No, I don’t think I am exaggerating when I call it a revolution. Relatively, it’s not a bloody one yet, but we’ve only begun. As individuals who are part of it, it is difficult for us to acknowledge, let alone grasp its consequences now. (read for perspective)
To deal with something, I first need to make an attempt to understand it, and this post is just that. To begin with, I have noticed at least two parallel forces that have worked to get us to this point. The first is privilege and increasing inequalities in society, on which I have written quite a few posts. The second is a subject on which I’ve only written a couple of posts – intersubjective reality, but its influence is equally important. Let me elaborate.
“But that’s the truth!”, I often hear, and for a while now, my response has been “Whose truth?” For an absolutely mind bending perspective on it, read The Case Against Reality. (thanks Gautam) To massively paraphrase, we build “realities” based on the stories we tell ourselves, and this is completely shaped by our perceptions and biases. Everything we perceive is a mental representation and there is nothing objective about it. The closest we get to reality is by experiencing something ourselves, and that is inherently subjective. As Scott Adams brutally but succinctly put it, “Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.“
Somewhere between subjective and objective lies intersubjective. Concepts which we consider a reality because sufficient enough people believe in it. e.g. a national boundary, which really doesn’t exist on the ground or currency, which is actually just a piece of paper. This is opposed to say, gravity, which will exist whether you believe in it or not! Across time, many intersubjective truths have helped civilisation ‘advance’ – religion, money, nation state, brands! So, by themselves, they aren’t a problem. But, social media! Where one is not just able to go forth with one’s reality, but also gets ammunition for confirmation bias and fuel the propagation of agreeable intersubjective realities. And thus, we form our filter bubbles of what we think are ‘universal truths’ e.g. “Everyone agrees Trump is evil.” When this propagative power of social media collides with the first force (inequality) we get into the situation we are in now, because within the filter bubble, privilege is a given and inequality doesn’t exist except as stray forwarded items. Worse still, views within the bubble are usually binary, stripped of nuance and context, because binary is so much less taxing on the mind. In fact, the Oxford dictionaries chose “post truth” as its international word of the year. Reliance more on emotion and preconceived notions than facts.
(Apparently there is an argument on this quote’s attribution. Oh, irony!)
It can be argued that at least two huge recent events – Brexit and Trump – are a manifestation of one set of non-privileged people making a giant “F*ck you!” point. Both of these events are instruments of retaliation. Those who thought Trump would fail apparently misjudged the the angst and the mass sentiment. Silicon Valley, for instance – Silicon Valley was worried about the wrong bubble.
What a lot of people are now experiencing now is a double shock – how could so many people disagree with their idea of “truth”, and how could they have missed it despite their prolific use of social media?
Once we realise there is a bubble at work, there are a few crucial things to understand. One is that you might be mistaken in your biases. Two, if there are sufficient number of people who believe in a “truth”, it can become a mainstream reality – and that’s probably your dystopian reality. And finally, you cannot outsource the “fixing” of this. There is no worthwhile ‘authority establishment’ left, and in fact proponents of every sort of “ism” will try to fill this void. Fundamentally, dealing with this begins at a personal level. Treat revolution with revulsion at your own risk.