Thanks to Grant Goldenchild (Technicality MC bitd) and his Drum & Bass Against Racism FB group for bringing this damn fine piece of writing to my attention, and for Rebecca for allowing the repost.
The wave takes shape, emerges, evolving as it advances; gathering momentum, it grows and swells to new strengths. Final
Whilst innumerable waves crash without consequence, some bear considerable effects, even cataclysmic: their influence palpable.
This is not about the waves of the ocean, but rather the waves of human
dialogue, which when emotively captured, become the Great Waves that
sometimes surf with irrational behaviour. The rise of the internet
drives dialogue further still, surging at speeds far greater than any
time before. This powerful force is one we must handle with care,
consideration and consciousness.
‘The Wave,’ or ‘The Third
Wave ,’ is also the name of a social experiment, birthed in a history
lesson designed to demonstrate, when unable to explain, the manner by
which the German population willingly supported and followed the
ideologies of Adolf Hitler. History teacher, Ron Jones, wanted to show
that even democratic societies were susceptible to fascism.
‘The Third Wave’ was propagated as a movement initially for those
students in Jones’ class. The movement enforced strict discipline and
routine, and its principles were founded on a carefully manipulated
motto, containing sound bites that promoted discipline, community,
action and pride; individuality was suppressed and membership and
exclusivity elevated. Within just a couple of days, the students were
immersed in this new movement. Increasing numbers of students joined
from all over the school, initiated with ceremony, membership cards and
rules of conduct; members kept outsiders out, and reported on anyone who
broke the rules. Dangerously slipping out of control by day four, the
experiment was drawn to a conclusion on day five, with the students
having to face the reality that so easily had they been swept away on a
wave of misdirection and control that echoed that of Germany during the
Third Reich.
The experiment captured the ease of
indoctrinating a group of people with the succinct encapsulation,
repetition and reinforcement of an idea, supported by a culture of ‘us’
and ‘them.’ The succinct encapsulation of an idea and its gathering
momentum is not to be feared. The waves come and they go, and their
perpetual nature sustains us. However, when ideologies are encouraged
with the principles of divide and conquer, establishing rule by setting
one side against another, surely the ideology becomes corrupted.
The emergence of thought and development of dialogue has driven
evolution and change – we talked about it and then it happened. And
history shows us that when ideologies are given a voice and the same
voice is echoed, the further it spreads and the quicker it spreads, the
more effective it becomes, and the more likely it will become a force to
be reckoned with, good or bad.
Media and the communication of
ideas to a mass populace has increasingly grown and increasingly
infringed on the lives of ordinary people: from the rhetoric circling in
the small and distant amphitheatres of ancient Greece, to the
ubiquitous twittering of online cyber surfers today.
With each modal move comes greater responsibility as movement of thought increases its reach.
Today the volume is turned up, and we find ourselves practically
deafened by the proliferation of carefully, (or carelessly, depending on
which way you look at it), compressed, caption carried content. With
so much available information and the relentless bombardment of info
-bombs, it isn’t surprising that we have become accustomed to digesting
our information in a comparable manner: quickly and indiscriminately.
And just as we would, more often than not, we admit it all without
accounting for source or evidence, or content even, let alone context.
It’s human nature to make snap judgements: an evolutionary requirement
to protect ourselves. But we don’t have to indulge them. Surely real
strength of thought is assessing it for what it is, weighing up our
prior knowledge and our own personal experiences, judging as we would a
wager.
Social media is shaped to galvanise ‘likes’ and
‘shares.’ It taps into our susceptibility to follow trends, and
effectively adopt herd behaviour. There are at least two psychologies
at play here: that concerned with the fear of missing out, and that of
collective hysteria.
Whilst mass hysteria is something largely
cited as a collective response to perceived threat, rapidly spread
through rumours and fear, herd behaviour can be a collective reaction to
a much greater range of events and occurrences. Think Princess Diana: a
seemingly inexplicable event of collective mourning, on an
international scale of mammoth proportions not likely seen before.
Across numerous animal species, herd instinct (Nietzsche, 1887), crowd
psychology (Freud, 1921) and similar theory, attempt to explain the
phenomena of large numbers of individuals acting in the same way at the
same time, without centralised or dictated direction.
