We, as American citizens, face realities that are unavoidably constructed by our social environment and political landscape. Although America has experienced considerable social progress throughout its history, Americans continue to be crippled by our inability to engage in purposeful political discourse, and it has thus robbed us of our ability to continue to coordinate maximized outcomes for all. We should not avoid the problematization of statements or concepts that political discourse inevitably brings up. Rather, we should engage in open-ended dialogues in hopes of developing what Michele Foucault once described as ‘critical ontology’.
In short, Foucault characterized ‘critical ontology’ as an ethos that always compels us to critique our history and imagine the possibilities of going beyond the limits of history’s contemporary manifestation. Yes, constantly evaluating our Socio-political orientation sounds very familiar, but what is less familiar and increasingly concerning is our inability to engage in prolonged conversations about where, how, and why our orientations may differ from those who have radically different lives than ourselves.
The lack of political discourse is especially prevalent on social media. While scrolling through my Twitter feed one day I noticed that a considerable amount of people were either bragging about blocking people they disagreed with or were warning others that if they were to tweet something “problematic” they would block them as well. Instead of tweeting my frustration about people’s apparently quick tendency to block others on various social media outlets, I texted a couple of my friends and began venting.
“Yo, that's kinda ugly..”
A few messages later Bruce and Sam told me that this is called an echo chamber— “a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise underrepresented.” This troubled me. I initially thought “that’s bad.” And it is! I continued to vent and thought “how are we going to get people to sympathize with our beliefs if we so readily disengage them by blocking them?”
Again, I continued to reflect and realized that blocking people isn't the only problem. We can mute people, put our accounts on private, choose who we want to follow and listen to, etc. The list of user-friendly techniques that we have at our disposal in organizing our social media experience is convenient, but it is also scary. It is with these tools that we design the way we want to see the world.
And I’m guilty of it too! Even in trying to be well informed on political issues, I realized that all the news sources that I followed were center-left, with an apparent lack of right-winged ideas to represent a balance in my political palate. I was crafting my account to fit a depiction of the world that was comfortable to me— leaving out dissenting voices and filtering out conflicting ideas.
Echo chambers may not seem that bad until we realize two things. First, the reason conceptual innovations and social movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have gained traction is because social media was used as a platform to analyze the differing ideologies that supported these political concepts. Without people engaging the difference between the warring ideologies, dissenting audiences would fail to understand the importance of saying Black Lives Matter instead of All Lives Matter. And secondly, the lack of political discourse dampens our critical ethos and polarizes us towards different ends of the political spectrum. It is my belief that presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have gained massive support because they represent the ideological chasm we have created.
