Saturday 20 August 2016

Heaven's Echoes

Humans enjoy spending time with other humans with similar opinions. If a social group becomes too exclusive, strongly in favour of certain views and ostracizing whose who disagree, it can become an echo chamber of agreement. Humans with "far-left" political views meet up and tell each other how correct they are; those of the "far-right" persuasion so similar. Such groups, if sufficiently isolated from the wider human population, if their members social lives do not extend far beyond the group itself, can become totally convinced that they alone have The Truth.

As each racist says "they should send them all back" and his fellows agree, repeating the view with slightly different wording; as each communist says "the proletariat must rise up" and her fellows agree, repeating with slightly different wording; as the groups non-conformists are ostracized or ridiculed for disagreeing (or maybe only suggesting that foreigners contribute to the country, or pointing out that communism has not worked out well anywhere it's been tried) the view becomes stronger, more solid, and in the minds of the group members moves further from opinion, view, subjective interpretation, towards fact, certainty, The Truth. One would expect these 'idealogy echo chambers' to be less common in the Information Age, and perhaps they are, but it easy for people looking online to seek out information that supports rather than challenges their existing opinions.

Yesterday I discussed the 'Overton Window': the range of publicly acceptable ideas, and how this can be changed and manipulated over time. If the 'public' becomes a small group with similar strongly-held opinions, then the window shrinks. Alternatively, if a country's freedom of speech is seriously restricted, and dissenters who do not follow the party line are done away with, then the range of acceptable opinions can be suffienctly narrowed to create an echo chamber where everyone agrees with each other, singing their shared opinions together, believing they have The Truth.

God is good. God is just. God is great. God is loving. Etc.


No comments:

Post a Comment