entitlement & civilised society

it is destroying us

Those of us who participated in a webinar with Dr. Cassandra Lewis this morning had a real treat. She led us through a lot of material but assured we all participated as she hoped, creating a meaningful back and forth between Los Angeles, Peach Glen, Kansas City, and the Beltway. Many thanks to all from whom I learned, not just Cassandra.

The last question opened the door to a topic we most certainly will revisit because it might (assumptions are dangerous, I have noted) be the toughest nut to crack in cyber and information, two topics interwoven but decidedly different. That question centered on how do we address the disinformation problem created not only by AI technology but simply by malicious actors at multiple levels of our world? What is the way to cut this off from destroying societies?

I realise we have not had the discussion yet but I have no idea how this will work if we so fundamentally distrust each other. That distrust pervades every single level of U.S., much less global, interaction.

As of this 5 morning (haven’t heard news since), three separate shootings in the last few days across this nation resulted when innocent, confused folks went to a wrong home (Kansas City), drove up a wrong drive way (Hebron), and tried opening a door on the wrong car (Elgin). In Kansas City the homeowner is alleged to have told the victim ‘not come come around again’ before shooting him in the end while the other cases had no audible exchange of words according to press reports.

We absolutely must as individuals and as a whole of more than 330,000,00 begin recouping our sense of respect for the other 329,999,999 people living in this country. The entitlement leading us to shoot because someone unknown darkens our doorstep without calling in advance or because the individual is lost is insane. Why does it happen? Because far too often each of us believes our needs or desires or fears are more important than anyone else’s.

We continue believing that we are victimised when our desires are not satisfied. Seriously?

The Declaration of Independence, one of those documents so many people love to assume gives them unfettered rights, has two phrases we seem increasingly to forget: all men (and since men can’t get here without women, women) are created equal, endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. Strikes me that living without being shot by someone with whom I have never even exchanged a word is an unalienable right. This is affecting all of us, people, ALL.

All men and women are created equal. Why do people assume behaviour of attacking others is acceptable ? Why are they then surprised when the law incarcerates them? The recent shootings of people in the wrong place are classic examples.

We no longer discuss seem to discuss societal obligations, focusing instead on what restrictions others are imposing on each of us and our desires. What are we teaching our children about this behaviou as a result?

This entire question reflects a deterioration in civility but also highlights a probable—it’s awfully hard to tell because of the nature of the activity—use of disinformation about others to divide us. Believe me, I am not naive enough to say the first four centuries of American history were harmonious, respectful lovefests. Slavery, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrantism (any immigrants: the English did not like the Scots who did not like the English and so forth), misogony, anti-gay, and an incredibly long list of ‘anti’ views have pervaded this country since the English arrived in 1607 determined to settle a land already long-populated by Native peoples.

What is different now, however, appears the toxic mixture of entitlement and the most egregious negatives about whole classes of ‘others’ promoted systematically by competing and autonomous news sources. These sources appear to choose the most negataive descriptions of others to build a narrative of fear regarding attempts to steal positions in society for which the ‘victims’ are entited in some way.

Conspiracy theories are not new. The United States is only one society where myths that Popes will order a Catholic president to serve Rome’s purposes to the detriment of Protestants have pervaded, misinformation dating back hundreds of years. Similarly, the utterly repulsive cartoons and chatter over centuries about Jews controlling banks, newspapers, politics, and everything else run rampant through U.S. history as they sadly do through so much of the Judeo-Christian world.

Today, however, we have a constant diet, 24/7 if one partakes, of misinformation about groups many of the listeners seek to avoid. It’s a constant stream of lies about people with whom many seek never to engage to validate or disprove anything. The contemporary 'information’ environment, especially online, draws people to hear what they want to hear, repeating it constantly to drown out any other views.

This makes it ever harder to discover that misinformation is afoot or that individuals or classes of people are indeed human with comparable concerns, needs, whims, and equality. Our increasing isolation into de facto intellectual, cultural, and political ghettoes is not only counter-productive for the future but downright dangerous.

Note I regret this is not one political side or the other; I fear it’s across the board. We feel comfortable taking the easiest path of not asking sufficient questions of sources and motives. We are comfortable around those with our views, often shunning opportunities to hear others’ beliefs. We feel entitled too often to surrender our own power of analysis to someone else as if there were no consequences. That is fundamentally incorrect.

That is not meant to empower hate. Hate is hate is hate. Nothing justifies that but we definitely see less effort to hear other views across a town than we did forty years ago.

I certainly do not mean we all do this 100% of the time! But I worry for our fabric as we close libraries, condemn those with views different from our own, accept the most negative interpretation without doing even the most basic digging to validate outrageous claims.

We can take small steps to address this, beginning by making sure we don’t ignore chances to engage with others. None, none of us, has a monopoly on knowledge; we learn from each other when we are willing to do so. But we must make the effort.

We also have an obligation as citizens of a society where all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. We must be certain the information we are absorbing, disseminating, and promoting is accurate to begin because we are now in an action-reaction spiral which threatens each and every one of us.

Disinformation may be domestic or it may be foreign but its damaging effects are the same. We must make a conscious effort to recognise it regardless of the source. Disinformation is destroying us, deliberately and accidentally as it is continuing to drive us apart in fatal ways.

How about chatting for 60 seconds today with someone you know has a view different from you won? I don’t care if it’s a Duke fan encountering a Carolina person. Take 60 seconds to hear her out on something on which you disagree. It’s a small step but it’s a step.

Dr. Lewis probably will discuss disinformation with us in a more systematic, formal manner as we all know it exists. I believe we also each have responsibility to stop circulating disinformation which is killing our children and assuring the ‘more perfect union’ is dissolving before our eyes. If we think things are bad now, imagine how much worse it will be as we spread even less trust through more vociferous arguments of hate. FIN