Influence

I find I am interested in Facebook much less than in the past. I tune in occasionally to find out what’s up with friends and family. But I wondered recently who is trying to influence me through postings. I went on to look at my timeline of recent posts.

It’s revealing. Facebook itself starts by asking if I want to buy a print book of my photos. I then hear from the World Health organization twice - with some facts about Covid-19. I also have a message from the Canadian Mental Health organization. These can be justified in the same way as notices in my building’s elevators and other bulletin boards. There is also a post that I can’t read – in Spanish. That could be accounted for by one bilingual “friend” on my list. I have no clue re the contents.

I decided to look at the next 24 items. These consisted of twelve posts from people on my list of over 200 “friends” every one of which I can recognize if I met them face to face and would be happy to do so. What they had to say varied in importance or relevance for me. Of these eight posted messages about their thoughts, opinions and events in their lives. Five acted as curators and posted links to articles of personal interest.

These had a wide range. One was an article from the Guardian. One was an article about birds. I have a friend who frequently posts pictures of birds, so the assumption there is that I am also interested. One was about Messiness Chic – which I guess applies to me in some way. One was an article from the Pontifical Academy - a bit of a connection but not a great one. One was from a show that somebody liked on Netflix, which I no longer have. One was from a software program; I act as an administrator using it and have sometimes responded to a query, so I regarded that as legitimate.

All the rest were advertisements with no attribution. One represented Celtic sweaters. Two were from the Toronto Star. I had a brief subscription but cancelled it. One thought I should be interested in an article on NPR – I might have been, but not about Britney Spears. One was for The Economist. One was from Facebook with pictures of people I might know. I didn’t. One was about cat food. I don’t have a cat. One was from the bee protectors. I don’t have any bees either.

My guess is that some of the 200 friends “liked” these things. Sometimes the ads tell me so. We can do one another a favour. Get off Facebook and pick up the phone or send a note to a friend. If you care about causes, tell them so and send them some money. At very least, stop “liking” things. We’re allowing our personal information to be hijacked every time we do so - and foisting it on others. Facebook is laughing all the way to the bank.

May I Have Your Attention

These words sometimes come across the public address system in my apartment – usually in response to a fire inspection to warn us that the alarms are not signaling a real fire. But I noticed a connection in a recent article by Charles Warzel, who interviewed Michael Goldhaber and called him a Cassandra for our current age.

Goldhaber was a physicist but also something of a prophet. In the eighties he predicted that society would become totally a world of online technology – with its political rudeness, social media over-sharing, information hijacking, reality TV, influencers and bloggers. Distraction affects our action – or the lack of it.

Goldhaber later termed this “the attention economy”. Everyone from presidents to parents want to have global influence. It used to be that modesty and humility were the pre-eminent virtues but not any more. Everyone is busy seeking attention – or getting it. Attention has become the currency of advertising, journalism and social media where the numbers of likes or subscribers are the only thing that counts.

There is a certain amount of pushback lately with requests for content moderation and censorship. But there is also an appeal to first amendment rights - where what a president Tweets is just a personal expression of his point of view – or even after pushback explained away as sarcasm.

What really matters is that attention is power gained through tweets and rallies carried by cable news. Complaining about it or opposing it as some channels do doesn’t take away the attention. It enhances it.

What Goldhaber wonders about – and we should too – is the effect of this attnetion on democracy. What used to be nuanced discussion now come in the form of slogans. They are easy to say and obvious and become rallying cries. Difference of opinion now gives way to tribalism where every opponent becomes the enemy to be both feared and hated. It’s easy to voice and publish what used to be unmentionable and become a spokesman. These often are views that others have been afraid to say, but are willing to give power to anyone who can say it. That’s precisely the power of the former president.

What is to be done? We need to start to pay attention to personal our habits and hobbies. They simply relate to how we spend our time, a limited and precious commodity. A pandemic could be an unanticipated moment of grace to do that. We also need to see how we relate to the social issues of our era. We also need to re-evaluate our relationship with those closest to us and how to connect during a lockdown. Loneliness and discouragement are common emotions for all of us along with hope for better times. It is not insignificant that a reporter who followed the life of conspiracy enthusiasts found that much of their conversation is social – wishing one another happy birthday in the midst of spreading hateful or ridiculous information. What was desired and met was companionship.

I’ve been a fan of Howard Rheingold since I first encountered him in the eighties. I even wrote him once and was pleased when he took the time to write back. He says:

“Attention is a limited commodity – so pay attention where you pay attention”.

Self Portrait

What will life look like when later in this century researchers look back on 2021? 

 I was interested in contrasting my current life as a single elderly woman living alone in the past few days with that of one of my oldest friends.  I was able to renew contact via email with her daughter and hoped that we could connect via technology during the current lockdown.  This is not easy, she said, because her mother’s hearing is challenged, even with hearing aids, and her sight because of macular degeneration. Personal visits are best and her children are frequent visitors – but since she lives in another city, that is not an option for me right now.

