America’s Spiral into Absurdity - Part 1
Imagine living in Babel after its downfall. The Book of Genesis describes how Noah's descendants erected a towering city in Shinar, aiming to build a tower reaching the sky to earn fame. God saw this act as human arrogance and decided to intervene, saying:
“Here is a single people with one language, and this is only the start of their undertakings; there will be no limit to what they can achieve. Let's go down and scramble their language so they can't understand each other."
Picture this scene: people aimlessly roaming through debris, their ability to communicate shattered, destined to eternal misunderstanding.
Modern Day Tower of Babel
To me, the tale of Babel mirrors what befell America in the 2010s, leading to the deeply divided nation we see today. A sharp decline took us by surprise. We find ourselves lost, speaking different ideological "languages" and unable to agree on a shared reality. We're isolated from each other and from our history. It's as if the country has been thrown into a dizzying world where language has lost its common thread and truth is a matter of perspective.
The United States, once seen as a cohesive entity with shared values and ideals, has diverged into 'red' and 'blue' America, each holding onto divergent constitutions, economic models, and interpretations of history. But the issue runs deeper than just political tribalism; it’s an all-encompassing fragmentation affecting every crevice of society - the left, the right, academia, businesses, cultural institutions, and even the family unit.
This has been significantly fueled by certain forms of social media, platforms that were meant to bind but have instead cleaved, impacting the country's direction and our identity as a people. The pressing questions then arise: How did we arrive at this juncture? And what does this mean for the future of American life?
The march of history has always trended towards greater cooperation and integration, evident in the evolution of both biology and culture. This trajectory was notably captured by Robert Wright in his book "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny," where his central thesis was that human progress is marked by increasing interdependence and collective advancement.
Early internet and social media platforms like Myspace and Facebook appeared to highlight this optimistic view. They ushered in an era where dialogue flowed unimpeded by geographic borders or linguistic barriers, potentially dismantling the very foundations of autocracy and repression. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, both in 2011, best embody the vibes of this era.
The Unraveling of a Nation
How does a sprawling, diverse democracy like the United States hold itself together? For most nations, a shared ancestry, religion, and/or foreign enemies have often served as unifying forces.
In secular diverse democratic republics, the glue binding citizens together is social capital, robust faith in institutions, and shared narratives. It's in these three areas that social media has not only failed to reinforce our cohesion but actively eroded it.
In its infancy, social media was benign, an extension of the age-old human need to maintain connections. However, as these platforms evolved, they encouraged users to craft public personas, trading intimate connections for broad, performative interactions. And with the introduction of mechanisms like Facebook's "Like" and Twitter's "Retweet" buttons, viral trends began to take hold. Content now spread like wildfire, not for its depth or truth, but for its ability to evoke emotion and reaction, particularly anger.
By 2013, the landscape had shifted dramatically. The goal was no longer about connection but about virality and the fleeting fame or notoriety it could bring. This environment fostered dishonesty and a mob mentality. Even one of Twitter's own engineers expressed regret over creating the Retweet button, likening it to giving a child a loaded weapon.
This shift towards impulsivity and moral outrage flew in the face of what the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had intended. They understood the dangers of unbridled passion and intentionally designed a system that would temper these human impulses. But social media, with its instantaneous spread of information, has plunged us into the very nightmare James Madison feared.
As social media platforms became conduits for trivial disputes and outrage, they also began to undermine the necessary trust that holds a democracy together. Autocracies might control through propaganda and fear, but democracies rely on a collective belief in the legitimacy of their institutions and processes.
Things Fall Apart
As trust in institutions erodes, so does faith in the narratives they propagate, especially those tasked with educating our children. Contentious history syllabi have long sparked political disputes. Yet, platforms like Facebook and Twitter now fuel daily parental anger over new excerpts from school curricula, spanning history to math and literature. This scrutiny often casts doubt on educators' intentions, prompting hasty, poorly-considered policy changes and reforms that further diminish educational standards and trust.
Ex- FBI agent Martin Gurri foresaw these divisive outcomes in his 2014 book "The Revolt of the Public," where he examined the internet's impact from the 1990s onward. He observed the power of social media to dissolve traditional bonds and debilitate institutions. Gurri recognized that while such networks can upend the status quo, they lack the capacity to govern. He remarked on the disintegration of a once-unified public sphere, now splintered and increasingly antagonistic due to the internet's fragmentation.
Mark Zuckerberg and other platform creators, in their pursuit of growth, perhaps did not anticipate their hand in eroding the societal glue of trust and common narratives. The period between 2011 and 2015, from the 'nihilistic' protests to the 'great awokening' and Donald Trump's rise, marked the crumbling of societal consensus. Trump, adept at harnessing the dynamics of this new era, capitalized on the outrage-driven virality that overpowered traditional media, rendering shared truths and stories unattainable and fleeting.
This 'post-Babel' landscape, where scandal no longer impedes political ambition, has rendered truth ephemeral and consensus elusive.