We Are the Fire Brigade
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WE Are the Fire Brigade
The central idea that first led me to start writing these musings every week was, and still is, that I am truly concerned about the deterioration of our public discourse. And the problem is often that we don’t actually see the degradation that is happening because it is so gradual. The biggest changes often happen gradually then suddenly. It’s the nature of tipping points.
It’s much like the famous frog apologue. The premise being that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out. But if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. This sadly is the case with our civil dialogue. We need to turn down the heat quickly.
I am also not very interested in asserting blame for whose fault this is. I subscribe to a life philosophy that things can be your problem even if they are not your fault. The meaning of life, in some respect, is to find yourself useful, productive, and able to contribute to the health and happiness of your community (however you define it). Sadly, we are stuck in a finger-pointing and blaming mindset where the only objective seems to be defeating the other side.
Bill Gates gave a good TED talk the other week. It’s on my TED post (15), if you haven’t seen it. His basic premise was that we should use the pandemic experience and lessons learned to make sure this is our last pandemic. And he showed what we would need to do in order to make that so. His comparison to firefighting, I think, was most relevant.
While we obviously have more to do about preventing wildfires, we have at least built an infrastructure during the past few hundreds of years preparing ourselves for how to best handle fires within buildings when they do happen. We first began with buckets, which lead us to install systems and infrastructure around fire hydrants, parking rules, insurance systems, fire departments, building codes, etc. All of that has enabled us to “live” with fires and both reduce their prevalence, as well as cope with them more effectively with reduced loss of life and property when they inevitably happen.
The deterioration of our public discourse is analogous to our climate crisis. Our climate challenges are a result of decades of ignoring planetary boundaries and reducing the regenerative and restorative power of our ecological system, such that we are now facing problems that are more acute, more difficult, more expensive, and to some degree, impossible.
I fear that our public square, our civil dialogue, is a form of a cultural climate crisis. We have become so polarized and stuck in a frame of win-lose mentality, partisanship, and media bias actively amplified by algorithms that are incentivized to accentuate the division, not reduce it. We are gradually losing restorative and regenerative qualities of civility, kindness, rationality, and discourse that are pushing humanity further away from where we all like it to be. We are like the frogs in an ever hotter pot. Literally, spiritually, and figuratively. We simply have to turn down the heat before it is too late.
I thought I’d take Elon Musk buying Twitter as an example of how divisive and mean our public conversation can be. It's of course not lost on me that Twitter itself is at the epicenter of our public conversation. It's been so interesting to see daily articles about this transaction and almost all of them are extreme in nature. There are few commentators that have the ability to cut through a problem and layout both the good and the bad without personal, often mean-spirited attacks, fueled by a strong political bias.
We have to be able to hold multiple thoughts in our minds at the same time. We also don’t have to judge before we have any evidence. Can we ever assume innocence about a particular action? Do we have to assume bad intentions by people and always lay out worst-case scenarios? If we keep expecting the worst, isn’t that what we will get? Like a self-fulfilling prophecy of its worst kind. I fear that this says more about us than about whatever we are afraid of.
I don’t have a strong opinion about Twitter, really. I am neither an expert nor a particularly avid user of Twitter. I am just using this as a modern-day example of how our media reporting is and how important it is for all of us to somehow keep a more balanced perspective.
This week, I have chosen to give you three different examples written by people with a rather significant following. By no means are these the “worst” examples. I picked them because I respect all three of these writers. I disagree with them often, but I read them. Partly for that reason. They help me get a broader perspective of issues.
Please read all three in the order I am posting them. The first is the AGAINST post. The second is the FOR post. And the third is what I would prefer to see more of: a more balanced take that at least tries to allocate concern and credit more evenly. After you have read them, you can read my ending take below if you want!
The AGAINST post by Anand Giridharadas titled "Elon Musk is a Problem Masquerading as a Solution"
The FOR post by Mike Solana titled "Elon Conquers the Twitterverse"
In my mind, the most balanced article by Ezra Klein titled "Elon Musk Got Twitter Because He Gets Twitter"
My two key points and parting words:
First, let us all realize and recognize we are all firefighters. We don’t park by hydrants. Most of us have insurance. We know what to do when fire alarms go off. We support and love the people that are real firefighters.
Let’s take that mindset as much as we can to the public square of conversation. Let’s be kinder. More human. Let’s work harder at presuming innocence in others. Let’s discuss and debate issues without personal attacks and the spreading of dehumanizing content. I found some hope in the recent French election that the “center” actually won against the extreme left or right. Hopefully, we can see a wind of moderation starting to sweep over our world. Let’s do what we can to fan the flames of moderation instead of extremism.
Second. On Elon. Yes, power can corrupt. It often does. Yes, Twitter matters and free speech is one of our absolutely most important and currently severely challenged values. And yes, neither politicians nor the free market has so far come up with solutions for tech platforms and their role in our deteriorating democracy.
At the end of the day, I worry less about capitalists than I do about capitalism. Capitalists are at least real humans that you can find, talk to, and debate with. Like all humans, they are imperfect, but they make decisions faster with more transparency than really large and complex systems can, like politics and capitalism.
We obviously need better systems. I have written about that before. And it is the system, stupid. And no, I don’t believe in benevolent dictators, as I know some could surmise from these last few sentences. But I am also not ignorant about the challenges of our current institutional corruptness and sclerosis. So, for now, I like Elon as a disrupter. Our public square needed some intervention. So, I am more optimistic, on balance, about him buying Twitter than I am concerned. But we should all stay close, assume the best, and like with all good systems, trust but verify.
I am curious to know how you feel reading the three different takes. Did they help inform you better by the breadth of their perspectives?
Finally, it is completely ok and valid to BOTH admire and respect Elon Musk for what he has done for the world AND to hold concerns about the accumulation of power in the hands of one person. You can share concerns without hate. You can contribute to deliberation without debilitation. We can disagree more agreeably. And certainly, more humanly.
Please share ideas you have for fighting fires of hate and division.