 There are similarities, but key differences for which I have every reason to be grateful. I also wear hearing aids but they allow me to hear well.  My optometrist can see tiny beginnings of macular degeneration, but taking a supplemental vitamin is currently preventing an increase showing in the sophisticated optimal scan.  I am also reasonably mobile so long as I do gentle exercise regularly.  My friend is confined to a wheelchair.

 But I can also see how changes in technology make my current life not only tolerable but extremely rich during lockdown.

 Books – As a child I could walk to the local public library and sometimes read a picture book on its steps and then returned it right away. I still enjoy hard cover books and am currently reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, a provocative and deeply troubling portrayal of a humanly constructed system of superiority with profound implications.

 Much – even most of my reading, of course is now online – via a laptop, a tablet and a phone. I first turned on a desktop in 1984 to use office software, but computing is now just part of living.  Reading books happens through Kindle or Libby, the public library app, and that can include both print and audio books.   My morning starts with online newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post , the Ontario edition of Canada’s Globe and Mail – and sometimes the aggregated Apple News.  I still have a paper subscription to the New Yorker but I can read a library version of The Economist.  These give me some balance between progressive and conservative views about current issues.

 Then there are online newsletters.  I first picked up the initial edition of the magazine Fast Company in an airport when I was still working, and I liked its approach to innovation.  I still do.  There are eclectic ones like Brain Pickings, Maria Popova’s weekly aggregations of famous writings and wonderful illustrations from children’s books that she finds in public libraries - and Aeon, an Australian newsletter with wide reaching topics. I also scan most many of the environmental newsletters referenced under the resource section of this site.

 As a former resident, I’m somewhat of an American news junkie and dive in an out of CNN and PBS – as well as the Canadian channels, CBC and CTV.  These can all be accessed both live and after the fact through recordings.  I might turn later to Prime or Brit Box for a series of two.

 There is still the telephone.  I pick up less and less to avoid the robocalls – but I can see whether it’s a son calling from Hong Kong or another one who wants to borrow my car which is an easier one for his teen age son to practice driving between online lessons - or a friend wishing me a happy birthday. Less welcome is a call from a colleague who has clearly traveled down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. All I can do is remind him of the caring person I have known in the past – but I doubt if I have changed his view.

And I realize that in the week that the only live face to face conversations I have had is a brief one with the son and grandson picking up the car keys – and the concierge when I picked up a food box.  A couple of Zoom meetings lasted much longer and provided views of welcome faces.  And I’m back taking art lessons on Zoom where the gifted instructor can receive our works in progress and make suggestions for improvement, The six learners share their work and we admire one another’s creations and learn.  My twice monthly piano lesson on Zoom also provide good instruction and learning.

This is a pretty rich environment where I am lucky to be alive and experience.  One of the things that has struck me in writing this.  While I have social media accounts, I feel almost no need to access them at this point. What that means is that I’m not part of the world totally immersed in lack of truth.  And the challenge for others and for me is – how to I change that from where I sit now?

The Climate Change Challenge

President Biden’s returning to the Paris Climate Accord, halting the Keystone Pipeline project and putting new restrictions on oil and gas production is good news; but it is only the beginning of a long challenge for the leader who has vowed to become the climate president. As he vows to cut fossil fuel emissions, the oil and gas industry is immediately mobilizing to challenge any changes. Executive orders are immediately viewed as job killers in an already over stressed economy. Biden counters that new production in areas like electric cars will create and replace jobs. Last year was the hottest ever recorded. Environmentalists say that the challenges have never been greater. The US has to be a partner in climate change with the world.

It’s easy to be focused on one’s own country, so I was interested in a modeling in the New York Times this morning that allowed me to look at the primary risks for Canada. It is well worth looking at the model which presents the insights modeled by the company Four Twenty Seven with comments placed on top of maps of the areas.

The chart posits that our major climate hazard in Canada will be flooding - followed by wildfires, water stress, cyclones and sea level rise. These could affect 60% of the population. Our gross domestic product and agriculture could also be affected by at least one of the hazards.

We won’t be alone - 90% of world populations will be threatened. Some of the figures are staggering and defy imagination. In the first 18 years of this century, 165 billion people were challenged with flooding. It will be even greater by 2040.

Climate change has unequal effects. The poor suffer most and economic inequality increases. Other factors, like population density add to the discrepancy and food shortages and infrastructure decline, lead to mass migrations. Rich countries like ours are not immune from the challenges The Covid - 19 pandemic has brought home the lesson that we are all connected and the lesson is immediate. The climate pandemic is much more serious but easier to deny.

Here are some of the perceptions of Americans about climate change identified by PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy. I will try to find comparable information re Canadian perspectives later.

• Americans rank climate change last on a list of important issues. Only five percent of Americans say climate change is the most important issue facing the U.S. today. 

• When asked which environmental problem is most important for the current administration to tackle, nearly 3-in-10 (29%) Americans point to air, water, and soil pollution. One-quarter (25%) of Americans say climate change is the most pressing environment problem, while a similar number (23%) identify water shortages and drought. Fewer Americans cite the shrinking of wilderness areas and animal habitats (11%) or endangered species (4%) as the most critical environmental issue.

• Americans are significantly more likely to believe that people living in poorer developing countries will be harmed by climate change than they are to say that they personally, or U.S. residents as a whole, will be negatively affected by climate change.

