“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”-Friedrich Nietzsche
I just realized something crazy: most people today are now getting 100% of their ideas about the world from the media: social media and traditional media.
Think about that for a second.
It's as if we reverted to the time before books when people were told what to think because there was a control on information by those in power.
We have reverted. The Internet, with its promise of universal inclusion and the sharing of all ideas, has backfired. The algorithms are doing it. The media properties are doing it. Users are doing it.
And the net effect is people believe their own shit. THAT IS DANGEROUS FOR US ALL.
Most people are not reading books, especially the younger generation that grows up on short bits of content. Who has time for books?
Most people are not discussing their ideas in person, you often hear the typical, "I don't want to talk about politics, or religion, or this or that" in person.
People are afraid to talk with anyone that might disagree with them. They instead hide behind the safety of a screen and the ability to delete and edit comments.
What is this going to cause?
It's going to create BILLIONS of dogmatic and myopic humans with polarized and fragile beliefs that are NEVER challenged and are instead fed a constant stream of reinforcement.
This is how wars start. This is how revolutions happen. This is how violence becomes a default.
If you look at the last 12,000 years, since the advent of agriculture, humans have gone to war on their own species... and it's still going on all over the world. The idea that bloody conflict is a thing of the past is a pipe dream.
When the human blocks, close out, cancels, and otherwise shows signals of what it does and doesn't want to see, the algo's respond by appeasing the user because that is what the corporations want: for you to remain on their platform so they can monetize your attention.
I've always been an optimist. I still am.
But what I'm certain of: there is going to be a lot more pain, suffering, and destruction in our future. The idea that we've "evolved" out of this may have been true before the Internet. But I now see the current Internet as the greatest threat to our humanity.
Scary, I know, which is why we all need self-reliance. We need to cultivate nuanced, self-aware, and open thought patterns that can destroy dogma and keep it at bay the best we can.
We need to raise our kids with more traditional means. We need to challenge our beliefs and engage in compassion for those that think differently.
The individual needs to take personal responsibility for these dangers and for how he or she perpetuates these dangerous ideas to others.