Social Experimentation in Real Time

Hi and Welcome to the A & J PEI Treasures E Jean Simpson Author Blog Post and Podcast. I’m your host, Jean coming to you from the beautiful Province of Prince Edward Island, Canada!! The blog post and podcast is an opinion piece and only reflects this author’s opinion and not that of any other entity. I hold no designations in politics, economics or medicine. I am retired from the mental health field. I am a humanitarian and speak from that viewpoint only. Whether you agree or not, at least I hope it makes you think. This past week has definitely shown the best and worst of the internet. With Twitter take over came tons of drama. I’m not sure if half the people read the news or don’t…I’m not even sure it will make a difference as there are so many different news stories with different perspectives depending on the ownership. Of course at the same time, there seems a ton of property damage and such being done in the name of environment. There seems a huge disconnect between the world and our social media. If you want to find out more, then stay tuned…!

This week has been a smorgasbord of various events. Many of them don’t seem to connect well from a humanistic perspective. First, Elon Musk has finally taken over Twitter. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-... and apparently reports are true of him calling himself the “Head Twit”. I won’t comment further on this as I’m not sure that word means the same thing that it had when I was a child. Plus, cheap shots would only make me a “Twit wit” and I’m certain there are enough of those around. This has been received less than enthusiastically. His charge of $8 a reduction from the original proposed $20 https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/1... is also less than enthusiastically received. I can see both sides. I suppose that people paying for Netflix pay somewhere in that realm. I don’t get Netflix. On the other hand…the free speech that he touts has now become paid and it is hard to understand why his dislike of advertisers should translate into people paying for the shortfall. So, for those, such as me that don’t even indulge in Netflix, $8 is beyond what I can or would be willing to do. There are benefits to not being rich or famous.

I am wondering how much of the Elon Musk controversy was further inflamed by his insistence of posting a controversial link. I know it didn’t increase my confidence any. I believe it had to do with another event in which the husband of the Speaker of the House in the US was seriously injured. Some things aren’t a joking matter. A man born in the 1940 could have been killed in that attack. Further the actual target was the actual Speaker in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/article/pelos... So, whether we like to admit it or not, that does kick it up a notch. Despite Mr. Pelosi’s recent issues, he is husband of the Speaker. This does result in a stronger message having to be sent. There is also the fact that elder abuse is part of the messy issue.

Further, when it comes to Elon Musk…well, he did take over Twitter. I’m somewhat apprehensive about what he is intending to do with the forum…and some of his actions have been less than encouraging to those of us who watch. https://news.yahoo.com/hate-speech-sp... At the same time, to be fair, there was an increase in hate speech, however, this seemed more due to the fact that people were expecting to be able to get away with doing this. It was not due to a change in policies on his part at that time. It still doesn’t make me less apprehensive, but it needs to be understood that the monster that crawled out from under the bed, wasn’t exactly created by him though his giving expectations of ‘free speech’ may have dragged many the monster from under the bed. The monster that crawled out from under the bed was the fact that they thought that they could get away with it. They thought they saw an opportunity. Because there was so much of it, the AI just couldn’t catch it all. It’s still not right, and he still shares in the blame.

The thing that I find on Twitter lately is that incidents such as these result in people not acknowledging the wrongness of attacking an old man and nearly killing him. Some saw it as an opportunity to make light of it to score some kind of perverse political points. Some were making jokes of it, others spreading conspiracy theories. It was a total dehumanization of the main facts. An old man was attacked with a hammer because his wife was in politics. We have something wrong with our moral compass. Some were shocked by it. Others were disgusted by it. Others tried to downplay it. I know we have differing opinions on political people and who should run a country, but if it was my father or grandfather that was attacked, I certainly wouldn’t want to see people making light of it. If it was your parent, would you find it funny? Remember, the older a person is, the more brittle the bones, the more time it takes to heal. These are just the realistic problems that come with age and the injury itself. Every year elderly are abused. Every year, elderly are victims of crime. When you look at it from that angle, it makes a lot more sense. It seems that people make things political so that they don’t have to face the grim reality out there. They make things political so that they can point fingers. Rather than look at it from the human perspective, they make it political in an attempt to remove the human face. We have too many things that suddenly become political so we can’t look at it objectively. Stop making everything political. That seems to be the sticking point for a lot of the news issues out there. We need to look at it from a human perspective and that might take the form of “if it was someone related to me, how would I feel?” If it was my family that got attacked, how would I feel? Some even wanted to make it about orientation. This was not the issue. The issue was a man born in 1940 was attacked in a home invasion of his home. Being related to someone in Government made it a substantial threat to Government…no matter who runs it. His security system didn’t even help. We need to change our perceptions and change what we deem political and how we express these issues.

