… we all know the internet never really tells the whole truth, don’t we? This blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – these are, more or less, art installations filled with carefully curated pieces of my life and faith and family, hand selected to tell only the parts of the story that are suitable for public consumption.
Jamie Wright
Pathway to Surviving and Thriving in Echo Chambers
Coming to the conclusion of this series of posts, the intent is to suggest some understandings I believe necessary to navigate the turbulent waters of life in a society dominated by echo chambers.
For too many of us it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods, or on college campuses, or places of worship, or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. In the rise of naked partisanship and increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste, all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable.And increasingly we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.
Obama farewell speech
Accepting that echo chambers are a fact of our existence in today’s society, two important questions remain. First, how can we survive that experience? Secondly how can we thrive in the on-going reality of echo chambers?
To survive the experience of echo chambers, it necessary to understand the breath and depth of the peril we face.
The poor in spirit do not commit evil. Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves. The evil in this world is committed by the spiritual fat cats, by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin in because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of significant self-examination.
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
Unless we can now tame and transmute the potential for evil in the human soul, we shall be lost. How can we do this unless we are willing to look at our own evil?
M. Scott Peck – People of the Lie
Certainty, conviction, and dogmatism reduces our anxiety in the face of life. Having all the answers feels good. That’s the upside. The downside is that certainty, conviction, and dogmatism makes you suspicious and wary toward people who have different beliefs. And that suspicion sows the seeds of intolerance.
Richard Beck
Living in an unmitigated echo chamber can dehumanize ourselves and our dissenters. It is a dark place that brings out the worst in us. Erwin McManus describes that place as a biopsy of our souls. A context where what is inside of us is pulled out and made public, revealing any malignancy within us. Aberration becomes normal.
A relentless bombardment of filtered information and media affirms and reinforces our beliefs and biases. The deeper our convictions about our rightness, the more we believe we are omniscient. In essence, we transmute into God and cease to be responsible to anyone but ourselves. In that sovereignty, we are no longer restrained by a virtuous human nature, but are free to act in ways, inhuman or otherwise, necessary to protect our rightness. We abdicate our humanness . Correspondingly, we see our detractors as less than human and deserving of our actions.
We all seem to exist in huge feedback loops, squelching dissent, and growing more extreme in our thinking, blithely ignoring evidence that our respective positions might be wrong. In fact, we want little to do with each other.
Michael Frost
In the absence of a realistic understanding of echo chamber’s potential for malevolent outcomes, we will be content to revel in our self-delusion of omniscience.
In the digital age, it is unrealistic to think we can opt out of echo chambers in our daily experience. The important question is, how can we thrive?
Five keys to thriving in echo chambers.
There is opportunity for good. Echo chambers can function as a “deliberating enclave”.
…“enclave deliberation,” … defined as “that form of deliberation that occurs within more or less insulated groups, in which like-minded people speak mostly to one another.” … (Sunstein)
The main value of deliberating enclaves is not that they increase conversation across differences, but that they enable like-minded people to make progress in what they agree about.
2. Continually seek to be self-aware.
The human mind is an overconfidence machine . The conscious level gives itself credit for things it really didn’t do and confabulates tales to create the illusion it controls things it really doesn’t determine . David Brooks
3. Continually evaluate your beliefs.
A good place to start [evaluating beliefs] is to be particularly critical of sources that support your beliefs. “I’m always the most suspicious of beliefs that I have or conclusions that I come to that are in line with my own ideology,” “So if I have a particular worldview and something supports my worldview, then I have to be especially suspicious of it. Because that’s when I’m going to be most vulnerable. Because that’s when I’m going to be most vulnerable. That’s when my motivated reasoning and confirmation bias are going to try hard to engage… but that’s exactly when you should question it the most. It’s a high-energy state, and it takes a lot of vigilance and a lot of practice and a lot of dedication. It’s a life-long practice, and there’s no shortcut to that. You just have to really be dedicated to policing your own thinking.”
Dr. Steven Novella
4. Intentionally engage dissenting beliefs through media and relationships to achieve understanding.
Alex “Sandy” Pentland in “Beyond the Echo Chamber” commends the concept of social exploration.
Social explorers spend enormous amounts of time searching for new people and ideas—but not necessarily the best people or ideas. Instead, they seek to form connections with many different kinds of people and to gain exposure to a broad variety of thinking. Explorers winnow down the ideas they’ve gathered by bouncing them off other people to see which ones resonate.
5. Never forget that you are fallible. With every interaction we experience, we must remind ourselves “I could be wrong.”
“Truth is not something we possess, it is, hopefully, a goal to which we strive.” M. Scott Peck
Epilogue:
This post concludes a six month journey which began during our winter hiatus in Florida. An excerpt from my first blog post explains why I began writing on the subject of echo chambers:
The subject of echo chambers has become increasingly personally relevant. After recognizing my self imposed political/social echo chamber, I made a decision to dampen the echoes and open myself to different sources.
My efforts have met with mixed success. The peril of trading one echo chamber for another is real. The most significant result of my decision, thus far, is that it has become a catalyst for more serious thought and investigation into the character and nature of echo chambers. This blog post is the first, in what I hope to be a series of posts, addressing questions, ideas and issues that I have encountered related to echo chambers.
Although this post concludes this series, the subject remains of significant interest to me. I have been sensitized to the reality of echo chambers and there are few days that I do not encounter explicit or implicit references to them in my reading or listening. I expect that I will continue write on the subject.
In the beginning, as I became more and more interested in echo chambers, my enthusiasm and passion grew. I initiated this series of blog posts through which I hoped to stimulate some interest on the part others. My assumption was that everyone would see the importance of understanding echo chambers. It did not take long to discover that conversation about echo chambers ranked somewhere behind conversations on race and religion. In an attempt to receive some constructive criticism, I asked numerous people if they would read my posts and give me feed back. With one or two exceptions, my requests went unheeded. Although disappointing, that experience confirmed what I was learning about the difficulty of addressing the challenge of echo chambers personally and societally.
Additionally, I experienced the reality of Facebook’s ability to control and influence the information we send and receive. Based on anecdotal evidence, I found that my blog posts on echo chambers, unlike other subjects, rarely showed up on my friends timelines. I interpret that as a result of impersonal algorithms, not something directed to me personally. Unfortunately, the result is the same.
I am undeterred in my belief that echo chambers are a threat to our democracy but more importantly, a threat to our humanity. M. Scott Peck states it well:
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
George Ezell
Wilmore, KY
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.
We all want to be heard. It is central to the nature of our being, a sort of validation of our existence, for someone to pay attention to us.
And because of this, in some cases, it may be that the best way to defeat a really horrible idea in the mind of another is not to refuse to listen, or be the first to launch a pre-emptive attack to convince them otherwise, but first really to listen. And it may be that we also learn some things along the way we would not have known otherwise.
No guarantee of that, of course, but we may. And even if we learn nothing intellectually, we will undoubtedly grow in the virtue of patience.
It’s a liberating experience, to be free to listen to and learn from people with whom one disagrees about deeply important matters. Hospitality, in other words, is not merely a gift to the recipient but to the giver.
Lee Camp
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:
