The Internet as Divider

 

Of all the changes in modern times, the internet has had the most significant effect upon moving the world in new directions. While it has connected the world in ways only Ayn Rand, Arthur C. Clarke, or Alvin Toffler may have imagined, it has not brought us closer together, person to person, nation to nation. If anything, it has accentuated our differences and pushed us away from each other. The internet was supposed to bring about a transparent society, but the opposite has occurred.

Much of the world seems to have gone crazy. It is all but certain that many people think that I have gone crazy; I have been told as much. There was a time – not so long ago – where the world I was seeing was essentially the same world that everybody else was seeing. We all got our news from the same three networks in a time when investigative journalism was not so stained by politics and partisanship. Different points of view were given seemingly equal air time and due consideration.

The internet has expanded the number of sources we can turn to to find out what is happening. In and of itself, that is a good thing... or so we've been taught -  evolutionary success is strongly dependent upon a healthy degree of diversity. But we get our information from a broadly expanding diversity of sources today, thanks to the internet. And while diversity is good, we have not become more diverse in our individual resourcefulness. If anything, we have individually narrowed our focus and become cloistered in our gathering of news and with the conclusions we draw from it.

I make no bones about publicly acknowledging that I support a conservative agenda based upon freedom. Some people think that is absolutely nuts. But I think proponents of the liberal agenda are nuts. Are we further apart today than ever before? Why can't we meet in the middle and understand our differences instead of resorting to name-calling???

What is really going on is that each of us, more than ever before, see less of what others are seeing, and so have less opportunity to understand each other. Sure, I monitor the content of web sites than seem dramatically contrary to what I believe so that I can see what it is that other people are seeing. And I enjoy intelligent conversation with those who disagree with me, as long as we can shelve emotion and not resort to name-calling.

I really work hard at not judging other people. I know that I will never have all the facts or background on someone to understand why they did what they did or said what they said. I increasingly suspect most people do not share the same intent, however.

Internet news sources don't seem to help much when they cut and paste only the content that serves their agenda, without including the context. For instance, I watched a news video of a police officer violently pushing a suspect to the ground, knee on the his neck, attempting to handcuff him and bring him under control. What the news failed to share with us is what events led to this interaction. I want to know what caused the officer to react with such extreme measures before drawing a conclusion as to whether he was justified in his actions or not.

I once helped two police officers pin a PCP freak to the ground to prevent him from doing further property damage or hurting himself. The confrontation was extremely physical, quick-lived, but tentative. It was all that the three of us could do to bring him under control without becoming bloodied casualties of the encounter as well. The man was clearly a danger to others and the police were without question within their right to detain and remove him. Extreme force was justified.

While the courts exonerate law enforcement officials more than the viewing public would agree with, had everyone that judged against the police officer in the example above been exposed to the available video footage, the facts would have clearly exonerated his efforts in the court of public opinion from the beginning. Instead, public reaction became divided to the extreme and many more individuals lost their lives or were injured in subsequent rioting over the incident – all because of selective reporting on the internet to satisfy an agenda.

Such edited news reporting from the recorded images of a smart phone held by nearly everyone on the street today only serves to divide us because of a reporting prejudice that shouldn't be so starkly evident. That's what the instant internet gives us these days. Those willing to withhold judgement until all the facts are in seem crazy to those who take up signs to protest any apparent injustice before knowing what really happened. And vice versa.

When you can only see how someone else behaves, but not the experiences that influenced their behavior, it becomes harder to draw any meaningful conclusion. Our collective view of the world has become divided as the result of selective internet reporting that guarantees that the version of the world that I see remains invisible to the people who misunderstand me and think I am crazy... and vice versa.