The Insinuation of  Social Media into our Lives – Part 1

Technology and Culture

Many of us must believe that our current social media platforms are indispensable for discovering, interpreting, and understanding world events. These believers, particularly among our youngest citizens, trust that social media is the best way for them to stay informed about what is happening and to distinguish between truth and lies, as well as good and evil.

Others are unsure. Those with doubts believe that our current social media platforms may have deleterious effects, including contributing to the fragmentation of our society’s cultural foundations and conflict with friends, family, and strangers. Moreover, the new technologies might also create mass delusions by destroying our cultural systems for collecting and validating known facts and truths.

Americans with differing perspectives often ignore the underlying cultural and psychological dimensions of our collective problems and blame technology for everything. While technology can be used to destroy the foundations of our culture, as we will discuss later, technology is not the sole cause of our problems.

History shows that new communication technologies can be leveraged to produce highly beneficial outcomes. For example, the invention of the printing press allowed millions of people to become literate. Humanity was no longer held hostage by a small minority of scholars and scribes. However, the combination of these new levels of literacy and the Protestant Reformation fragmented many societies, resulting in centuries of religious conflict and war. Likewise, the mass production of radios enabled societies to access the same information in near real-time uniformly. This brought many societies, such as Germany, together in ways that had not existed before. However, over time, radio stations, particularly in the United States, began to cater to specific subcultures, and it is no wonder that the more unified American culture circa 1955 no longer exists. Even today, a trip across Interstate 80 from New York to San Francisco will provide a cultural roadmap of America. By listening to local AM radio stations across America, a listener will encounter several distinct cultural perspectives that are overtly in conflict with one another.

When pundits discuss the voting patterns of people in America’s urban, suburban, or rural areas, they tend to overlook the obvious 800-pound gorilla in the room. Some Democrats do not understand why their candidates do not win elections, despite promising farm subsidies for farmers in Nebraska. They think, “Why don’t these people accept our help?” Republicans often struggle to understand why they cannot make inroads in urban areas when gun control becomes a significant issue.

America’s 800-pound cultural gorilla is a set of persistent subcultures that often conflict with one another. American voters and politicians who ignore the separate American cultures cannot understand America. Cultural historians have subdivided American culture in several ways; however, I will use the following four folkways described in David Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: 1) Puritans of New England, 2) Cavaliers of the South, 3) Quakers of Delaware and Pennsylvania, and 4) Scotch-Irish and the Backcountry. This book, along with others, documents the westward migrations of these folkways across America over time.

While most Americans may prefer a unified culture, history has shown that achieving this is not an easy task. So, it is unsurprising that communications technology ultimately supports and reflects our cultural differentiation. Some might wish to vilify most communication technologies, but in their defense, our technologies are an integral part of who we are and our culture.  

We will never live in a society with one set of beliefs. Fundamental differences have always existed and will continue to exist within every culture. Given these innate differences, should every society fight to the death until one side or coalition wins? Many have tried this, but unsurprisingly, the extremist victors never last long. The long-lived societies tend to accommodate diversity and multiculturalism to a greater or lesser extent.

One tactic of the enemies of multiculturalism is to control the dissemination of information, the religious institutions, and the education of the young. By restricting all information, religious instruction, and general education to one doctrine, alternatives become scarce. Ironically, the act of hiding or denigrating alternatives causes a few to ask, “Can’t I judge for myself? Why should someone dictate what I or my children can be exposed to?” Closed nations, such as North Korea, might seem like a viable alternative way to live, but how many of us would volunteer to live like that?

Even within multicultural societies, struggles for cultural dominance persist. Ironically, when multiculturalism becomes the dominant “culture”, those with differing beliefs believe their subculture is being disrespected and under attack. Thus, when a “liberal” criticizes or restricts someone who does not believe in multiculturalism, the “conservative” may call the “liberal’s” actions authoritarian. This stuns the “liberal” because he thinks he is the antithesis of an authoritarian. However, when the “liberal” forces, however weakly, his multicultural beliefs on “conservatives” then the “liberal” can be perceived as violating the “liberal” code of conduct.

This is the first in a series of three posts about social media; the next post will follow.