it leads many of us to check our smartphones and smart devices et al multiple times a day as we jump from story to story.
So, a sanity-saving tip: Always read at least as far as the third paragraph of any story!
Shame & Sharing
“Networked Shame” is the potent brew created by what takes place on social media and has been named so by the author Cathy O’Neil in her new book, “The Shame Machine”, Penguin Random House, 2022.
We see the machine learning algorithms of Facebook, Google et al continually optimising to spur conflict. The sophisticated algorithms drive traffic and advertising to create enormous profits, and this is nothing less than the gamifying of human suffering as a route to shareholder value.
Whilst the product is a toxic flow of put-downs and ridicule, or even worse — Cancellation!
On a superficial level cancel culture might be thought of as a way to castigate those we are ideologically at odds with. In practice though it is digitised bear baiting, and the algorithms increasingly reward us for hating and demonising one another, while also giving succour to this culture and distorting our perception of what constitutes reality and what is fact!
“Almost everywhere we turn, trust is on the decline. Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions, and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago” Stephen Richards Covey
Covey originally wrote this nearly twenty years ago, in fact almost a year before the first Apple iPhone was launched in 2007.
And things have been steadily going further south ever since, as social media has weakened three major forces that collectively bind us together:
- social capital i.e., extensive social networks with high levels of trust
- strong institutions, &
- shared stories.
Because as human beings it is in our DNA to be meaning makers and story tellers, and what are we if not the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Social media however has turned this on its head.
So, if we talk straight this needs to be balanced by demonstrating respect. If we right perceived and actual wrongs we should do so with humility. And If we challenge reality we must be crystal clear what our intention is and what outcome we expect.
Who now practices the art of really listening? Where resides personal and public accountability?
To paraphrase Covey, the best leaders recognise that trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It underpins and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives — both personally and professionally!
And Today?
“Every new child is nature’s chance to correct culture’s error.” Ted Hughes
The road to ruin is ever paved with good intentions, and in all honesty can the truth survive in this ‘Age of sharing and shaming’ ?
The act of sharing is no longer “other-directed” i.e., determined by giving a portion of something to someone else, it has become “inner-directed” i.e., focussed on one’s own thoughts, feelings, and experiences — Hashtag #MyTruth!
In a time where there has never been so much information, many of us are no longer acting in good faith, or so it would appear.
Is this our visceral response to the complexity, and confusion, the commotion and upheaval we are experiencing?
I believe our online behaviour is exacerbated by the 24/7 rolling news, clickbait headlines and catastrophising language, fact presented as fiction, and fiction presented as fact, half-truth, and post truth!
The legendary Hollywood film producer Robert Evans, famously said, “There are three sides to every story — Your side, My side, &, the Truth!!” [Tweet This]
And I think it remains true that the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
Intelligence is knowing what to say and do. Wisdom is knowing when to say and do it.
Wisdom starts when we begin to call things by their proper name, and we must be bold and gain some objective distance — Some understanding — Strengthen our impartiality, reset our filters, separate truth from fiction, or faction — And spot the canard that awaits us at every turn.
Funnily enough though, we may talk an awful lot about stuff, but rarely do we think about it.
We now live in a world where social media ensures we are constantly interacting with things put forward as facts in a perpetual running dialogue.
The whole notion of what truth is has decayed and become infected by a cultural shift that sometimes seems to suggest that emotion trumps reason and that social media ‘truths’ are more powerful than objective truth.
And it feels almost impossible to escape
In fact, truth has become a malleable, floating commodity — But it’s not just out there bobbing around freely in an ocean of public thought and opinion is it?
There’s a massive interplay — free-trading, horse trading, hucksterism, misdirection et al going on — Millions of games of capture the flag are being played and we are all being played along with them too!
So, What To Do?
In today’s world we need to try at least to understand these three things:
- Choices are not binary: The word binary is increasingly used to describe the choices we need to make & the positions we should take — Either it’s this or it’s that — More and more this is how things are framed and presented to us, day-in and day-out, forcing us to take a side, make a choice — But life is not that simple & perhaps balance and truth have become its casualties and we’ve unlearned how to be critical, to weigh things and to evaluate what’s before us? We live in a Volatile Uncertain Complex Ambiguous world, things cannot be certain — So, let go of that binary mindset and free yourself from the mental chains that bind you
- Nature abhors a vacuum: Life and so much that happens is still a great mystery — Beneath our world of fixed objects is uncertainty and we know this because Quantum Theory reveals how elementary particles and waves continually appear and disappear — It’s impossible to predict or know with any certainty so many things in a world that Greg Bear describes in ‘The Infinity Concerto’ as being , “All waves, with nothing waving, over no distance” — But as nature abhors a vacuum, human nature abhors uncertainty — We want answers and we want them now — Without them we feel uncomfortable, ill at ease — But of course, there are far more questions than answers and we bide in that tension between the unknown and the unanswered — The American Astronomer & author, Carl Sagan, wrote “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” — So, learn and allow yourself to trust the elemental You — Your brain, Your instincts and, Your objective truth; &
- Know your bias: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man” Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 — With all the negative news and negative emotions coursing through the arteries of social media, we can so easily get a biased view of the world as more negative or hostile than it actually is, activating the biological fight or flight response and increasing aggression — So, accept that you have a limited perception, but also accept and understand that so does everyone and everything else, including the multiple sources you look to for reliable information, news and facts — Accept that perception and reality aren’t the same thing — And then Embrace your beautiful imperfection — We are all works in progress, as well as being the sum of our nature, nurture and our experiences — But choice is a gift we give ourselves and it can liberate — So choose not to accept everything at face value — Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable — & get to know your bias
And then we can,
“Build cathedrals with columns and arches to the stars, to let all light and hope shine within, and be of benefit to all.” (Anon)
About The Author
Having written a million plus published words over the past couple of years on leadership excellence, navigating complexity, working with change, wellbeing, well doing and Mindfulness, Paul Mudd is about making the complicated less complex, the tough stuff not so tough and putting the unreachable within reach of everyone.
He is also a Trusted Adviser, Leadership Rockstar (Apparently), Savvy Thinker, International Keynote Speaker, Best Selling Mindfulness Author, Global Well Being & Well Doing Influencer, Co-Founder and Director of the Mudd Partnership and Co-Creator of the new tMP Hexagon Leadership & Coaching programme #ThinkHexagon © 2021
