We know that we have echo chambers for increased advertising revenue and to keep us engaged but we never really address WHY they keep us engaged? > shafak’s idea that it comes as a way to fight uncertainty and anxiety. Echo-chambers as a psychosocial reaction to Climate change.
Elif Shafak – How to stay sane in an age of division
Pg 8 - How is it possible then that in an era when social media was expected to give everyone an equal voice, so many continue to feel voiceless.
Pg 14 - When you feel alone don’t look within, look out and look beyond for others who feel the same way for there are always others, and if you can connect wth them and with their story, you will be able to see everything in a new light
Pg15 - wanting to be heard is one side of the coin, the other side is being willing to listen. The two are inextricably connected. when convinced that no one - especially those in places of power and privilege - is really paying attention to our protests and demands will be less inclined to listen to others, particularly people whose views differs from us.
Pg 16 - The moment we stop listening to diverse questions is also when we stop learning. Because the truth is we don't learn much from sameness and monotony. We usually learn from differences.
The thing about group think or social media bubbles is that they aggressively feed and amplify repetition. And repetition, however familiar and comforting, will never challenge us mentally, emotionally or behaviourally.
Pg 18 - If I only watch videos or programmes essentially validate my worldview, and if nearly all of my information comes in the same limited sources, day in, day out, it means that, deep within, I want to be surrounded with my mirror image 24/7. That is not only a suffocatingly claustrophobic setting, is also a profoundly narcissistic existence.
But here's the thing: sometimes narcissism is not merely an individual trait, it is a collective one. The shared illusion that was the centre of the world. This notion was examined in detail by various thinkers in the last century, especially Theodor Adorno and Eric from. What these writers had in common was that they had witnessed, first-hand, the rise of nationalism, jingoism, xenophobia and totalitarianism. There warnings at opposite today. Central group narcissism is an inflated belief in the clear-cut distinctiveness and indisputable greatness of us as opposed to them. One unsurprising consequences of this conviction is an enduring resentment towards others. If I am convinced that my tribe is far better and worth more, I will first doubt, then denigrate anyone who refuses to recognise our superiority.
In a world that's profoundly complex and challenging, group narcissism has become a compensation for our personal frustrations, flaws and failures. But above all, it provides a counterpoint to two troubling feelings: disillusionment and bewilderment.
Page 23 - Never with so many big promises made to so many for so long, only to have delivered so little in the end.
Page 25 - We don't quite understand how the Internet works but we don't want to say that aloud because everyone else seems to be OK with that, so we must accept it to.
Pg 27 - To employ the same metaphor, it is frightening to suddenly find ourselves in a zone of unpredictability. If there is one thing that's ever more frightening, it is to find ourselves here all alone. To be part of a collective feels more anchored, less anxiety inducing. This is what Eric from highlighted when he explained how individual after being afflicted with insecurity and vulnerability, aspires to gain a new sense of safety and self-worth by equating himself slash herself with a large body of people. “he is nothing dash but he can identify with his nation, or can transfer his personal narcissism to the nation , then he is everything.”
Pg 29 - Whether in public or digital spaces nuance debates are not welcome anymore. Instead there are clashing certainties.
They're not there to listen and they're not there to learn.
30 - And there will come a point when I will simply stop talking to people who are different from me. Why should I ever trust them?
It is not a coincidence across the world authoritarian demagogues go to great lengths to incite inflamed polarisation they know they will benefit from it they love it when there is more division, friction mutual exclusion.
32 - The less the people from different backgrounds can communicate and empathise with each other, the smaller appreciation of our, common humanity, the less egalitarian, and inclusive are shared spaces, the more satisfied the demagogue.
34- I have often wondered what resides in an accent. Is it a presence dash an identity, a trajectory, history? Or is it rather an absence dash and estrangement, of withdrawal, are blank space refusing to be filled? And I'll be immigrants synonymous to our accents? Or are we, or can we ever ospite aspire to be , more than that? This is not to deny that our accents are fundamentally important to who we are, and that their near and dear to our hearts will stop then inextricable trace of the path we have travelled, the loves we have loved and never forgotten , the scars we still carry on which still hurt . But that doesn't mean that we are from our accents.
37- What we are going through is also a crisis of meanings.
40 - This is a crossroads, a threshold. As we come to realise that we cannot and should not go back to how things were before the pandemic, were confronted with two paths, of which we can choose one. On the one side stretches out nationalism, protectionism, my kind first approach dash already authoritarian leaders have been using the disruption as an excuse to consolidate their power, control over civil society and further retreat into isolation. On the other side extend the roads toward international communication and cooperation, a spirit of humanism to deal with major global challenges, from climate emergency to rising poverty, from cyberterrorism to the dark side of digital technologies. Whether the choice between these paths will ultimately be shaped by economic and political factors, is it is also dependent on another debate: identity.