There has been a lot of news feed of people deciding that they wanted to protect the environment from oil. I saw at least three occasions in the past week. First someone tossed potatoes on a Monet painting https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/... then there was the same group tossing cake at a waxwork https://www.foxnews.com/world/just-st... followed by defacing buildings in London https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk.... It seems there is a lot of feeling that it is appropriate to do harm to make a point, yet others applaud this. First, these works of art are irreplaceable. If you damage a Monet painting, he cannot come back and repaint it. Artists of all sorts must have been incensed to see the lack of respect for art. Wax works, are also a form of art. To destroy it shows lack of respect to the artist. Then they follow up by painting all over London buildings. In my humble opinion, I didn’t understand the thought processes that went with it. See, paint has chemicals in it. They were old buildings (well known buildings) and they’ll have to use chemical compounds to try to get the paint off the buildings. They will have to do the work to remove it. It will cost, not only money but they will have to use chemicals to remove the paint and they do it because they don’t want chemicals (oil) to destroy the environment. So, they increased the need for chemicals. It seems somewhat illogical to me. In fact a lot of stuff that has been going on seems illogical to me. The property damage doesn’t seem to make any logical sense. At one time, there were sit-ins. There were protests. I was at some myself when in University. We did not try to damage others. We did not feel the need to make up lies about people. We didn’t feel the need to try to harm someone.

I think part of the problem is as Gertrude Stein is credited with saying, “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” This seems perhaps part of the crux of the problem. I’m sure that I’m missing some of the issues and some of the challenges. We have a steady diet of information coming at us. It’s all over every feed on every social media page. It’s on every page that we open. Many people seem to spend so much time online. I’m sure some pay for people to do online work for them. It’s freelancing work if you can get it. Then we have sources that are misinformation or disinformation. We have people who knowingly share provocative things…who in essence, lie to people. We have so much information to sort through, we often just take things as we find them without trying to determine if they are true or not. Gossip is often passed around as truth. So, it gets to the point that we often don’t know the difference between truths and lies. It is an ever changing cosmos of information that changes from minute to minute. Another issue with this is that people seem to invest in the story that they follow…and it follows what they want to believe. Knowing both sides of a story might not change the opinion of those who blindly follow one ideology, but it might add a human quality to what they spread.

As Dr. Seuss is credited with saying, “We should strive to treat each other with common Human Decency.” It seems that having everything online allows us to dehumanize each other. To take up whatever stand without taking into account the humans involved or the cost of the action in human suffering. I see it time and again where people jump on a bandwagon. Please, before you jump on the bandwagon, think about whether there might be something more to the situation. If it is important to you or you think that it is something that might be important, take some time to look deeper at the issue. You might find that the monster isn’t under the bed; the monster might be looking at you in the mirror. This is what makes common sense, honesty and common decency so important. Without it, we can become that monster under the bed. Without thinking about things, I spent several days wondering what was going on. Had things changed so dramatically, so quickly? I started to jump on that bandwagon. Then I realized that the problem wasn’t the problem. The problem was more how we look at the problem. There is still a problem, and I’m still not sure there is a good solution as of yet, but if we don’t look at the human side to the problem, we will be unable to find a humane solution. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope I made you think. Thanks for listening to my podcast and/or reading my blog post and thanks for your interest in A & J PEI Treasures! Keep watching because we’re always working on something. Thank you!

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