What’s happening to and around Dave Chappelle sucks right now.
He did ask for it though. Let me be clear, I’m all for the consequences of someone being an asshole, that’s kind of the best part of free speech.
The issues arise if you are in the slightest bit counter-narrative or sometimes even additive to the conversation. By being brave, you risk being called out as a dissident, and increasingly likely to be an outcast guilty of the crime of possessing your own opinion.
This is crazy for a number of reasons, but chiefly because we live in a time when the totality of human knowledge is at your fingertips.
Despite that, it’s become harder for the average person to manage to think for themself and pursue a curiosity or have an independent thought because of the constant deluge of information aimed at them.
Objective reality itself is in question these days, and there are people with such diametrically opposing viewpoints it makes you wonder if we’re all watching the same events unfold.
Brain Candy
All information isn’t created equal but most of what we consume in our mobile feeds are essentially the fast food of news, quick takes, sound bites and usually tow along the lines of the narrative of the day.
With a few lines of code a software system can show, hide or obfuscate the information you are looking for and may never know existed.
There is an incredible power and responsibility our tech companies and governments aren’t capable of fulfilling, nor are they motivated financially or politically to do so and that should concern us.
Poor and low information media is the junk food of the mind and it’s the person shoveling it into them with the power to control where the next bite comes from.
Put it in reverse
To go outside of the constant hum of the echo chamber is difficult. I hear the argument all the time that we need to protect people from misinformation, but that would require gong backwards to a singular narrative and central sense of authority which I don’t believe is compatible with where we are going, that is of course towards greater decentralization.
In the interim, this might mean employing soft skills and tools inherent to every human on the planet. I’m talking about instinct, intuition and a general bullshit detector that beeps when something seems off.
Without wisdom in a world of noise, having all of the information is like having none of it.
We could also think back to ancient times, when the knowledge pool was smaller, people had to center worldview to something congruent with their core philosophy. Finding and regaining our sense of individuality and moral guidelines should give us perspectives as unique as our personalities. More POV’s, should inherently lead to more discourse which should invariably lead us to more truths. That is, if we’re not censored or afraid.
If becoming the next Plato isn’t appealing to you then in the meantime, building our critical thinking skills while remaining open minded (within reason, because the earth certainly ain't flat), is our best shot at creating a neo-renaissance era.
The world is calling for a new operating system, one that improves the lives of everyone on the planet but to invent that, we need to be flexible enough to question and even interrogate the narrative of the day. By changing the framing of our most complex problems using first principles and applying the lessons of the past to foresight strategy and systems thinking to solve for the present and the future, we can evolve to Earth 2.0.
For that, we’ll need people who can see the world from a child’s perspective. Naturally inquisitive, freethinkers produce better societies. Free speech or its forebear freedom of thought might be considered the cornerstone of scientific inquiry and innovation. They brought us the first renaissance and will bring us the next.
Invention does not happen if one is trapped in a figurative box or shackled to an ideology. Ask Galileo…
Freedom is one of the core tenants of which modern western society is founded on, and I believe it’s that spirit that has given it a competitive edge and kept it a place that draws people in from all over the world to partake.
What is science if not the perseverance of free inquiry of the world that surrounds you?
There is always new data to be uncovered and interpreted, new hypotheses and experiments to be dreamt up. This is how we upgrade the framework of our reality.
Don’t just believe in science or, “follow the science”, be part of it. Learn and practice the process of the scientific method, be a citizen scientist. The principles are for everybody to understand and use. Imagine if our society experienced a renaissance period now.
We could all be a little more like Da Vinci, but maybe a little less weird about cadavers.