Escaping the Election Cocoon

A good opinion piece on how censoring others who don't subscribe to our own ideologies / thoughts & don't confirm our pre-existing biases adversely affect our own ability to make intelligent decisions.

Lots of people around the world are wondering for the past year or so how such bigoted people like Donald Trump in US elections 2016 or even a self-professed criminal like Rodrigo Duterte, latest President of Philippines & who was nicknamed, "The Donald Trump of Philippines," can win over millions of people.

A major reason for how these kinds of people win over the hearts & minds of millions is because those millions of voters are living in a bubble / cocoon of their own. Anyone who is not a mindless "yes-man" to their ideas / opinions / thoughts are banished from their little worlds. They feel intelligent & safe in knowing that they are surrounded by people who think like them. In the end, there are millions who are mindlessly following anyone, like a herd of sheep, to do anything to appease their human god.

So why are we seeing more mind-numbing stupidity in this gilded age of data & information, which are all around us & easily accessible, too? We are seeing this happening far more frequently in this information age, because the information providers, the social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc.), are helping the populations become mindless zombies. The social media is actively altering the perception & truth around us by feeding us info which confirm our bias & echo our thoughts, instead of helping us see the other side of the debate.

On a personal level, I've felt this happening all too often. I've been unfriended & unfollowed by friends because of my thoughts & opinions; just because I am not mindlessly saying what they wanted to hear from their "friends". I thought a true friend who is supposed to push back on your ideas which are wrong, but, apparently, in this "modern" day & age, a true friend is one who mindlessly agrees with you with whatever crap you are spewing out of your mouth.

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http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/escaping-the-election-cocoon/

More & more, we are living in our own tailor-made media cocoons, carefully constructed shells that surround us with voices & ideas that support our own beliefs. Conversely, they also shelter us from anything that might challenge our perspective. This distorts our view of the world, makes us less able to understand others, & less likely to embrace new ideas.

My parents & my grandparents before them had 3 sources of news: the local paper, the radio, & the 6 o’clock television news. On a typical day, I get my news from 2 or 3 newspapers, the radio, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, a couple of news sites & maybe LinkedIn. And I’m probably below average. A recent survey by Ipsos Reid examined 16 different types of media commonly used by Canadians for their news. Another poll by the Media Technology Monitor in 2014 found that the number of Canadians who are using the Internet as their main source of news has increased by 20% over the previous 2 years.

The options to filter that news are also increasing. The most common online news aggregators & social media platforms, such as Facebook & Twitter, allow us to customize what we see. Are stories about the global refugee crisis getting you down? Click. 60 million people just disappeared. Is a particular journalist saying something unpleasant about your political party? Click. As far as you’re concerned, her mouth has been forever covered by especially durable duct tape.

When we tune out that journalist because we feel she isn’t being “objective,” what we really mean is that her views do not support our pre-existing beliefs. In fact, truly objective news is impossible. Every adjective & headline shifts the story in one direction or another. Even if you reduced a story to just numbers & facts, much would depend on which figures & in which order.

Unfortunately, our habit of tuning out ideas & voices we don’t like is part of our biological programming. “Confirmation bias,” the tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs & to remember it longer, is a well-documented & inescapable element of our behaviour. As a result, we instinctively tailor our universe to limit the emotionally upsetting views that contradict us. Until recently, the shortage of media choices made this hard to do. Left or right, we all watched the same suppertime newscast. Now, it’s finally possible to be bound in a nutshell, & count ourselves kings of infinite space, because we can avoid any bad dreams.

This has been very apparent in the refugee debate. A significant number of Canadians are opposed to allowing in more Syrians, due to the possibility that they would include Islamic State supporters, or that they would spread Islam or because we should be helping our own poor first. If you listen to a specific set of radio stations, read certain blogs & interact with people similar to yourself on Facebook, these ideas aren’t only defensible, they are overwhelmingly obvious.

