DIGITALLY FRACTURED BELIEFS
Only belief unites
people, for going to war or for civic projects. It is only belief,
ungrounded - arbitrary - unsubstantiated shared belief.
Belief, and only
belief, gets an army to march, the members to pledge, a populace to
serve.
Belief driven
societies underlie all of human history.
Shattering of
shared belief underlies today’s fractured political landscape.
In hindsight the unravelling
of nations and civilization by the internet was quite predictable because the
internet and fractured media facilitated the shattering of shared belief.
The collapse of a
unified belief system, neighbors holding different beliefs, family members
holding conflicting faiths, this is exponentially amplified by today’s diverse
digital media environment.
I no longer need to
behave like you. Unseen influencers in Moscow or Austin can shape my
behavior, and your behavior. Even your family need not worship as you
do. A media multitude will tell them they need not worship at all.
The great clashes
of civilizations are simply clashes of beliefs, beliefs that conveniently
justified the raping and pillaging that reside in our dark souls. The
belief could be in a king or prophet or political system, as long as it was a
shared belief. .
For millennia,
family and society defined our beliefs. Now we can believe whatever we
want, with affirmation from people all over the world. It is a heady
feeling, a disorienting feeling, inducing a spiritual vertigo. It is
liberating, one would think. Yet instead, it is more fearful than
liberating, because we are exposed to so many people, people near and far, who
do not share our beliefs and even threaten our beliefs.
This is new for
humanity. Our beliefs are ultimately our identity. Contradictory
beliefs in such close proximity are a threat to the core essence of our
being.
Historically
humanity accommodates a sudden exposure to conflicting beliefs by invoking
violence, cataclysm, and terror on the infidels, heathens, and gentiles.
But this time the differing beliefs are not across a border, not conveniently
wearing a uniform, not even demonstrating the courtesy of self-identifying with
a different skin color or facial structure.
This is existential
conflict of beliefs, beliefs identified only by channels watched and newsfeeds
subscribed.
Differing beliefs
can coexist if there is some shared overarching belief subsuming the divergent
beliefs, or if the differing belief is entertained by such a small cross
section of population as to not pose a threat. On Sunday mornings it was
OK to drive past those other churches that were not really that different from ours.
It was OK to tolerate some minority opinions and ethnic groups when all were
under an umbrella of shared patriotism and faith in a political system.
But remove the umbrella of overarching belief, partition a subcontinent or
dissolve an authoritarian Balkan country, and the next lower level of
beliefs come to the fore, beliefs now in conflict. The people that
have always been in that other house of worship now seem
threatening.
In the United
States and western Europe, the overarching blanket of beliefs is being stripped
away, not by imposition of new borders or eradication of central governments,
but by profitable exploitation of fears and ignorance. Nothing has
changed, but you and I now believe completely contradictory claims.
Shatter beliefs and
shatter a nation, fragment beliefs and destroy a civilization.
When my neighbor
shares almost none of my beliefs, it takes little provocation, a
provocation based on fervently held belief, for my neighbor to become a threat.
That is the world
(dis)order of the internet, repeating the lessons of history but now worldwide,
a history driven in its triumphs and tragedies by beliefs, beliefs now
dispersed and mixed and scattered and stirred, terrifying diversity right next
door, even in our own living room, history waiting, waiting, to see if
humanity will find any belief in common, anything overarching, some belief to
share and unite, before the digital media incited conflicting beliefs turn our
own neighborhood into the 1861 U.S., 1919 Russia, 1935 China, 1947 India, 1965 Indonesia,
1992 Balkans, 2024 Ukraine, 2025 Palestine…….
Copyright 2025 Don Ray. Please share.
