The Problem With Echo Chambers
“There are two kinds of people in this world…”
It seems there is a great conspiracy to make this cliche a reality.
The polarization of America is well underway. You must be conservative or liberal. Republican or everything else. For us or against us.
The same thing is happening in other parts of the world. I can fit what know about Indian politics on a teaspoon. But I was talking to a friend from India yesterday and it seems that bipolar nationalism is becoming a thing there, as well. The same in Italy, The Philippines, Austria, and more. Nationalism is seeing a spike around the world.
The problem isn’t so much nationalism (although I do see this a problem as we begin to see the shape of 2020 appearing on the horizon). The problem is the polarization necessary for the promotion of nationalism.
It’s weird to me that we have the entire world at our fingertips. A touch of the keyboard and it’s possible to explore new ideas and different perspectives.
But rather than explore, we retreat to our own echo-chambers where we can “right on” and “amen” everyone else who thinks as we do.
There is only one voice in an echo chamber. A single narrative.
The single narrative gets louder and overwhelming.
Overpowering everything else. Every other voice.
The problem with echo chambers is that if the single narrative is wrong or out of balance or out of context, there is no other voice to counteract it. You end up with an entire room full of people who are out of balance or out of context.
Or just plain wrong.
Our best bet is to stop retreating to echo chambers. Because there are far more than two kinds of people in this world. In fact, there are over 7.7 billion kinds of people in this world.