A sense
of self-preservation seems to run through many of these philosophies; we
see others engaging in an activity and assume there may be benefits to
us doing the same. A key example is the numerous scientific
observations that reveal that when panicked, individuals confined to the
same room with two equally distributed exits, disproportionally rush
towards one exit over the other. The result is damaging, harmful even,
yet time and again we behave in the same way.
There are
countless examples of this kind of behaviour prevalent in human
societies, and perhaps the playground is one of our first individual
experiences of such. Remember the scenario of two individuals falling
out at lunchtime: over what, a misplaced insult or a copied homework
assignment? The rumours spread throughout the afternoon, and by the
last lesson of the day a fight has been scheduled for 3.30pm outside the
school gates. Did one of the two victims of this silly lunchtime spat
goad the other into an official fist fight at the end of school?
Probably not. But the rumours have them with their backs against the
wall, and there’s no getting out of it. The two square off. Neither
one of them wants a physical altercation, and it’s all been blown out of
proportion; but all of a sudden there’s a call to ‘Fight!’ from the
amassing crowds, and then there’s another one and another one, and now
the whole crowd’s chanting, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ Suddenly these two
unprepared and frankly petrified individuals have their fates committed,
and the repercussions are inescapable.
The call to ‘fight’ is
not a reasonable or rational response; it is not an informed judgement,
and retrospectively it’s just not right, but we do it. The same way an
ordinary group of people respond recklessly in kind to events such as
the recent ‘Black Friday.’ We observe the actions of others, and, in
spite of the possibility of our own available information to the
contrary, we decide to imitate what we have observed.
Also at
play, warming up a lot of these en masse experiences, is FoMO, the Fear
of Missing Out: a psychology that simmers under the surface of a lot of
our actions. Whilst the term was coined only recently in 2013, I
imagine the psychology has always been there, and that social media only
heightens our susceptibility to it. FoMO is defined by the online
Oxford Dictionary as: “Anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may
currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a
social media website.”
Given that we are all now so
‘connected,’ we are constantly exposed to the goings on of everybody
else. It doesn’t stop, and it genuinely feels like it’s not stopping;
thus, so many of us feel like we shouldn’t be stopping either, lest we
miss out. We feel compelled to be engaged with whatever else it is that
everybody else is doing.
Was this behind the literal wave of
the Ice Bucket? Remember, not so long ago, the hundreds and thousands
spurred on to throw a bucket of ice cold water over themselves? ‘For
what?’ was the criticism leveled by many when it was realised that the
majority of these participants didn’t make a charitable contribution to
the cause, which for a large number of them remained vague or unknown.
‘The Ice Bucket Challenge’ was a phrase coined that alone could rouse
recruits, and it also clearly demonstrated the power we have to do good.
It’s worth noting that over my lifetime the use of sound
bites has had a largely negative effect on political discourse, reducing
real political insight to catchy snippets of information that
oversimplify matters of great complexity. Politics is not black and
white; but, perhaps our politicians have been persuaded to reduce it to
such for apparent effectiveness. And effective it often appears to be,
seemingly able to sway a nation with a small number of words, think,
‘Education, education, education,’ or ‘Yes we can.’ ‘It’s the Sun wot
won it,’ has never been far from the truth, with the media able to
effectively adopt their own political agenda and sell it in a headline;
now where’s ‘Our Only Hope’?
Language here is crucially
important; the words we use often carry more weight and influence than
at first observed. Consider the term ‘Asylum Seeker.’ Before this term
flooded British vocabulary in the ‘noughties,’ the same group of people
was referred to as ‘Refugees.’ Refugees clearly require refuge, and
this simple noun denotes that. But what is the implied purpose of an
asylum seeker? This noun phrase shifts emphasis to the act of doing
something, in this instance seeking something. Already our compassion
may be reduced, less willing to provide for those who are looking for
something, and who sound less like victims. And thanks to the media of
the day, the term ‘Asylum Seeker’ was muddied so much so that there was a
literal sense of blurred public perception, confusing the two very
distinct groups of immigrants and asylum seekers.
