Help, I'm drowning!

Algorithms are taking me down

I love social media. That doesn’t make me a mindless scroll-er, an angry post-er, or a cackling troll. It makes me social. It makes me interested in my friends’ trips to Iceland and latest regenerative projects.

What makes me crazy, though, is the algorithms. They magnify any whiff of interest I express in anything, and trap me in a hall of mirrors. Unable to sort truth from lies fast enough, my minds wanted to declare, “I’m old” and just accept that I’m sliding into cognitive decline. No. I am not. My country is sliding into cognitive decline and I’m getting out of the mud-slinging-pit.

Draining my inner swamp

Drowning in the toxic mud-pit this morning, I sat myself down for a reality check.

“Who wins if I believe this?” is the question I often ask to un-befuddle myself.

No surprise, it’s not the little people.

It’s what I call the overlords (the unaccountable wealthy, privileged, powerful, and sociopaths) who live beyond our reach, feeding us bon bons of hate through all the channels they control (including the financial system). It is in their interest that we sling mud at one another. We aren’t strong enough to sling mud way up there at them - shaking our fists at the billionaires. Since we can’t, we just look for someone more proximate to blame. And the algorithms dish up blameworthy targets. The overlords don’t care who we blame. They make money no matter what.

I’m not going to argue the issues they fling at us. I, a proud “woke libtard”, refuse to froth anymore over the scapegoating of people of color, violating the basic physics of climate change, and back-peddling on civil rights Currently people more in the MAGA camp are frothing about trans people, about immigrants (documented, undocumented, citizens or anyone who can’t trace themselves back to the Mayflower), about DEI (code word for rights only for those Mayflower children), Leftist Commies and on and on and on, as if racial and sexual purity would cure what ails USA.

I’m not biting that dangling, juicy, amplified by algorithms, worm. I care, deeply, but I refuse to add to the hate speech, while somehow still speaking.

It’s our responsibility now to discern when our inner swamp is being frothed, step back and ask, “Who wins if I believe this?”

Where I land

I wrote “where I stand” but that assumes a line and a question, which side are you on?

I’ve described myself as a Berniecrat. Or a Warren Democrat. Or a Marianne Williamson fan. That’s because these three articulate a civil-rights-based-politics.

Culture, society and politics are three different realms.

We can’t legislate culture.

Not with the tools of government. As a nation of immigrants (except for the indigenous people who were here before the Mayflower), we have many cultures. It’s way too late for one immigrant culture, White Northern European Christians, to insist that everyone else conform to their views. Some of the roiling upset out there comes from one culture using politics to dominate the others who are also citizens, homeowners, business owners, parents and grandparents. C’mon.

While I have my own cultural traditions, I will not spend life energy debating better or worse cultures, but I will expend energy protecting the rights of people, whatever cultural background.

We can’t legislate society

Our social roles are also mutable - with whom we partner, socialize, work next to, work with, live near, laugh, or barbeque. If you are a citizen, or legal resident, or legally here, the government protects your right to marry, socialize with, work with, live near whoever you want, but cannot legislate based on how others feel about it, their prejudices, resentments, race, gender, orientation, country of origin.

We had to legalize gay marriage because some think marriage and gay don’t go together. Gay marriage, cis marriage, gender fluid marriage - should all be legal marriages, even though the cultural assumptions of the Founding Fathers were more narrow. You can say God said a Man and a Woman, but this is now a pluralistic society.

We can legislate politics

We are a nation of laws, not of Kings. We all have inalienable rights. Citizens, visitors, workers with visas, anyone inside the country can expect their rights to be respected. Once established by law, rights should not be rescinded by a politically appointed 9-person Supreme Court. They should not be ignored by a President. Holy crap, are they coming for a woman’s right to vote? Will people with any ounce of black blood become 3/5 citizens again? You can hate gays. You can feel overlooked for work. You can want women to go back home, and try to prove that they prefer it. But the freedoms given to people of this land by the Constitution and “settled law” are not yours to muck with.

Because I am no expert on civil rights or civil liberties, here’s one summary, and no, AI didn’t write this post.

My point being

Our political discourse, amplified by algorithms that slice us and dice us into ever more narrow silos, imposes binary thinking on us. It seems to be our ticket to write.

Reality is not binary. This complex world requires study and respectful debate of us to find our way forward. Reality is complex and so much of it is yet a mystery. Newton was right, but not absolutely right as quantum physics is teaching us. To the binary mind, complexity looks wishy-washy. To the complexity mind, which is a closer approximation of reality, binary is a prison.

The binary mind, fed by algorithms, is the threat to our society and our democracy. Cracking open the binary mind is our project, not picking sides and ultimately doing harm to others, aggressors and innocents alike. Humanity in general doesn’t have a great track record with complexity, but it’s the razor strop we need before we slit our collective throats.

Hate is the enemy, not different cultures or social norms.

To refuse to “binary” my mind is an act of resistance. I will work on rights and liberties, but not on constraining who within our borders deserves them. If it’s against the law - theft, murder - the rights and liberties of the perp will be constrained. But not whether they dress in an American Flag or wear a big wig, false eyelashes, fake boobs and volunteer in their communities.

I’ve never been more centrist. Tolerance, generosity, civility and civics have been the ethical center for this experiment in colonialist policies which have enriched kings and merchants while sending we the little people, of many religions, cultures and ethnicities, across this world. Traditional societies, in a couple short centuries, have had to grapple with who has rights and liberties, now that our countries are shockingly “diverse.” We-the-people didn’t do this to ourselves. We are not one another’s enemies. Algorithms that enrich the overlords, do not have the right to assault and separate us while the grifters take off with … everything…

Silence is not golden

This Towel of Babbling algorithms, the unwitting mouthpieces spewing hate and lies, press on my mind like abusers, demanding my inner most sanctuaries open and let them in. I say NO. I won’t populate my mind with predator’s thoughts.

I find it very hard to pull away. Even if I am not reading social media or news, it’s all around, others are reading it and opining.

What can we speak about anymore that feeds our minds, reflects our hearts, and deepens our wisdom?

And what speaking will not risk our liberties and rights or those of someone we care about? What breadcrumbs are we leaving for people of ill will to follow? Am I willing to get in trouble. Yes. Get others in trouble. No.

Yet silence is not golden. It is leaden. It cooperates with the incursion of the haters into our social lives.

Is writing this today, while the sun is shining and Fall is in the air and I haven’t been to the woods in a week, robbing me of my sanity?

For now, my choice, as an old white woman on an island in the northwest corner of the lower 48, is to speak my mind with as much complexity and wisdom as I can muster, when the pressure differential between the outer babble and my inner wisdom gets so great I am going to burst.

How are you dealing with this cognitive dissonance wrapped in algorithms?

Like my other post on Fuck It, I’m pressing send, knowing it’s a rant but … fuck it.

PS. Just as I was to press publish, this came through about Karen Attiah being fired for uncivil discourse by quoting Kirk’s own words… How can we stay silent? How can we not?

Talk to me brothers and sisters. Can we elevate the dialogue when in the mud-pit of algorithms?