(1) Social Media, Self, and Society
For quite some time now, there has been a growing awareness of the insidious algorithms operating below the surface of the most popular social media platforms - Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Each of them has been deliberately designed to promote the most fiery, outrageous, and unsubstantiated posts.
The end result of this subtle encouragement to play so loose with the truth - perhaps an unintended consequence, but certainly consequential - is the cesspool of exaggerations, lies, and lunatic conspiracy theories that for the past couple of decades have been infecting our polarized political discourse across the media, all the way up into the two chambers of Congress (and, from January 2017 through January 2021, the White House).
More recently still, there have been a growing number of studies published that document the alarming increase in cases of anxiety, depression, and suicidal behavior among teenagers and young adults, and the role that social media is playing in this rise. By enticing so many still-maturing individuals with the promise of instant gratification as “influencers” if their posts attract sufficient number of “likes” and “shares”, the algorithms prompt a culture of exaggeration in which success depends not on who you really are and how you relate to the actual people in your life, but rather on how countless complete strangers with whom you have no relationship whatsoever react to the pretend persona you put online.
From the perspective of the Buddhist teachings, both of these regrettable features of social media - its poisoning of our political discourse at the societal level, and at the individual level, its toxic effects upon mental health and emotional wellbeing - were totally predictable.
Two teachings in particular are relevant here: (1) “skillful speech”, which calls upon us to speak at all times with kindness, truthfulness, and the dual intentions of understanding the other and improving the situation at hand; and “non-self”, which reminds us constantly to hold in check our own egos, to remember the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings, and to embrace with humility the impermanence of all things, ourselves first and foremost.
In contrast to the urgings of these two fundamental Buddhist tenets, social media by its very nature (meaning the algorithms that have been deliberately programmed into it) promotes the most unskillful type of speech in the service of the most shameless kind of narcissistic self-absorption.
It’s unlikely that we can either regulate or legislate these unwanted effects away - at least not nearly as soon as the growing urgency of the situation warrants. In fact, the highly polarized state of our current politics - itself a product of social media - is likely to serve as one of its staunchest protectors.
For the time being, then, while we look for more effective means of countering the toxic effects of social media, one thing we can do is to renew our personal commitment to practicing skillful speech and to cultivating a non-self perspective over our own egoistic impulses.
(2) Helpful and Unhelpful Noise in a Zoom Chatroom
Last week, I attended an hourlong online event sponsored by Tricycle magazine. The topic was “The Not-Self Strategy”; the format was a conversation between Tricycle’s editor James Shaheen and the Buddhist teacher and author Thanissaro Bhikkhu; and the venue, of course, was Zoom.
Connectivity problems on Thanissaro’s end interrupted the conversation barely fifteen minutes in, and for the next fifteen minutes, as we all waited in vain for Thanissaro’s return, the chatroom began to pulse with participant comments - progress reports from the call’s technical moderator on her efforts to restore the connection; from the attendees, sympathetic assurances of understanding about the technological snafu, and helpful suggestions on how to resolve it; expressions of gratitude to our host James for the conversation thus far; and even a few humorous words of wisdom to help pass the time (my favorite one suggested an analogy between our guest’s “not-presence” and his chosen topic of “not-self”!)
Our lively chatroom conversation, while not a good substitute for the conversation we were all there for, still served as a useful way of supporting (and entertaining!) each other during that fallow stretch of time, before the event was finally cancelled at the thirty-minute mark.
This was quite a contrast to my experience of this same chatroom during the first 15-minute period. As James and Thanissaro were getting started with their conversation, the chatroom display box began scrolling audience member comments - praise, criticism, ideas and observations not yet brought up by the speakers, and eventually argumentative comments between people holding different points of view about a conversation just barely begun.
It was a steady stream of unnecessary and, in some cases, unskillful speech. And yes, I realize that I could have simply turned the display off, but sad to say, I let myself get hooked by all the drama.
Looking back now, I wonder how any of the active chatters could have been truly listening to the conversation. And I wonder how many others among the non-chatters were being as distracted as I was. And most of all, I wonder how many - if indeed any at all - of the chatters had even the slightest idea of how utterly useless their comments actually were.
But one thing I’m not wondering about is what my chatroom setting will be next week, when I attend the re-scheduled (and hopefully better connected) Zoom conversation between James and Thanissaro.
Without any doubt, my chat display will be off!
(3) Postscript
Interesting reading from the past few weeks:
In this recent Guest Essay for The New York Times, David Miliband, a former foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, warned that we are living in an increasingly dangerous “Age of Impunity” … “[Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] offers a textbook example of the Age of Impunity. Impunity is the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in starkest form, the commission of crimes without punishment. In Ukraine this has included repeated violations of international humanitarian law, which is supposed to establish clear protections for civilians, aid workers and civilian infrastructure in conflict zones. The danger is that few people will ever face consequences for these crimes.
