We’re all just spitballing here unless someone is secretly a sociologist, but I do think social media accelerates cultural swings/overcompensations. Social media, and its focus on appearances, encourages a low-specificity sorta purity testing. If you aren’t visibly conforming, at the very least you’ll be inundated with media of how “this” is the correct thing. And that’s assuming you aren’t actively harangued by people pushing conformity. So “the correct thing” gets positively reinforced and quickly builds momentum.
I think the only recourse is educating people to not just absorb everything their eyes and ears ingest, i.e. critical thinking. Which doesn’t seem feasible without a revamp of education.
I totally get the impulse to say “we solve this by making people smarter”, and when it works I’m over the moon. But it’s literally the hardest solution to achieve in a fascist society where all the major media outlets are co-opted and the schools are all chronically underfunded.
The only other answer depends on where you[impersonal] lie on the topic of governance. Because you’d need some kind of overarching organization to feed mediating/moderating media to the population (trying to sidestep the word “propaganda” although that is what it would be).
Either the population becomes smart enough to ameliorate unreasoned shifts in culture on an individual basis or the populace entrusts that responsibility to someone over them.
In-line edit: I guess there is also the possibility of a sort of “herd immunity”, where enough educated individuals are countering misinformation and overreactions in their community to achieve the same effect.
Hard to say. I think anyone trying to force anything on a society usually deserves to be shot into the sun. Maybe the only morally flawless way to create a better world is to expand your (impersonal) own circle of empathy to its maximum, and when you get a chance, try to help others to do the same.
We’re all just spitballing here unless someone is secretly a sociologist, but I do think social media accelerates cultural swings/overcompensations. Social media, and its focus on appearances, encourages a low-specificity sorta purity testing. If you aren’t visibly conforming, at the very least you’ll be inundated with media of how “this” is the correct thing. And that’s assuming you aren’t actively harangued by people pushing conformity. So “the correct thing” gets positively reinforced and quickly builds momentum.
I think the only recourse is educating people to not just absorb everything their eyes and ears ingest, i.e. critical thinking. Which doesn’t seem feasible without a revamp of education.
I totally get the impulse to say “we solve this by making people smarter”, and when it works I’m over the moon. But it’s literally the hardest solution to achieve in a fascist society where all the major media outlets are co-opted and the schools are all chronically underfunded.
The only other answer depends on where you[impersonal] lie on the topic of governance. Because you’d need some kind of overarching organization to feed mediating/moderating media to the population (trying to sidestep the word “propaganda” although that is what it would be).
Either the population becomes smart enough to ameliorate unreasoned shifts in culture on an individual basis or the populace entrusts that responsibility to someone over them.
In-line edit: I guess there is also the possibility of a sort of “herd immunity”, where enough educated individuals are countering misinformation and overreactions in their community to achieve the same effect.
Hard to say. I think anyone trying to force anything on a society usually deserves to be shot into the sun. Maybe the only morally flawless way to create a better world is to expand your (impersonal) own circle of empathy to its maximum, and when you get a chance, try to help others to do the same.