Copyright 2017 Don Ray
Today's political polarization seems shocking, a new and
unforeseen development, unimaginable and inconceivable, at least to us old
goomers. But if viewed in the context of
history and technology development, we can see this societal divergence as
quite natural.
Bear with my brief recap of 100,000 years, and we will come
to the key question facing our hyper-connected society today.
We began with family alliances, small groups of people hunting
and gathering, parents and children and grandparents looking out for each
other.
We evolved into tribes, groupings of people bonded by
mutually beneficial survival advantages gained from group membership.
With the advent of farming technology (read “sticks and
grinding stones”) tribes evolved into villages.
Eventually with wheel and ship technology allowing trade
across vast distances, the city-state arose.
People now joined together for defense, as always, but now also for
economic advantages.
Occasionally a city-state, Babylon or Rome for example,
would extend its power, and empire was born, but most residents of the empire
would not identify with the distant city-state center of that empire.
With improved roads and spreading language and communication
now possible over hundreds of miles in only a matter of weeks, the nation-state
was enabled, and kingdoms spread their influence beyond the city walls.
These national identities were not as automatic as had been
membership in the tribe or village.
Coercion and manipulation and propaganda became necessary to convince
people to kill and die for king and country when king and country posed no
evident advantage to survival. But with
enough flags and anthems and taxes, the nation-state secured its “natural” role
as the geographic location of a given linguistic or ethnic or religious group.
During the perennial warfare of the age of nations French
speakers in the Alsace moved west, Deutsch speakers moved east; Deutsch
speakers moved north of the Alps, Italian speakers moved south; Muslims moved
west of the sub-continent’s Line of Control, Hindus moved east; Shiites and Sunnis and Jews and Turks and
Armenians packed up and moved in countless migrations in whatever direction the
swords and guns pointed; Russians and Mongols and Magyars moved wherever they
wanted.
We always had somewhere to move, even if only a desolate
reservation assigned by treaty or a tiny strip of desert between the ocean and
the tanks.
We moved as ethnic groups, as language groups, as religious
groups, and we formed new nations, or conquered old ones, or assimilated into
existing ones, but we wound up in a place with people of some shared identity.
All fine and good until recent decades. A new coalescing, a new great migration, now
unfolds. A large swath of the human
population has taken to a virtual road to journey to their promised lands.
That new promised
land is populated with people just like us.
That new promised land is run the way we think a land should be
run.
Our new virtual migrations do not conveniently lend themselves
to tidy borders and genocides and conquests and subjugations and expulsions.
We now migrate digitally.
Our tribe and ethnic group has been replaced by those who listen to the
same news sources. Our religious
denomination has been replaced by a congregation of people of shared faith in political
and social and football philosophies.
We once coalesced around a water source. Later we coalesced around a color on a
map. Now we coalesce around a FaceBook
page.
Shared genes once brought us together, then shared food
sources, then shared language, then shared place. Now it is shared opinions and attitudes that
bring us together.
Spears and clubs facilitated the tribe. Hoes and digging-sticks facilitated the
village. Sails and compass facilitated
the city-state. Wheels and roads
facilitated the nation.
What “migration”, what new structure of human
interconnection, is our digital technology facilitating? It is not a migration of place, not a
structure of geography. It is something
new and unforeseeable, as the city-state and nation were unforeseeable before
their advent.
The word we associate with “tribal” is warfare. Name a city-state: Troy, Babylon, Rome,
Venice, and we can list its wars. Mention
a nation and you can list the nations with which it fought wars. Will the outcome of these new migrations,
this new connection, this new communication, be new in its influence on our
behavior?
The migrations of old separated us as we crossed rivers,
mountain ranges, or lines on a map to be with those who spoke our language or
read our scripture. Today’s digital migration
to our preferred news source and web sites and FaceBook friends still leaves us
living next to the same irritating neighbors, in the same country as those
benighted voters we won’t talk to, and in the same world as those
gentile/heathen/infidel heretics we fear and demonize.
The technology has changed and the geographic distributions have
changed……but have we changed? Do we want
to change? Each historic coalescing of
identity: family – tribal – religious - and national, led to violent conflict
with the “others”. Will our coalescing into
right and left - red and blue - liberal and conservative - fundamentalist and
progressive - NASCAR and Indy Racing League - science and superstition, simply
lead to new iterations of conflict? …or will we finally learn that the person
of different belief – opinion – perspective – attitude – philosophy does not necessarily pose a threat? When no longer separated by the mountain
between villages, the river between tribes, the language between nations, when
we have the same language - the same neighborhood - the same community - the
same world, when we are done texting and tweeting those who agree with us, will
we finally talk to each other?
Copyright 2017 Don Ray
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