The demise of the familiar, but not intimate, relationship?

[August]

A very interesting article from the Washington Post about the possible reasons behind the polarization of America.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ook-next-door/

If we want to understand why the nation has become so polarized, we need to examine what's happened to the social ties that shape the way we each understand the world. The spirit of compromise that so many Americans long to reclaim was grounded in an everyday sense of mutual understanding. But the element of American community life that de Tocqueville identified as the cornerstone of compromise — the way in which power flowed from the bottom up rather than the top down — has more recently come undone.

[Aktungbby]

And, in flowing from the top down...or the bottom up...and clashing somewhere in the middle..."We have met the enemy and he is us."-pogoBBY Nuthin' on the sinnin', spinnin' mudball really amounts to much..."Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent." pogoBBY

[Oberon]

The internet has a lot to take blame for, and I think the ease in which radical views are accessed and transmitted also adds something to the polarisation.
Take Alex Jones for example, before the internet he would have been limited to as far as a home-made radio station could broadcasts, with occasional forays onto state-level media through appearances on local news and radio. As such he would be only able to spread his viewpoint to a small collection of people.
Then came the internet, and now he can do podcasts and video logs, and suddenly it's as if he has his own radio and TV show that broadcasts internationally. His viewer potential has, within a decade gone from a few thousand to millions.
Naturally, the loudest people are the ones who are heard the most, so people like Alex Jones and company gather the attention of the most people, even if their attention is limited to "What the hell is this nutjob spouting off about?" but for every five people who ignore him, there's one who doesn't, and so it spreads, through social media as people pass the link on facebook or twitter. A picture or opinion can go 'viral' within minutes and be accessed by half the planet.

In short, the world has never been smaller than it is now.

So why is it more polarised?

Perhaps it's because people are no longer willing to accept the possibility that their viewpoint may be incorrect because they have a ready access to thousands of other people with the same, incorrect, viewpoint?
Take, for example, just how quickly an urban myth can spread around the internet, being reblogged or reposted from forum to forum, from social media to social media. If it wasn't for the likes of Snopes.com, we'd be none the wiser since most of us trust the hive mind of the internet, or perhaps more specifically, the people who we receive the post from.
For example, if Steve posted something, I would assume that it was accurate because I believe he is trustworthy, and he might have received it from someone else who he believed to be trustworthy and so on it goes in return, like a game of Chinese whispers until you get to the original poster who probably thought it accurate.
It is also, perhaps, a symptom of human nature, research is hard and most people either don't have the time or do not wish to allocate the time to undertake it, therefore they automatically replicate the inaccurate data like a photocopier and continue on with their lives.

As a result, or perhaps as an offshoot of this, it is much easier for radical groups to promote their ideology by praying into the patriotic or nationalistic fervour of a nation. For example, far right groups such as the British National Party may post a picture on facebook of a soldier and will write the text "How many likes for this veteran?" on it. Now the average person will scroll down their feed and see this picture and 'like' it, not for the group that has posted it, but for the message within, however each 'like' brings the BNP more legitimacy in an online network.]
Likewise when something like the murder of Lee Rigby happens, the usual far-right suspects are very quick to jump on the bandwagon by stirring up hatred against Muslims through facebook images and 'like' campaigns.
I suspect that had facebook existed in the 1930s, the NSDAP would have run a 'Jews brought down the banks and put this child on the streets, how many likes for this child?' campaign...heck, I dare say in facebook there probably are Nazi groups doing such things, probably using the Jew image from 'Le Happy Merchant'.
Needless to say, it's not just right-wing groups that conduct such campaigns, periodically a left-wing group image will come past, or even an animal rights group ('How many likes for this poor puppy?').
Either way it's all about promoting a viewpoint through sympathetic manipulation, and the average public falls for it every time. Heck, it's a trick older than the internet, that's for certain.
Will this polarisation get worse in the future? Unfortunately I think the answer probably is yes, but it will likely fracture more into specific sub-groups, so it won't be so much Left vs Right, as it will be varying degrees of Left and Right vs each other, Libertarianism is a popular buzz-word of the 2000s, and so as each person finds a niche political viewpoint for themselves online they will slot into their own part of the giant political jigsaw puzzle, and begin to parrot the viewpoints of their political superiors, be that Democrat, Republican, Tea Party, Communist, Anarchical or so on.
I think new types of politics will emerge as the internet envelopes the globe further, a sort of technocratic system...perhaps similar in scope to the sort of organised anarchy that is seen in the likes of '4chan' may be one, and eventually the lines between the real world and online will be so blurred that we will think very little of the difference between the two.

In the meantime, however, I hope that a way to bridge the divide can be found, polarisation is never a good thing, especially when it feeds radicalisation, and lurches to the far left or right is not what any nation needs, but sadly in times of crisis or economic downturn these lurches tend to happen. Perhaps one day we will learn to evolve beyond politics, to reach a level of understanding where we no longer need such concepts as left wing and right wing, but we are unified under one global belief or understanding that we're all stuck on this tiny ball of dirt, floating in one of the most inhospitable environments known to us, and that any day our entire history, everything we've worked for, killed for, enslaved for, schemed for, bribed for, paid for, lived for and died for, could be smashed apart around us. Compared to the universe, we really are nothing, and it's about time we acknowledged that and stopped acting like we're something special.

[Armistead]

What I find amazing is people seemingly believe anything they hear if it supports their view. I could spend hours correcting memes and stupid comments on FB if I cared and sometimes they're so stupid I must. Just tonight a guy posted 81 Africans with Ebola were caught crossing the US Mexican border, then went into his rage how Obama is going to get us all killed. I pointed out his error, with a lil research figured somewhere someone got confused with the statement 81 confirmed cases in Sierra Leone. He admitted he heard it or read it and probably misunderstood, but like how can you believe and rant about something that would be covering the news as a national crisis....

It's all day with propaganda memes and stupidity, people believing they're true....

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by Armistead

..and sometimes they're so stupid I must.

Sometimes ??

Ja.. you're right, it's amazing what rubbish people think you should listen to.

[Skybird]

One can draw a link to another development: the way artificial fertilization deletes fate from man's life, because today everybody can carry out a child if he wants, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. Not only women, but men as well (yes, you read that right: men as well, thanks to the possibilities of modern surgery). This has implications that the political left, genderists and feminists and gay activists celebrate as progress, but I doubt that it is constructive progress indeed, but only is destruction. Not only must a woman no longer live with a man to raise a child, even lesbian women can now become pregnant without a man, even single men could, if they have the money to pay the medical procedure, even gay men could. Add to this the more and more permissive laws that rule that homosexual couples also can adopt children.

What it all means? It means that the clasiscal form of "family" is being systematically eroded and destroyed. It should not need great and long explanations what that means for a society. We can see it failing everywhere in the West, in whole social castes, so to speak. And so far not much good is coming from it, but a lot of cultural and social desintegration, disorientation, and brutalization. It also means a growing cash loss for the current social systems, becasue more and more children get raised by single adults depending on state wellfare. Like people buy or build houses withoiut their income allowiung them to finance it, other people get children while not caring for contraception, or calculating on state wellfare with intention, from all beginning on.

I think t is just another symptom of the Western cultural sphere collapsing and dying a slow death, comparable to the social and cultural decadence which was the symptom of the Roman erosion in power and influence and its growing economic self-castration, and taking over by the "elites" celebrating their last parties.

I hold Tocqueville in high esteem, but I fear things are worse than it appears if comparing just his focus of observations with the present states. And constantly things slide for the worse. What certain ultra-progressive - so they think of themselves at least - people consider to be liberty, in reality is nothing else than the refusal of any moral standard a society my agree to in order to form an identity that defines it as a society. It is no liberty, but total and egoist, almost nihilistic disinhibition.

[Jimbuna]

I don't blame the internet at all but my wife blames SubSim.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by Armistead

It's all day with propaganda memes and stupidity, people believing they're true....

Everything works at the speed of light now. Take the JFK assassination theories. JFK was killed in 1963 but the conspiracy theory itself didn't spin up until 1966-67 with Mark Lane. By then we'd been in Vietnam for 2 years in a big way. By 1969 the US Government had begun to lose credibility with the Baby Boomers, and at the same time the belief arose that had JFK lived we wouldn't be in Vietnam. Then you had the Church Hearings about the CIA, then Watergate, and by 1976 the JFK conspiracy was finally a cottage industry among it's devotees.

911 conspiracy theories on the other hand, were 100% internet fuel-injected from the beginning and rocketed into place in no time. The rumours begin to fly on the net he day it happened that Jews were told to avoid the building. That Arab princes had fled New York shortly before the attack. etc, etc.

The internet certainly has created massive shifts in society good and bad, shifts we're still struggling to figure out--it very well could be considered a collapse of the previous society, and the start of a new one.
　
There's a parallel in paleontology: mass extinctions. You can either kill most things off suddenly (mass die-offs), or you can rapidly replace the existing things with new things (mass turn-overs). Similarly, a societal collapse can be a destructive collapse, such as the fall of Easter Island, or a slow shift to a new society, such as after the fall of Rome.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I don't blame the internet at all but my wife blames SubSim.

Let me speak with her, I can fix that.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

The internet certainly has created massive shifts in society good and bad, shifts we're still struggling to figure out--it very well could be considered a collapse of the previous society, and the start of a new one.
　
There's a parallel in paleontology: mass extinctions. You can either kill most things off suddenly (mass die-offs), or you can rapidly replace the existing things with new things (mass turn-overs). Similarly, a societal collapse can be a destructive collapse, such as the fall of Easter Island, or a slow shift to a new society, such as after the fall of Rome.