The impunity in Ukraine is only one part of a broader global trend. In conflicts around the world, attacks on health facilities have increased by 90 percent in the past five years, and twice as many aid workers have been killed in the last decade as in the one before that. In recent years, civilians account for 84 percent of war casualties — a 22-percentage point increase from the Cold War period. The lack of accountability for crimes in places like Syria and Yemen has fueled the culture of impunity we now see in Ukraine and elsewhere.
It’s not just war zones. Impunity is a helpful lens through which to understand the global drift to polycrisis, from climate change to the weakening of democracy. When billionaires evade taxes, oil companies misrepresent the severity of the climate crisis, elected politicians subvert the judiciary and human rights are rolled back, you see impunity in action. Impunity is the mind-set that laws and norms are for suckers.”
New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow called his readers’ attention to the emerging conservative campaigns to demonize D.E.I. (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives across all American institutions, which is being spearheaded by activist Chris Rufo and championed by such influential Republican governors as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida … “This fight against D.E.I. isn’t confined to public institutions and bureaucracies. When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law limiting D.E.I. in the workplace last April, Rufo likened him to Teddy Roosevelt and praised his ‘muscular’ strategy for combating ‘corporate malfeasance.’ In fact, Rufo sees Florida as the seeding ground for his censorship, where it can take root and spread, and Texas has already followed suit. This month, just a few days after DeSantis announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on D.E.I., the office of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, issued a memo warning state agency and public university leaders that the use of D.E.I. in hiring was illegal. This is the New Right’s strategic plan: a relentless push to re-establish and strengthen the straight, cis, patriarchal, white supremacist power structure. The objective is to win the war against progress and to freeze America in a yesteryear image of itself. This is a swing-for-the-fences play.”
Farah Stockman, a member of the New York Times editorial board, offered this somber assessment of the costs of war that we don’t always pay sufficient attention to what she calls “the breathtaking waste of war” … “How sad that human beings survived deadly waves of Covid only to get right back into the business-as-usual of killing one other. It’s senseless to spend tens of billions of dollars on missiles, tanks and other aid, when more needs to be done to help communities adapt to rising oceans and drying rivers. It’s lunacy that farmers in a breadbasket of the world have gone hungry hiding in bomb shelters.
Governments gussy up war. They talk of victory because that gives soldiers hope and the will to fight on. But in the end, war is death in a muddy foxhole. It’s an existential fight over a frozen field with no strategic value. It’s a generational grudge that begets new generational grudges.
When a country is fighting for its survival, as Ukraine is, the ability to wage war is essential. Indeed, it can feel like the only thing that really counts. But it is also true that our collective prosperity as human beings depends upon the absence of war, which gives people the breathing room they need to farm, to trade, to make scientific breakthroughs and art. Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine makes us all poorer, hungrier and more insecure. Although the world has avoided the mutually assured destruction of nuclear war so far, it has not dodged the slow-moving bullet of mutually assured economic degradation.”
Tom Nichols, in a recent issue of The Atlantic daily newsletter, worried about the prospects of a second Trump presidency and wondered about the people who are supporting his bid for reelection … “In 2016, Trump supporters could lean on a slew of hopeful arguments: Trump is just acting; he’ll hire professional staff; the ‘good’ Republicans will keep him in line; the job will sober him up. All of these would be disproved over time. But by 2020, Trump, along with his enablers at Fox and other right-wing outlets, had created a kind of impermeable anti-reality field around the GOP base. This shell of pure denial defeated almost any argument about anything. Media, flummoxed by having a sociopathic narcissist in the Oval Office, treated Trump like a normal political leader, and soon we all became accustomed to the fact that the president of the United States routinely sounded like the guy at the end of the bar who makes you decide to take your drink over to a table or a booth. When Joe Biden won, I hoped that this strange fever gripping so many Americans would finally pass. But the fever did not break, not even after January 6, 2021, and the many hearings that showed Trump’s responsibility for the events of that black day.
And now Trump has kicked off his attempt to regain office with a litany of lunacy.
But we shouldn’t mistake Trump’s gibbering for harmless political glossolalia. By now it should be clear that the people listening to Trump don’t care about facts, or even about policy or politics. They enjoy the show, and they want it back on TV for another four years. And this is a problem not with Trump but with the voters.”
Thanks for reading this issue of TLBR. Look for the next one in three weeks, posting on Wednesday, March 29th.
Hi Tom! It's just the same in yUK... Trump = Johnson = Trump... And the slanging matches keep going on. The person who is supposed to represent me in 'Parliament' tells me that my ideas are just part of the 'echo chamber' of social media. His ideas are, of course, generated by himself. I'm contemplating informing him that he exists in the 'echo chamber' created by Edmund Burke, Charles Murray, Roger Scruton, and Oakshott. But do I really want to? Gurdjieff would call it the sin of Making Accounts...
Colin