Information Overload

[sealchan]

In my musings on how the US has come to the political climate that it has come to, I feel that my former feeling that white racism is the primary factor has shifted. Certainly the Trump voter is primarily white, male and Christian. Certainly a deep survey of the Trump voter in 2016 revealed that, by my estimates, roughly 60% of the Trump voters are anti-immigrant, anti-other.

A Measure of Xenophobia

But I think that external factors that are especially consequential to that political coalition have combined into a perfect storm and have basically overloaded those individuals in a way that they just cannot turn away from. They have been backed into a corner and their lives are continually disrupted from what they would have their lives be. These factors include:

• The Information Age
• Global Warming
• Global Pandemic

The Information Age is the age of human civilization where information, indeed, personal interactions, know no bounds. By that I mean no regional bounds. Through cellular technology tied to a more or less globally accessible network, we have constant contact with the whole entire world. Conservative or liberal we struggle at times to balance the temptation and the anxiety that this much connectedness brings. For those who want to reach out across the network and interact, but, who, are otherwise most comfortable within their local community and a culture where most other people are like themselves, this exposes them to a lot of ideas and beliefs that they would, perhaps, otherwise like to ignore. This fact has created a marketplace for alternative realities, false authorities and conspiracy theories mistaken for reliable knowledge by those who cannot fathom or process this wider reality. In fact the spectacle that is the internet just may present a picture of the world far more strange and disturbing than what local only people every dreamed could be the case.

Global Warming is the direct result of the success of the human race. Never in the past has there been more people yielding more of a physical impact on the world. We used to worry about clean air and water, about preserving endangered species and protecting wild lands for future generations. But now, even having addressed many of these concerns, we now have a rise in global temperatures. The threat of increased taxes on carbon emissions and other costs will be introduced into their lives leaves them resentful of government and other authorities who seem to just want to take away their freedom. Global warming, in this way, has caused great political friction. The only argument against science is science denial. But more and more the scientific view is becoming clear and each year brings new oddities to our experience of the seasons.

The Global Pandemic is many things to many people. To some it has been yet another intrusion, this time, in record time, bringing economic failure to countless small businesses and uncertainty to those who already struggle to isolate themselves from a world they don't understand. People were not even allowed to go to church or meet together without risking some potential social consequence. Dealing with a viral pandemic was an immediate, deep intrusion that while it has swept the world, hasn't made many people realize that you can't just hole up in your own private world or local community any more.


Conclusion

Human civilization is growing and changing and if we are to thrive we must learn how to work together and not just fall apart into our separate worlds. We all need to nourish ourselves and our subjective needs and wants, but we all must come to terms with the fact that we are not a bunch of loners...nor can we reasonably or morally act that way. Unfortunately for the many who will not come to those terms there has been a sort of revolt against this constant intrusion of global conditions into local lives. Everyone can get overwhelmed at the size of our human world and the magnitude of the challenges we must now face as a global community. Many of us are just not ready for this. Some of our fellow citizens have lived their entire lives knowing that there is no good in the world except for what good they can carve out for themselves and their people. In the end, racism is just a symptom and not a cause in many cases for the polarity we are experiencing in our politics. It is that our physical presence on this planet is becoming so consequential that we cannot move off into a corner and care only for ourselves.

There is no more moral or responsible local-only thinking any more.