• Less than one-quarter (24%) of Americans believe that they will be personally harmed a great deal by climate change, while 30% say climate change will affect them a moderate amount. More than 4-in-10 Americans say climate change will have only a little (23%) or no impact (22%) on them personally.

• The Climate Change Concern Index—a composite measure that combines perceptions about whether climate change is a crisis and whether it will have adverse personal effects—finds that nearly 3-in-10 (29%) Americans are very concerned about climate change, 21% are somewhat concerned, 29% are somewhat unconcerned, and 21% are very unconcerned.

  • Close to half (46%) of Americans say that the earth is getting warmer and that these changes are primarily the result of human activity. We characterize this group as climate change “Believers.”

  • One-quarter (25%) of Americans believe the global temperature is rising, but say the change is due to natural fluctuations in the earth’s environment or are uncertain about its cause. We describe this group as climate change “Sympathizers.”

  • Finally, more than one-quarter (26%) of Americans say there is no solid evidence that the earth’s temperature has been rising over the past few decades. We call this group climate change “Skeptics.” Skeptics were asked to share, in their words, why they believe the earth’s temperature is not increasing. Answers varied considerably, but the most frequently cited reason (33% of all open-ended answers) was that they have not noticed a change in the weather around them.)

• Climate change Believers are substantially more likely to than Sympathizers or Skeptics to score high on the Climate Change Concern Index.

Clearly what we believe counts - the challenge is to determine what it is base on

Misinformation Wars

One of my favorite Dave Frishberg Songs is “Marooned in a Blizzard of Lies”. It seems to have been background music in the past two or three months, but even if we now have a twice impeached person in the American White House for a few more days, I am less confident that we have survived the misinformation wars - even with 20,000 troops assembled to reduce the risk of violence.

Misinformation has never been easier to produce. You can find an image and put a slogan on top of it and disseminate it on social media in less than two minutes and have others share it hundreds of thousands of times. Video editing is a bit trickier but possible. The effects can be visceral – immediate anxiety, increasing to anger and leading to violence. Words and images don’t always lead to violence – but when it occurs, they have almost always preceded it. That should give us pause.

Most us watching from a distance in Canada, but inundated with US news are still confounded by the actions of a rising star like Josh Hawley. How could someone with his credentials – Stanford, Yale Law School, clerking for the Chief Justice be seen raising a clenched fist to rioters and continue to claim a lost election? His local newspaper the St Louis Post Dispatch now claims he has blood on his hands and accuses him of blind ambition. His rise not be as easy for him now as he meets disgust from his own party and a lost book contract. But even blind ambition doesn’t seem to account for something so evil in either intent or consequence.

Katherine Stewart writing in the New York Times sees something deeper accounting for his actions. Citing an article that Hawley wrote for Christianity Today, she views him as part of a religious-right framework that wants America to return to religious roots that are endangered by liberal ideas of freedom. Who knew that the problem was that America had succumbed to the Pelagian heresy? Hawley says conforming to what religious leaders say is correct is how society should be governed – and that includes politics. My own response to that as a person who is still a member of a faith community (Anglican/ Episcopal) doesn’t land me in such a place – that it is okay for a lawyer to pretend an election is stolen to bring in some kind of religious oligarchy - just won’t wash.

Why do such views gain traction at all? Hawley was not alone. In another article Stewart wrote, the religious right is estimated as 28 percent of the US population who identify as white evangelical or born again Christian; 76% of them voted for Trump. Stewart cites several reasons why they prevail and why they are likely to continue to do so. Economic inequality exists and it can be used to foster discontent. Paradoxically much of this is financed by wealthy individuals who fund the religious right to protect their own wealth. Persons in smaller communities receive much of their news through local or regional religious publications that reinforce their views. Religious organizations of all types are well organized and networked. For these reasons, views on subjects like abortion, appointment of judges and religious freedom and can become key issues to organize around. A president’s appointment of 220 court judges and three to the Supreme Court is worth overlooking obvious shortcomings of misogynous bullying, racial tweets or conspiracy narratives of stolen elections.

Stewart notes:

“While many outsiders continue to think of Christian nationalism as a social movement that rises from the ground up, it is in fact a political movement that operates mostly from the top down. The rank-and-file of the movement is diverse and comes to its churches with an infinite variety of motivations and concerns, but the leaders are far more unified. . . . (They promote) a radical ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid, and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world. Partisan politics is the lifeblood of the movement.”

Are there solutions for the rest of us? Another Times writer suggests we can ask questions such as:

• Who is the author?

• What is behind the information provided?

• What is the evidence?

• What do other sources say?

When we encounter a meme that seems suspicious, we can check the original image. We can avoid using social media as a news source. We can also resist the impulse to “share” and “like” which enhances dissemination. We can also make decisions about what we choose to be our trusted sources of information.

But how do we convince others to do this? David Brooks, writing this morning is somewhat pessimistic:

“The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.

Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.”

He goes on to cite another writer whose prescription is to separate leaders from the group. If Stewart’s analysis is correct this may produce some hope in a new era of government.