CHALLENGES: SYDNEY WILLIAMS
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In a letter to a friend in late 1777, after General Burgoyne’s loss at Saratoga, Adam Smith wrote: “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.” His point was that great nations can withstand defeats – that it takes a great deal of bungling to bring down a powerful and prosperous state. But he did not deny that nations, like empires, can and do collapse.
We face challenges, but is the United States confronting ruin that could imperil our way of life? In the April 11, 2022 issue of The Atlantic, Jonathon Haidt wrote an article titled “After Babel: How Social Media Dissolved the Mortar of Society and Made America Stupid.” “Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We were disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” Mr. Haidt warned of abuses from social media, which he blamed for the lack of cohesiveness, civility and trust in society and in government, as well as being a risk to democracy. The answer, he believes, lies in three parts: “hardening” democratic institutions against extremist elements; providing more intense regulation of social media, and helping the next generation by letting children be children, encouraging more time for fun and less time on smart phones. While I agree with his suggestions about children, I have doubts as to the wisdom of “hardening” democratic institutions, and I am not a fan of more regulation. In addition, I was disappointed he did not spend more time on how social media impedes free speech, in legacy media, schools, universities and in board rooms.
A world in a whirlwind needs an anchor to windward. For most of man’s history that was religion. Today, in the United States, just over 40% of Americans say religion plays an important role in their lives. In the past two hundred years, since the onset of Industrial Revolution, there have been unprecedented changes in the lives of our species. Life expectancy in 1800 was 43, about the same as it had been at the time of Christ. In the past two centuries, it has increased almost 100 percent, and the quality of our lives have improved in hundreds of ways: transportation, communication, agriculture, the environment, sanitation, education and healthcare. Consider improvements we take for granted – central heating, air conditioning, public transportation, on-line shopping and options in entertainment. Think of the knowledge we have access to today through the internet. For better and for worse, social media has been one of those changes. We must ask ourselves: Has innovation outstripped our species’ innate ability to adapt?
For thousands of years man could travel (on land) only on foot or by horse. Now there are an estimated one billion passenger cars serving a world-wide population of eight billion, and rockets take us into outer space. The world’s population has grown by a factor of eight since 1798 when Thomas Malthus published his theory that a geometric increase in population could not be sustained with an arithmetic increase in food supply. He was wrong on both counts. Birthrates declined and food production per acre increased. The average American lives longer, eats better and lives more comfortably than yesterday’s kings. Consider the changes in communication in just the past twenty years. Technological advancements have outpaced the ability of humans to evolve naturally, and religion, as a moral anchor, no longer plays the role it once did.
Social media challenges customs and traditions. But we also face other threats: The United States is a multiracial nation, yet we are condemned as being systemically racist by today’s progressives. In an April 18th opinion for americagreatness.com, Victor Davis Hanson asked of America: “Can its various tribes and races unite around the Constitution?” My answers: If left alone from interfering progressives they would, but not when a cult of “social justice” drives decisions at schools, colleges and businesses. And not when we are seen as a nation of victims and victimizers. Woke progressives divide us based on race, ethnicity and gender, but not on class. Individualism has been sacrificed on an altar of collectivism. A black NBA millionaire is oppressed, while a white auto mechanic is an oppressor. A transgender cable TV anchor is a victim, while a white, cisgender nursing home aide is a victimizer. Globally, a peace-loving Israeli farmer is an aggressor, while a teenage Palestinian terrorist is a victim. Woke political correctness, with its mandate for diversity, equality and inclusion, threatens democracies.
In my opinion, the biggest challenge we face are threats to speech. Free speech encourages debate, thus slows decisions, an irritant for an impatient world. Social media, like Twitter, acts as a conduit, rather than an open forum. Today’s technocrats resemble H.G. Wells’ Morlocks, in their desire for control and in limiting open discussion. Opposition to free speech originated on college campuses, where professors fear offending sensitive students and where administrators see their mission as the indoctrination of students into a woke ideology, rather than providing an open-minded, liberal education. In this milieu, conservatives have been censured or cancelled. Intolerant woke ideologies have advanced in mainstream media where reporters act as editorialists, and they have infiltrated corporations where fear for one’s job prevents questioning doctrines of social justice. In Washington, what is information to one politician is labeled misinformation by another. People are not stupid. Let them hear both sides and decide for themselves.
There is validity to the concerns expressed by Mr. Haidt in The Atlantic, as social media attracts extremists and dregs of society; it is addictive and harmful to the vulnerable young, and much of the information that flows through its portals is garbage. But the way to handle the problem is to help users differentiate between good information and bad, to help them understand both the positive and negative aspects of what they are reading and viewing. The best way to do that is to ensure a classical, liberal education, where youth are exposed to different ideas and opinions, where they learn through debate and discussion, and where they are taught rules of moral behavior that have withstood the test of time. Religion, meditation and tradition provide moorings in an ever-changing, restless world. They restrain behavior and act as a governor on technological changes that infuse our lives. The great value of free speech is that deliberation slows the process of change by making all participants consider the consequences of their decisions.
Is the challenge we face enough to bring ruin to our nation? I don’t pretend to know. I hope not, but I worry.
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