Journalist Charles MacKay published his book “The Madness of Crowds” in 1841. Friedrich Nietzsche said “In
individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it
is the rule.” And we have always known that lynch mobs, once they form,
will do things, horrible things, that no individual in the crowd would ever be willing
to do alone.
I think of that as I watch the bitter liberal/conservative,
religious/secular, rural/urban, etc etc battles in American’s current cultural and
political wars. We have had bitter
divides in the nation before, and it even once led to the Civil War. But this
is as bitter as I have seen it in my lifetime, and I keep wondering why.
One factor certainly is that we have no external enemy to
draw us together as we had during the Cold War or World War II. So now that we aren’t
facing outward to protect our nation against a common foe we have fallen to
fighting bitterly among ourselves – a common enough occurrence in groups and
nations.
But I am beginning to suspect another cause, the rise of
social media. I find it interesting, and perhaps significant, that people on social
media, where they are essentially anonymous, become so vituperative and
irrational. Read any of the millions of flame wars going on at any given time to
see what I mean. More significantly, notice that the comments section of a
posting often only goes three or four comments deep before people begin to be uncivil
to each other. (That is why comments are turned off on this blog).
It seems to me likely that the effect of social media is to facilitate
the rapid formation of virtual crowds around an issue, which then blows up out
of all proportionality and demonstrates all the irrationality and blind brutality
of a lynch mob. Of course the mainstream
media loves it; it produces great stories and drives readership, but it also
continues to amplify the echo chamber that is feeding the crowd’s frenzy.
The level of bitterness and irrationality, and yes, hypocrisy,
evident on all sides in the recent Kavanaugh Supreme Court battle demonstrated
all these symptoms of crowd madness. And for that matter the same effect can
be seen on the #MeToo movement, the #NeverTrump movement, and dozens of other
current “movements” being driven largely by social media.
Social media was supposed to be a boon to humankind. It may
turn out to be a disaster for us.
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