The commodification of our thoughts

Carving out social isolation chambers and paving the way to violence

The violence at the Capitol on January 6th shocked many of us. For myself, I find it nearly impossible to understand why members of the public have come to believe that the election of Biden was falsified. I desperately want to rant about pre-election groundwork to prime voter fraud conspiracies, a complete lack of evidence of said voter fraud, and the immorality of incitement to violence. But even as I write those words, I recognize that they will not help with my goal today. And I get an uneasy feeling, which is growing day by day, that this yearning to rage is not good, nor helpful, to anyone.

This is not to say I think we should avoid talking about this episode or punishing those who participated in or incited the violence. It is painfully important that we unpack what happened during the insurrection, not only for the assault itself but also because we need to understand why some Americans felt the need to take up arms and assault the Capitol. What led them to such desperation? How is their world view so different from mine? These divisions in society are preventing our acting coherently on so many important issues. For instance, in a fact-driven society, we would have acted on climate change in the 1990s. And even if we’d started transitioning to wholesale green practices in the 2000s or 2010s it would have cost us far less economically, as well as environmentally, than the current cost of cleaning up climate intensified hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and droughts. However, fossil fuel companies managed to muddy the waters sufficiently to delay action. I think it is pretty clear why the oil companies engaged in this disinformation campaign - to make more money - but has that same motivation led to thousands of Americans violently storming the Capitol?

On the surface of it, it seems a bizarre conjecture that money drove the insurrection. However, a couple of conversations I’ve had this week have helped me understand that money and power have played an important role. In particular, one article my friend sent me argues that it is indeed financial motivations that underlie some of our social divisions, via the machinations of social media. What has been commodified in this instance is not a tangible product like oil, but rather our attention. The reasoning goes like this: the more time we spend on a website, the more money that website makes through its advertising, data harvesting, and the clout of having a large audience. Websites like Google and Facebook harvest the patterns of our online behavior to figure out, among other things, what keeps us on-page. More time on their site, more money, and data for them. Unfortunately, that which engages us most turns out to be stories that evoke a strong emotional reaction. And it most reliable to evoke strong reactions with negative stories. To increase their profits, the mega-online media sites feed us links to more and more emotive, i.e. more and more negative, stories. And thus we go down the rabbit hole of our choice. Over time our twisted path of discovery in the caverns of the internet may bear little resemblance to reality. So, disenfranchised Americans found like-minded folk online and were led to stories that supported the tale of voter fraud. Enough time raging online led to physical violence. I wonder if my own penchant for raging is similarly linked to time spent in the rabbit warren? Probably.

This feeding of our negativity via social media links is the commodification of our attention. We have not spent money on this path, rather we have spent something far more valuable - our time. But as our physics teachers always like to say - there is no such thing as a free lunch. When we access free websites, we pay in non-monetary ways. For example, Google not only harvests data about our search items a friend pointed out Google Maps keeps track of wherever you have been. That’s creepy.

In a similar vein, the news media is also farming our attention and our loyalty. I’d hazard a guess that news media is even more insidious as it wears a patina of responsible reporting. And even as world-weary as we are becoming, it is nearly impossible not to succumb to the biases in mainstream reporting, one way or another. Some 90% of news media is owned by 5 mega-companies. There seems to be some controversy around this figure, though truthorfiction.com claims it is true. Regardless of the exact details, it is clear that there has been a huge consolidation of news sources since deregulation in the 1980s. This mega-corporation model has led to a withering of local news and a heavy emphasis on national news being about profitability rather than journalism. Once again, negative stories that ring-fence an audience come into play. This is not a new story. Newspapers have been using negative stories to sell their product for decades. But there are alternatives.

In 1908, Mary Baker Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor to counter this negativity in response to a concerted media attack by leading newspapers of the day on her personal competence. There was a happy ending, the courts found in her favor, but only because she had the wherewithal to take the newspapers to trial. She decided to build a news service, based on caring principles, open to all faiths and none, which provides unbiased, trustworthy, and engaging news. And thus the Christian Science Monitor was founded. The Monitor has been awarded seven Pulitzer Prizes over the years and is on many lists of trustworthy and unbiased news sources. I’ve seen two approaches to estimating the trustworthiness of news sources - polling readers and assessing transparency, protocol to ensure authenticity, the use of experts, and no agenda. Both of the lists referenced here are topped by the Associated Press and include NPR, PBS, the BBC, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.

I’m keen to get my news from unbiased sources, and not support mega-media, so I’ll be exploring that more on my own in the coming weeks. I’ve already turned off my Google Maps and use DuckDuckGo to search the web rather than Google. I’m toying with deleting my Facebook account. I’ve also been enjoying a series of interviews by Mark Laita which we discovered last week. It’s called “The White Soft Underbelly”. Wow. These are powerful interviews that really help me understand other lifestyles.

And there is a final thing we can do. We can continue to talk about social divides. We can try to understand our own biases and the validity of others’ viewpoints. And to talk gently, perhaps even within our own safe circles. If we rage about these issues too often I suspect we may harden our viewpoints. There are times of course we need to let off steam but I’m thinking for myself this should be less often than it is. I know that this call to communicate and to be gentle can seem powerless and weak. But being open-minded and thoughtful of others is not the easy path - it’ll take a concerted effort. And of course, there are instances when we must be forceful - as when our election process and the lives of policemen and politicians are threatened. But as elegantly shown by several policemen at the Capitol 2 weeks ago, even force is most effectively done with grace, strength, and nonviolence. If you haven’t watched the videos of the policeman leading the angry mob away from the unguarded door to where the congress was, take a look. That’s what a hero looks like.

Somedays, talking may seem like a soggy noodle approach, but consider the wise words another friend sent me last week:

“I wish we had better solutions to align our lifestyles with the philosophy, but recognizing the problems is the first step. Envisioning solutions is probably second. Execution always comes last.”

Thanks for your wisdom this week friends. It has made a huge difference in my mood this bizarre January. Please keep your thoughts and comments pouring in. Your words matter.