Today, while exploring the nether
regions of X, or Twitter, or what ever name Musk will next use to wrong foot
most of the human race, I learned that some people are paying ten thousand
dollars a year to boost their reach on X.
They pay this sum in expectation of earning more than that as
creators. That fact inspired some
unexpected insights regarding social media.
I had not known (maybe I am too
naive?) previously that some of the big “influencers” had invested that kind of
money. That fact explained, to me, why
Twitter is so disappointing. With that
kind of money on the line, the vicious and underhanded popularity contest that
X has devolved into makes sense.
I started on Twitter, and
continue, with the now obviously vain hope that it is some kind of free market
place of ideas. So I have been
constantly surprised to find that putting out new and valid ideas, especially
in the realms of theology and American political philosophy (my specialties)
has not resulted in gaining a lot of followers.
Turns out that in this vicious,
for profit, middle school style popularity contest, the last thing some
influencers want to do is respond to a good idea. That just allows the newcomer to gain
followers and might detract from the influencers influence (and profit). So, I have ignorantly, generously and for no
pay simply shared my hard won insights with the world at large. While I was disappointed when my favorite
thinkers did not re-post, comment, or otherwise use this forum to further human
understanding, I was downright alarmed when I would see some of those same
ideas, slightly paraphrased, a day or two later in some creator's post.
Now I know why. Twitter, and Facebook, and all the other
social media (and virtually all corporate media generally) is not about
informing, educating, and other wise spreading Truth. No, it is all about monetizing the deep
hunger that all humanity has, especially in these dire times, to learn the
truth and to share the truths they have developed. Our current fear driven frenzy to somehow
solve the looming national if not global conflagration is creating an
insatiable demand for knowledge and truth.
The social media, and old media along with it, are happy to sell us some
small portion of that truth.
This is where the lives and examples
of both Socrates and Jesus come in to play.
These two men are undoubtedly the founding figures of Western thought,
and the one precept they had in common is that they highlighted how evil it is
to have knowledge commodified and sold to the people. That is because when the “leaders” of a
society make merchandise of knowledge and wisdom, they have a vested interest
in the people remaining ignorant. What's
more, even if some knowledge is sold, the best and most useful knowledge will
remain closely held, lest the masses no longer need the elite teachers.
In the case of Socrates, his
career consisted of teaching the youth of Athens that the things the educators
taught were wrong were, in fact, true, and the things the educators asserted as
truth turned out to be false. After a
few decades of this, the learned men and teachers of the law in Athens were fed
up and had him tried and sentenced to either banishment or death by drinking
hemlock. He drank the hemlock.
With Jesus, it was a little
different. He was simply teaching the
Truth of the Gospel to everyone. When
the disciples of John the Baptist came asking (for John) if he was the Messiah,
one of the things Jesus said to tell John was that the Gospel was being taught
to the poor. (As a slight aside, that
statement implies that some of the vital truths of God were being taught, for
money, to the rich before Jesus came along.
Hmmm?) At any rate, that same
demographic, the learned men and teachers of the law, this time in Jerusalem,
had Jesus crucified for some of the same reasons that Socrates was killed.
So here we are, seemingly at the
twilight of Western civilization, struggling to learn anew the most basic
lessons from our beginnings. The
electronic media, which could and should be used to enlighten and liberate
humanity from the ignorance of the past, is instead being used to confuse our
minds and increase the power of ignorance to divide and incite us.
This dynamic also explains why
there are so few innovative solutions gaining wide exposure on social
media. New ideas have always been a
great threat to any political and cultural establishment, because a truly new,
innovative concept might disrupt that entire establishment. Sadly, almost all the influencers, most of
whom probably started out on X to resist the establishment, have, due to the
jealous and greedy dynamic inherent on X, been captured by that same
establishment.
All of this is has been and is
being driven by deviously clever “leaders” posing, in the way such people
usually do, as saviors while they greedily exploit and frustrate our common
desire for truth, wisdom, unity and peace.
Good work if you can get it.