And why is it
that British migrants in their choice country of resettlement are
identified as Ex-pats? Why are they Ex-pats and not immigrants? The
very term that has been bred to positively encapsulate an immigrant’s
allegiance to their country of birth and not to the country that has
welcomed them, is of the very same logic that has people opposed to
migrants entering this country. The British and Americans can afford to
be patriotic, but other nationalities cannot.
Now consider the
terms, ‘Welfare,’ or ‘Benefit.’ When I was growing up there was
another term for this: ‘Social Security.’ Social security implied that
we were all paying into an insurance scheme: a social insurance that you
would be able to claim in times of failing security. ‘Welfare Benefit’
implies something entirely different. It implies that this social
security that we all pay into is somehow a benefit, not a right. And
the more we adopt this language, the easier it is to influence people’s
perception of what something really is.
Our National Health
Service is presently being brutalised in the public sphere: suddenly
it’s broken and in crisis. It’s as if overnight somebody pulled the
plug, and the following morning staff came on shift to find an
institution down the sink hole. It’s not realistic, and it’s not
failing. Everything is in need of constant consideration and requires
unrelenting care. Much like a child, we don’t leave them to fend for
themselves, we constantly reassess their needs, and when they’re not
doing so well, we don’t discard them and get another one, we try harder,
we care more, and we do not criticise.
Zero tolerance? This
is not a phrase I welcome into our dialogue, nor an ideology I want to
permeate our culture. Yet, today I hear promises of, ‘Zero tolerance of
failure and mediocrity’ in schools; as if failure is something to be
ashamed of and not something we all face in life’s valuable lessons. We
can’t all excel in everything, but we should have the support to excel
in the areas that best suit us.
At least today we can shout
loudly; in this country a large proportion of us have access to a forum
that provides a vague equality of voice. I am inspired by the internet.
For all its bad, there is good, and it is perhaps the one institution
that comes closest to an honest reflection of humanity.
‘Je
suis Charlie’ was an act of shouting loudly, but how many people took
the time to understand the nature of the circumstances that surrounded
this response to the atrocities that took place in France, before
purporting to be of the same voice? The political climate in France is
not the same as our own; the relationship with the state is not the same
as our own; views on tolerance and equality are not the same as our
own; Charlie Hebdo is not the Private Eye. In spite of all of this, if
you have taken the time to appreciate this and you still need to
represent the voice of Charlie, then by all means do so.
But what
Mark Twain said of the ‘Smith and Jones’ families, (what I knew as
‘Keeping up with the Jones’’), still applies, and perhaps it is even
more resonant in the information driven society we live in today: "The
outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always
obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts.” (p.510).
We
need to protect ourselves on this information-superhighway; we need to
adopt a green cross code. Before we perpetuate an idea, before we
respond to our fears and desires, and before we stick our heads above
the parapets with the simple click of a button, we need to Stop Look
Listen and Think. ‘Arrive alive! Keep looking and listening,’ is just
as relevant to crossing the road as it is to riding the waves of human
discourse.
Vincent Van Gogh is attributed with saying: 'I
don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me
dream.' We don’t know anything with certainty, and that’s ok – that
means we can have an open mind and freedom of thought. We can have a
dream, and we can give our dreams a voice, but let not our dreams be at
the cost of others. Let us ride the waves with mindfulness, navigate
with care for others, and not throw caution to the winds. Let us not
divide and conquer, but conquer division.
© 2015 Rebecca Pathan All rights reserved
References
Jones, Ron. (1976 & 2014) The Third Wave. The Wave Home: Learning from The Third Wave. [Internet].
http://www.thewavehome.com/1976_The-Third-Wave_story.htm. [Accessed 10th April 2015].
Oxford University Press. (2015) Oxford Dictionaries. [Internet].
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/FOMO [Accessed 10th April 2015].
Twain, Mark. (1901) Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, &
Essays: Corn-Pone Opinions. New York: Literary Classics of the United
States
Bibliography
Leitch, Vincent B. ed. (2001) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. London: W. W. Norton & Company Inc.
Nietzsche, Friedrich and Smith, Douglas, ed. (2008) On the Genealogy of
Morals: A Polemic. By way of clarification and supplement to my last
book Beyond Good and Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Twain, Mark. (1901) Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays:
Corn-Pone Opinions. New York: Literary Classics of the United States.
