Perception Virus

I really tried to avoid making this piece too politically charged, because I really don't enjoy being dragged into heated political arguments online. In that respect, however, I fear I may have failed.

Since my father passed away, I've started seeing a therapist again. Last week, she helped me realize I needed to start painting again, for my own mental health. A lot has happened in the past two years while I've been artistically silent. I realized that, in order to resume my work with the thematic focus of technology, there was a big elephant in the room that had to be addressed first-- the dissemination of partisan media through the internet, and the cultivation of self-contained, polarized factions. If I'm going to make any statement about technology now, this is unavoidable. Internet culture and social media were ostensibly created on the premise of connecting people on a grander scale than had ever been possible. But of course, human nature is largely still rooted in tribalistic instincts, so the technology actually seems to be having the exact opposite effect-- people find ways to surround themselves with like-minded communities online, and completely block out media and other people with dissenting views, which results in becoming more polarized. It has gotten so bad, and people have become so intractable in their worldviews, that two individuals from opposing perspectives may as well now be living in completely separate realities from each other. Our political discourse has become less about how to fix problems, and more about disagreeing on whether the problems even exist in the first place. Sadly, as a society, it feels as though our differences may have become irreconcilable.

I have delved into artistic depictions of the internet disinhibition effect before. Vox Populi and Antisocial Networking were both created in that vein. And I hate to rehash old subject matter so much, but this is important, and it's not going away. This phenomenon where people see the internet as an outlet where it is perfectly acceptable to be outwardly nasty to others, for the sole reason that there are no immediate physical consequences, has ceased to be a purely academic observation. It is having real-world effects now. It is reinvigorating old sources of hate that had been forced into dormancy. It is shaping actual policy decisions on a local, national, and international level. And it is feeding right into this cycle of polarization. The internet has become a weapon now, used for demonizing and dehumanizing the other.

How, in 2017, is it possible that a significant number of people believe the Earth is flat? How is it possible that many of us can see video footage of rain on a late January day, where the President of the United States can claim it wasn't raining? And how did we reach the point where we can't even agree on what constitutes a "fact"? Well, it's pretty easy to explain, if you look at the way we have used the internet to insulate ourselves from anything contrarian. This partisan stuff on the internet-- it's insidious, and virulent, and it reinforces itself by constantly discrediting other sources of information. If your only connection to the world constantly tells you not to look elsewhere, because everything else is a lie, it's very easy to fall into a pattern of dogmatic rigidity and prejudice. It's the exact same reason Scientology has persisted for so long. Be wary of anyone who tells you they're the only truth you can trust, because it's a sign that they mean to strip you of your precious critical thinking skills to make a buck (or even worse, to gain control over you).

What it boils down to, ultimately, is this: fringe insulation is toxic. It pollutes the heart and clouds the mind. It warps perception itself. And when what is even real is no longer a baseline consensus, society is going to break down and people are going to get hurt. Objective reality doesn't care about your agenda, or how skewed you are to one direction or the other; it just is.

2+ 2 does not equal 5.