The dictionary definition of ideology is no longer tenable: “a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture; the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program; a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture; or visionary theorizing.” Thankfully, Hannah Arendt recognized the change and […]
Underpinning and supposedly justifying this ideology, the ritual sacrament known as competition was largely a product of nineteenth-century Revivialism, the consequence of the mass psychological transformation of the religious covenant into a means of instilling a sense of unity by arousing and manipulating strong emotions; it is thus an indirect legacy of Puritanism, though Jonathan […]
Transnational corporations with supranational ambitions of total global domination are the chief vehicle responsible for all the unleashed destruction of wars, disease, forced migration, and the spread of moral and political corruption today. It began in nineteenth-century America with a corporate-funded “massive reconstruction of Nature,” the way having been prepared by an eighteenth-century “Age of […]
Modern visual and auditory electronic propaganda techniques utilizing black box AI (not artificial but advertising intelligence) algorithms to exploit consumers across a spectrum of digital devices (smart phones, laptops, notebooks, etc.) has given rise to what Harvard Business School Professor of Business Administration (emerita) Shoshana Zuboff identifies as surveillance capitalism, and defines: “1. A new […]
When behind the computer screen, it’s very easy for people to engage in behaviors they would never do in real life. The anonymity of the Internet offers a shield—some people feel as if they can be aggressive, and in some cases abusive, toward others because they don’t feel as though they are hurting a real person. One strange thing about the Internet is that while we are incredibly connected digitally, we are very disconnected interpersonally. The fact you can’t see the people you interact with online makes it easier to “other” them. When we “other” people, we don’t necessarily see them as real people with real feelings, and that makes it easier to disconnect from the reality that our words can cause actual harm.
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Thank you, Angelina, for a sensitive and intelligent response to my post. I think you are correct in asserting that the internet and social media disconnect many if not all of us–or not all of us to the same degree–from our sense of reality. What worries me is the way in which your account of the “strange thing about the internet” may be seen to offer trolls and other inflictors of online abuse an excuse for bad behavior.
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