Echo Chamber
We might enjoy hearing the resonance of the sound of our own voices in an echo chamber, but such will not prove conducive in persuading or reaching anyone else.
The idea of the echo chamber comes from any number of forms of acoustic echo chambers: an enclosed area in which sound reverberates off of many surfaces to amplify and repeat any sound uttered within it. In an acoustic echo chamber, a person could hear their voice amplified and repeated back time and time again, perhaps giving the impression the sound involved a lot more than just the efforts of one person.
By extension, therefore, an echo chamber proves to be the fruit of epistemic closure and confirmation bias: people are either closed off or close themselves off from hearing from a range of perspectives and voices, and listen only to those voices with which they agree and which reinforce their basic assumptions and beliefs. They thus close themselves off from obtaining insights from perspectives of others who would disagree, and they magnify the size and standing of those voices with which they agree.
Echo chambers do not, in and of themselves, manifest a logical fallacy, but many fallacies and an inability to well reason with others often results from living within an echo chamber. It proves almost impossible to maintain a well-reasoned and charitable framework and disposition while remaining siloed in an echo chamber.
The types of echo chambers, and reasons for finding oneself in an echo chamber, prove legion. Some echo chambers are imposed on people from those in positions of authority: an official line is taken and disseminated while forms of disagreement and dissent are silenced and suppressed. The impression is given everyone believes and accepts such things, and often grave consequences await any who would outwardly demonstrate resistance. Even if the powerful interest uses a “softer glove” approach featuring incessant propaganda but without as much suppression of outward dissent, the constant, withering barrage can still lead people to accept the authority’s framework and understanding about such matters.
Yet many voluntarily enter into echo chambers without any outward forms of coercion and in the face of plenty of disagreement and dissent. While it can occasionally happen very abruptly, most of the time people cease putting in the effort to fully consider and grapple with other perspectives and points of view. It proves easier to listen to those with whom you share fundamental assumptions and beliefs; before too long, it seems everyone with whom you are communicating basically agrees with you. At this point, receiving information that would suggest a significant percentage of people do not agree with you proves mystifying; it seems like a conspiracy or a hoax to you because you intuit far more agreement than actually exists because you’ve surrounded yourself only with people who agree with you.
We are tempted to enter echo chambers regarding many aspects of our lives, but as in all such things, rarely more so than in terms of politics and religion.
Almost everyone can see the challenges with echo chambers in politics; unfortunately, the challenges and critiques are almost invariably leveled at those on the other side. The recent shifts toward greater radical and reactionary poles of political discourse have likely been because of and fueled by echo chambers: people become alienated from those who disagree with them politically, which makes them easier targets for radicalization, leading to demonization, dehumanization, and great hostility toward those of the other side. Nothing good has ever come from such demonization, dehumanization, and hostility (cf. James 3:14-18).
Yet the tendency toward developing echo chambers remains quite alive in terms of religion as well. The Christian faith can easily be co-opted and made to be about “us” versus “them.” “We” have the truth and the answers, and “they” therefore must be in the wrong. We can justify and rationalize why we should only listen to those who share our religious presuppositions. Preaching and teaching can easily be conformed to the echo chamber, able to rally the faithful but without much critical rigor or standing. And in such echo chambers the temptation toward radicalization remains. How many horrific deeds have been perpetrated by those who professed to follow Jesus who ended up getting radicalized in a religious echo chamber?
There was hope and promise regarding the Internet: we had hoped interconnectedness would facilitate more information, insight, and exchange, and work against the echo chamber mentality. Yet the Internet has proven both a bane and a boon for the development of echo chambers. Internet algorithms can lead a person to experience selective exposure; the Internet has facilitated all sorts of people with very niche interests or views to find and support one another, for good and for ill. Therefore, it remains quite possible to ensconce oneself into a comfortable Internet bubble, receiving information only from those with whom you are predisposed to agree, and able to block, hide, or never even see material or people with opposing viewpoints. At the same time, people have often come into contact with those who had been demonized as “the other,” and they were discovered to be normal people, leading to disillusionment regarding the attitudes and ideologies in which people were raised. We see this latter trend especially prevalent among those raised in very restrictive and fear-based religious environments; such has led to not a little of the deconstruction going on in the present day.
Thus, in the end, the echo chamber ultimately proves self-defeating. You can be reinforced in your shared agreement for only so long before the group seems utterly remote and mystifying to anyone who is not a part of it. Sometimes people turn on one another in the echo chamber because of perceived deviations from what was held in agreement; many more times some have seen through the conceit of the echo chamber and no longer want to be a part of it. Those who wish to develop themselves or others in what seems to be the relative comfort and security of an echo chamber will be hard pressed to avoid any and every form of disruption which would easily shatter it all.
Arguments and ideas cultivated and developed in echo chambers painfully demonstrate their origins. They may make a world of sense to those already committed to those principles, but often seem hopelessly arcane to anyone else. Furthermore, the deeper we enmesh ourselves into an echo chamber, the more extreme and esoteric our arguments, discussions, and ideas become.
Echo chambers stand at variance with our shared work of God in Christ. Jesus called upon Christians to be the light of the world, not putting the light under a bushel, but out so all could see it (cf. Matthew 5:13-16). Jesus and the Apostles freely discussed and disputed with others from differing religious and socio-economic backgrounds. Paul could only tear down arguments and obstacles raised up against the knowledge of God by engaging with them, understanding them, and finding ways to subject them to the knowledge of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
Iron sharpens iron (cf. Proverbs 27:17), and the truth never has anything to fear from exposure or discussion. Therefore, Christians should not fear engaging with people with whom they have various levels of disagreement. In fact, such engagement is required for the Christian to be able to develop a robust, healthy faith and defense for that faith.
Engagement with other ideas does not demand acceptance of other ideas. And yet no matter how significant the disagreement, and even if we have been given no reason to adapt or modify our views based on what has been presented, we will never be entirely the same after the interaction. Perhaps in it we have learned a better way of describing our beliefs, or we have a better understanding of why we strongly disagree with a given premise. That kind of engagement and interaction will be manifest in how we discuss that given issue or practice in the future.
The Gospel of Christ cannot be well preached in an echo chamber. Those in echo chambers might be continually reinforced in what they believe, but the lack of a catalyst for critical engagement or thought will invariably lead to far weaker beliefs, impatience and frustration when attempting to communicate those beliefs, a strong temptation to demonize, dehumanize, and manifest hostility to those outside of the echo chamber, and ironically, a greater chance of later disillusionment if and when the echo chamber, for whatever reason, is shattered. We can only well and truly reflect God in Christ through the Spirit to the world by engaging in and with the world and allowing those engagements and interactions to better shape and inform our arguments and presentation of the Gospel. May we resist the tendency to ensconce ourselves in echo chambers, consider a range of views and perspectives, but always ground and root ourselves in what God has accomplished in Jesus!
Ethan R. Longhenry
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