This is a good point and good examples made. We are now moving rapidly into the new age of communication and technology, in a manner which alarms and frightens so many. I would not be surprised to see a new Luddite movement start up in the next decade or two as a reaction to the new society we will be living in, one where privacy is something that doesn't really factor in to peoples thoughts any more, a new area of exhibitionism where anyone can be a star.
We're already part way there in some instances, take for example the likes of Pewpewdie or TotalBiscuit, people who have decided to get a camera, or microphone (or both) and play games or do things whilst recording themselves, either for entertainment or for education. They have become minor internet celebrities, in fact people like Nostalgia critic and Angry Video Game Nerd have even found their way into the entertainment industry of other nations (An anime from Japan featured the likeness of the two in a brief scene). All this from relatively little.
Once upon a time it would take an agent, years of tolling around small two-bit shows, gigs here and there, before you were able to get your big break with an audience number in quadrupal digits. Sure, there are still agents in the internet fame world, but they are mainly to assist with demand after the success has been made.

I think a lot of people are terrified of this new era, it's so dramatically different from the era they grew up in that they no longer feel safe or secure in the society they see around them. This has happened in every change in society, I mean remember the mothers and fathers who saw Elvis as a destructive influence on their sons and daughters? So it is with all different kinds of changes in society, and when you compare the society of the 1900s with the 1960s and then the 2000s you see a rapid transformation which is aided and sped up by the growing communications network, from telegraphs, to radio, to television, to the internet.

Personally, I find it exciting, I cannot wait to see what technology awaits us in the next fifty years if we are able to get that far without our fears overcoming our rationality. Whilst our physical world may not be the utopia we may hoped it to be, I think that we may be able to make our non-physical world a more favourable place to live, and thus humanity will eventually move towards a more data based existence, in a manner perhaps not unlike that seen in the Matrix...just with less genocidal robots...possibly.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I don't blame the internet at all but my wife blames SubSim.

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Let me speak with her, I can fix that.

de Toqueville:...as the cornerstone of compromise — the way in which power flowed from the bottom up rather than the top down — has more recently come undone.

With SWMBO, it's always from the 'top down' and I've yet to see a compromise... damn those faulty torpedoes at least the sisters-in-laws are worse!"Yes dear! Yes Dear"-lest I become UNDONE!

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Personally, I find it exciting, I cannot wait to see what technology awaits us in the next fifty years if we are able to get that far without our fears overcoming our rationality. Whilst our physical world may not be the utopia we may hoped it to be, I think that we may be able to make our non-physical world a more favourable place to live, and thus humanity will eventually move towards a more data based existence, in a manner perhaps not unlike that seen in the Matrix...just with less genocidal robots...possibly.

I hope so. When I think of the internet future I always recall a sci-fi novella I stumbled across in 1974 as a kid. It was set in a world where everyone live in apartments underground and lived their lives vicariously through machine communication with others. Leaving your abode even to step into the hall out your door was considered a horror. So was physical communication or contact with others. It was originally written in 1909, but was remarkably prescient in many ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

Just food for thought.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The internet has a lot to take blame for, and I think the ease in which radical views are accessed and transmitted also adds something to the polarisation.

No need to quote your entire reply but I think you are right.

We have always had wackos in our country. The issue was that in the past, wackos had limited ability to spread their drivel. The worse/best one could do is "subscribe to your newsletter". Natural provided the balance -- wackos often lack the social skills to spread their viewpoints. Occasionally, we had a charismatic wacko, but thankfully they were uncommon, but probably a much greater threat.

With the advent of the Internets Tubes and sites such as this, wackos have unprecedented opportunities to connect. It is a virtual and virtually unlimited soapbox.

Nutters have a much easier time finding like nutters. As you wrote, that can give them a sense of legitimacy that was harder to get pre-Internet.

The good thing about the internet is that it gave the average citizen an ability to share his or her opinion and to learn about other people's opinion.

The bad thing about the internet is that it gave the average citizen an ability to share his or her opinion and to learn about other people's opinion.


What worries me is that with all this unprecedented access to data, one would think that it would make the citizens smarter and better informed....I have not seen this.

The Internets Tubes are confirmation bias in its purest state.

It is an interesting time for our species.

[Stealhead]

I think it will equal out. People seem to be more stupid in larger numbers because it is now far easier to make yourself heard.

I am sure that thosr in power feared the printing press hell in some countries one still cant print what they have to say freely.

I think it is better with the internet and faster and more free exchanging of information. So you see that stupidity is spread more easily so is everything else. Dont focus on the negative the fact is the world and society is always changing that is a good thing in the long run.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

People seem to be more stupid in larger numbers because it is now far easier to make yourself heard.

A little herd mentality?! in this instance Ingrish is a strange lingo