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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: Echo chambers

The Perfect Echo Chamber (13)

George 0 Comments

Only recently, after becoming aware of echo chambers, did I realize that my earliest significant encounter with an echo chamber came by virtue of membership in the Church of Christ (CoC).

Churches of Christ  are autonomous Christian congregations associated with one another through distinct beliefs and practices. Represented chiefly in the United States and one of several branches to develop out of the American Restoration Movement, they claim Biblical precedent for their doctrine and practice and trace their heritage back to the early Christian church as described in the New Testament. (Wikipedia)

Fiercely sectarian and dogmatic, the CoC was a perfect echo chamber. Our belief that we, to the exclusion of all others, were the one true church and our doctrine was unassailable, necessitated constant reaffirmation in our beliefs  and constant vigilance for dissenting voices. As a result, in my experience, there was implicit prohibition of any literature, music, icons, or opinions that were not consistent with our beliefs. Only those with whom we were “in fellowship with” were given any voice. Any occasion of deviation would result in swift censure if not “disfellowshipping”. 

2000 years of church history was unacknowledged. When our fellowship appeared in the late 18th century and came to believe they had restored the New Testament church, any history post 33AD until the present became irrelevant. Any contemporary voices from outside were suspect and mostly rejected.

Teaching and preaching emphasized our rightness (always Biblically) or attacked (also Biblically) our opposition (anyone who disagreed).  As is the case when people reside in unhealthy echo chambers, our fellowship become isolated and voices become shrill and divisive. On the outside the CoC was characterized as “the church that believes they’re the only ones going to heaven”, among other things..

As Michael Hanegan observed, “With no space for diversity or generosity towards difference the only remaining postures are rabid defense and destruction of the Other”. 

The CofC was characterized by debate, believing that ration and reason applied to the scriptures made their arguments invincible, debate became an art form. Ironically, differences arose internally and debates were also the weapon of choice in winning those disputes. As a result, internal differences created  numerous factions, all of which asserted their rightness and narrowed the voices in their echo chamber to affirm their positions. Fractured and isolated, the CofC was on path to obscurity and possible  extinction.

The CofC story is much deeper and complicated than just being illustrative of echo chambers. They are not extinct but  still have vestiges of  the characteristics that defined them in the past century. I use the CofC as an example of a “perfect echo chamber” because it is my heritage and I can speak with an authority I would not assume for other contexts.

Because religious beliefs are not only sacred and deeply held, and are  almost infinitely varied, every religious denomination, sect, movement, et al  creates their own echo chamber. However, not all religious echo chambers result in unhealthy outcomes. An examination of what differentiates healthy and unhealthy religious echo chambers can be helpful in understanding how to create healthier echo cambers in our divided and polarized society.

The journey of the CoC from a “perfect echo chamber” to a less toxic and more hopeful echo chamber parallels my personal journey. It is my intention to share and compare those experiences in my next post.

Surviving & Thriving in Echo Chambers – Self Awareness (12)

George 1 Comment
  1. I know I am right.
  2. I think that I am right.

Who are we?

Are we #1 or #2?

The truth is that we are both. Each of us has the inclination to protect our rightness and because we are “right”,we have permission to use any and all tools at our disposal to protect the “truth”. We believe we will do so in a civil manner, but sheltered by our echo chamber we are released from any constraints  of civility.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.    Eric Hoffer

Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness.     Erwin McManus

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.    Thales

The following citation, in reference to a recent Starbucks incident, further illustrates the importance of self awareness.

Starbucks has an ambitious plan to try to address discrimination and unconscious bias by training nearly 175,000 of its workers one afternoon later this month. According to David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, eliminating bias would require people to become completely self-aware and objective about their own thoughts, and Rock says no one’s found a way to do that.

“Any strategy that essentially relies on people to try not to be biased is doomed to fail; that’s the heart of the problem,” he says.

A prerequisite of self awareness is the greatest challenge to surviving and thriving in echo chambers. To see and truly understand ourselves is the only antidote to the self-deceiving nature of echo chambers. Self-deception is a path of least resistance. The lure self-deception is so consuming that any thought that we can will ourselves into self awareness is, ironically, self-deceiving.

Self-awareness occurs when we are exposed by light from external sources which strip away the shadows of self-deception and leave us profoundly naked and humiliated. It is in those moments that we cannot only see who we truly are, we are also able discern who we should be and what changes are needed to transform us.

Three examples of dramatic events of self-awareness from the Bible illustrate the power of such events to change lives. 

Apostle Peter

“Even if everyone else falls to pieces on account of you, I won’t.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Jesus said. “This very night, before the rooster crows up the dawn, you will deny me three times.”

Peter protested, “Even if I had to die with you, I would never deny you.” All the others said the same thing.

All this time, Peter was sitting out in the courtyard. One servant girl came up to him and said, “You were with Jesus the Galilean.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I swear, I never laid eyes on the man.”

“I don’t know the man!”

Just then a rooster crowed. Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” He went out and cried and cried and cried.

King David

The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,  but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!  