55 - In an era characterised by insecurity, fragility and downward mobility, when everything feels transient, what exactly does education guarantee?
60 - The truth is, there are plenty of negative sentiments all around and within us dash anger, thier, discontent, distrust, sadness, suspicion , constant self doubt... but perhaps it's more than anything, an ongoing apprehension. And existential angst. All these emotions are very much part of our lives now. Even digital spaces have become primarily emotional spaces.
Anger, fear, and echo chambers : the emotional basis for online behaviour D wolleback, r karlsen, k steen-johnsen, b enjoras
62 - We want to look strong. Emotions, we're taught to believe, make us look weak. The less we're capable of addressing negative emotions openly the longer it takes us to realise how many people are, in fact, struggling as we are, and how debilitating these silences are to our relationships and interactions with others, and how , in an infinite number of indirect ways, they shape our societies.
Angst, it can be argued, resembles fearful stop but whereas fear tends to resolve around a threat, an opponent or an enemy, angst is far more subtle, diffused, pervasive. It is, in the words of heidegger, about being in the world as such. And the one and the world we are in right now is 1 exacerbates our sense of vulnerability it's almost as if we have control over is almost as if we have no control over anything.
64 - But acknowledging the dark side of emotions is only where we begin. It cannot be where we end up.
68 - But I equally doubt whether anger by itself is a guiding force and a good friend in the long run. It is not.
71- We must be very careful here: anger can also easily turn repetitive, in transition, corrosive. Equally, it can be apparently to commotion. It's as if the intensity of it is enough to persuade the person feeling it that they've done enough dash or else it might keep you in a state of brooding and obsessing over the wrong without being able to move forward , to find a way to heal the wrong.
75 - Apathy is a combination of many emotions: anxiety, disillusionment, bewilderment, fatigue, resentment.
78 - Here is one of our main challenges: how do we simultaneously remain engaged and managed to remain sane?
82 - Information flows the middle fingers like dry sand. It also gives us the illusion that we know the subject bracket and if we don't, we just Google it bracket when, in truth, we know so little. Paradoxically, too much information is an obstacle in front of true knowledge.
Knowledge requires reading. Books. In depth analysis. Investigative journalism. Then there is wisdom, which connects the mind in the heart, activates emotional intelligence, and expands empathy for that we need storeys and storytelling.
84 - If individuals were given enough information, so went the assumption, they would surely make the right choices dash politically, socially, economically. So the best way forward was to enable and accelerate the spread of information technology, and then just allow history to run its course. Such was the extent of distrust that, in the early days of the Arab Spring, when it looked like even the most corrupt regimes could come to an end and the entire region would be transformed in the hands of its democracy aspiring youth an Egyptian couple named their newborn daughter Facebook.
85 - Citizens are supposed to be empowered and whole systems are expected to be democracy expected to be democratised through the freeflow of information and ideas. How could totalitarianism survive in the face of a digital platform?
86 - Democracy is hard to achieve, get easy to lose; Is an interconnected system of cheques and balances, conflicts, compromises and dialogues.
87 - It Withers under widespread numbness as philosophy and political theory Hannah ahrendt presciently warned when she wrote about the dangers of a highly atomised society. We will need to be more engaged, more involved citizens wherever we might happen to be in the world.
Perhaps in an era when everything is in constant flux, in order to be more sane, we need a blend of conscious optimism creative pessimism. In the words of gramski the pessimism of the intellect the optimism of the will.
89 - It is natural to seek out a collegial and congenial group will reinforce our core values and primary goals, and bring us close to the storeys that we want to hear and prioritise. That can be a good starting point but it cannot be the entire destination. Until we open our ears to the vast, the endless, the multiple belongings in multiple storeys the world has for us , will find only a false version of sanity, the Hall of mirrors that reflects ourselves but never offers us a way out.
Do not be afraid of complexity. Be afraid of the people who promise an easy shortcut to simplicity. [Is this what recuperated activism on social media does?]
We have all the tools to build our societies and you, reform our ways of thinking, fix the inequality is another discriminations, and choose earnest with wisdom over snippets of information, choose empathy over hatred, choose humanism over tribalism, yet we don't have much time or room for error while we're losing our planet, our only home. After the pandemic, we won't go back to the way things were before. And we shouldn't. What we call the beginning is often the end the end is where we start
(from TS Eliot little gidding forequarters Faber and Faber London 1941)
FURTHER READING
Digital citizenship in a datified society hintz denzik Wahl Jorgensen 2018 > section on mediated public debate
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