Sticks & Stones
If I feel hurt and angry at you, I may not understand my feelings. The visceral processes that drive them may be complexly rooted in a personal history of perceived slights and mistreatments that have nothing to do with you. I know that I am angry and want you to pay for whatever you’ve done. I would never attack you physically, but I can call you hurtful names, embarrass you by revealing secrets or tell nasty stories about you. These methods of retaliation are not new, but they were never as effective as they have become with through social media.
Social media provides immediate access to an unlimited array of insulting words and images that I can use against you. I can easily spread lies and make accusations that are instantly delivered to a large audience and remain in place indefinitely. I need not reveal anything about my pain, explain the reasons for my anger or even identify myself. I can inflict pain on you, intensified by its public exposure, in a moment of rage. I am unlikely to have carefully considered the consequences of what I am doing, and I may later regret what I have done. I wield enormous power through a series of clicks.
Consider the difference between the physicality of my clicks against you and the physical impact of those clicks on you and those around you. I have asserted little more than a gesture that I need not have thought about or care about very much. My clicks, however, have the potential to impact a wide audience who know you personally. Some might be persuaded by my lies and accusations, while others rush to defend you from an unfair attack. My clicks make you the center of a maelstrom of strongly voiced and intensely physical responses. A thoughtless series of physical clicks sets in motion a destructive series of intense claims and counterclaims. Social media has given me more power than I am able to use responsibly.
Throughout most of human history, the entities and events we identified and learned to recognize remained closely grounded to their physical core of experience at the first tier of consciousness. We recognize the ax, for example, as a tool for cutting wood, and we know how to use it in our core of experience. The ax we recognize is tightly tied to the physical uses we have experienced. Technology makes it easy to initiate complex lines of action that have enormous impact with minimal personal involvement. While this is labor saving, it distances us from what we are doing.
I am disconnected from many activities in my life. I wash my clothes with a button push and dry them with another push. The mindfulness approach to washing the dishes suggested by Tik Nat Han is not possible in the context of a dishwasher button push. I have become less mindful (mindless?) of both my clothes and dishes. If I only interact with friends through social media, I am less mindful of them as well. As we become less involved physically in the actions we set in motion, we are less grounded in what we are doing. Artificial intelligence offers the potential to make things happen that have enormous physical significance with no involvement at all.
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