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Saul of Tarsus

Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest  and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.  As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

It is my opinion that humans are incapable of  truthful self-awareness without external influence. Those influences can range from serendipitous, confrontational, coincidental to self-imposed. They maybe characterized as spiritual, dramatic, tragic, unjust, prophetic and/or mystical.

Every one of us, in the course of our lives will encounter many and varied external influences which can give us, at least, a glimpse if not an indelible view of ourselves. When we recognize those encounters and become more truly self-aware, the trajectory of our lives will bend toward virtue.

The following are two examples from my own experience.

A significant part of my career at Ford Motor Company included working as an internal consultant for organizational change, specifically training and development in participative  management. Effective communication skills were a critical factor to any success. Accordingly, I had the opportunity for my communication skills to be assessed and improved. I must admit that, at that time, my opinion of my communication skills was very high. In fact, I felt the assessments were unnecessary. A part of the assessment was to participate in a role play exercise which involved conflict and required skillful communication for resolution. The exercise was video taped.

After completing the exercise, I was pleased with my performance and was looking forward to reviewing the video.

The video was shocking. In my mind I had been polished and convincing, skillfully controlling the situation and reaching a satisfactory  resolution.  What the video revealed was angry, intimidating facial expressions and body language. My demeanor was controlling and  arrogant.

For the first time, I recognized what others had known all a long. I  was not the person I believed I was. With that realization, I began to understand why many prior difficult interpersonal circumstances had puzzled and frustrated me and defied resolution. That occasion of truthful self-awareness was a turning point which changed me profoundly.

The second example also relates to my communication skills, but in a different context. My confidence (arrogance) regarding my communications skills displayed itself in my role as a father. Five children were a convenient opportunity to utilize my gift. I seemed to be doing reasonably well with our first three children, all boys. The arrival of two girls was a game changer. Thankfully, I was able to translate my professional skills into may role as father. I was pleased with my ability to communicate with our oldest girl who, at the time, was in her early teens.  It was on the occasion of Father’s Day that I received a card from her.

Appreciative, but a bit puzzled, I opened the card.  I can   only describe my reaction as stunned. It was a moment of self-awareness that I have not forgotten. My image as  a “great communicator” was revealed for what it really was, self delusion.

The peril of unmitigated echo chambers is their inherent character to impede, if not block, external influences which would otherwise provide opportunity for truthful self-awareness. We become blind and deaf to anything other than that which affirms our self-deception. As a result, progress toward thriving healthily in an echo chamber requires at least two personal responses:

  1. …intentionally develop a sensitivity to the routine external influences that we encounter in our daily lives. (Essentially, “stop and smell the roses”).
  2. … make intentional choices that will expose ourselves to external influences i.e. social relationships, community, neighborhood, family, friends et al.

Surviving and Thriving in Echo Chambers – Self-Delusion (11)

George 0 Comments

“Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.” ~ Francois Fenelon

A common trait that qualifies a  person to be a member of good standing in an echo chamber is self delusion… the state of having a false idea about yourself or the situation you are in. The lure of echo chambers is the reinforcement and validation of an opinion or belief that we deem to be true.

In the face of relentless and increasing volume of confirmation for our opinion/belief, we become more and more convinced of our rightness. Correspondingly, we become less and less willing/able to entertain the possibility that we could be wrong and consequently we reject any dissenting voice. 

Ultimately, we become self-deluded, a self-delusion that is a two-sided coin. One side is the delusion that we are omniscient and the other side is the delusion that we are  infallible. Unfortunately, whichever side comes up, we lose.

Despite rational consensus that human beings are neither omniscient nor infallible, we inexplicably persist in the delusion that we are an exception. A convenient argument for resisting warnings about echo chambers and mitigating any peril they may present comes in the form of, “ Yes, but since my opinion/belief is TRUE, I have no reason for concern.” 
The negative impact of echo chambers is indiscriminate. Relative to negative outcomes, it does not matter whether we are right or wrong.  If we are absolutely certain of our opinion/belief, the reverberations within our echo chamber, which confirm our certainty, will deafen and blind us to any dissenting voices. In our self-deluded infallibility, we are able to justify responses, that we would never otherwise consider, toward any and all dissenting voices.

The first step toward overcoming self-delusion is to become self-aware. Self-awareness is a learned skill that requires courage and resolve to develop. Self-awareness involves, self-examination, introspection. “Know Thyself” is an  aphorism from antiquity. 

Socrates says …, that people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves. 

Self-awareness is essential to overcoming negative outcomes of echo chambers, which intensifies  the challenge we face.

…even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.

“For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong. – Bill W.” 

Faced with disturbing conclusions that,

  1. the default condition for those who reside in an echo chamber is self-delusion, and,
  2. the first step toward surviving and thriving in echo chambers is the necessity of self-awareness and,
  3. there is an innate resistance to any form of self-examination and
  4. there are prevailing, relentless narratives that engender fear and promote judgement on any dissenting voice and eschew self-awareness.
    …further emphasize the magnitude and complexity of echo chambers and diminishes optimism for a society characterized by our most virtuous human values.

Accepting the premise that self-awareness is essential to surviving and thriving in echo chambers, the immediate question to be addressed is, “How do I become self-aware?”

The next post will address that question.