Likewise, another group of Canadians who subscribe to different newspapers, listen to the CBC & read the Huffington Post are equally convinced of the self-evident fact that there is a clear need for Canada to do more, & accepting far more refugees would neither strain our economy nor our social fabric. In reality, both sides are filtering out important pieces of information, making it impossible to see the full picture. Which is why neither group can grasp how anyone could possibly be so asinine as to dispute what is so clearly self-evident.

This is bad, & not just because it prevents us from having civil conversations about Canada’s refugee & immigration policies. It creates a lack of empathy that leads us to denigrate & dismiss the opinions of others. The leaders of all political parties, who are equally unable to acknowledge they do not have a monopoly on the truth, demonstrate this attitude repeatedly.

Our self-made cocoons also impair our ability to make intelligent decisions. In ... elections, most voters will not watch a single debate, read any of the party platforms or attend any campaign events. They don’t need to. They already know for whom they’re going to vote, &, coincidentally, everyone else in his or her cocoon is voting the same way.

And for those we ultimately elect? Their own filters will make their governing decisions less effective. Ruling parties of all stripes tend only to listen to academics who support their agenda, only attend rallies that contain true believers, only read newspapers that endorse their policies & only engage constituents who already voted for them. ...

There are ways to cut through these cocoons, however. Just by being aware that you are constantly self-censoring the information that reaches you helps. You can also consciously resist the urge to mute the outspoken critic on Twitter, or unfollow the Facebook friend who shares articles in support of that politician you loathe. One step further would be to actually read some of those articles, or pick up a newspaper you wouldn’t normally read, no matter how much of a rag you think it is.
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Criminal Minds, S1E9 Quote

I ask this question everyday ...

 

Outlawing Public Opinion in Spain

Is this the modern democracy where public opinions matter less & less, perhaps, of no value. "Elected" governments might as well be dictatorships, because laws are being made "for the safety of the public," but they are that much against the "safety of the public."

Public is not stupid that they can be lulled into thinking that invading armies are standing at the borders & we need these strict laws against public opinions (e.g. Spain's Citizens' Security Law or Canada's anti-terrorism law). The general public is made busy by the government into surviving for themselves that they don't have time to do anything else but work, work & more work.

Is this really the modern world? Have we really progressed in a millennium when Kings used to rule the citizenry with a heavy hand?
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/04/outlawing-public-opinion-spain-150410082431492.html

When Spain first started making noises about an impending "Citizens' Security Law" that would criminalise various forms of popular protest, optimists may have assumed the flirtation with overt fascism couldn't last. At the very least - they might have reasoned - the government would have to retreat to semi-fascist mode.
 
Not so.
 
Approved on March 26, & expected to come into force on July 1, the law might be mistaken for something out of the Franco playbook. Dubbed the "gag law", it prescribes fines of up to 600 euros ($635) for disrespecting police officers, up to 30,000 euros ($32,000) for disseminating images of state security forces that might endanger them or their operations, & up to 600,000 euros ($635,000) for unauthorised street protests.
 
Inverse logic
 
These punitive measures are especially handy, of course, in an era of brutal austerity measures, home evictions, & other government efforts in Spain that have triggered collective action on a mass scale. In 2012, evictions were reportedly occurring at a pace of 500 per day.
 
While conveniently pre-emptively criminalising protests against the legislation itself, the gag law relies on an inverse logic, in which the real threat to citizens' security comes not from the lack of a roof over one's head or a physically abusive police force but rather from opposing the injustice of such realities.
 
In an open letter to the European Parliament, human rights groups warned that targeting those who disseminate images of police "could hinder the documentation & reporting of abuses committed by law enforcement personnel & reinforce the climate of impunity".
 
Expelling justice
 
Tacked onto the bill as a last-minute bonus is a provision validating the summary expulsion of migrants who jump the border fence between Morocco & Spain's African outposts of Ceuta & Melilla.
 
After all, we can't possibly have "citizens' security" with too many black folks in the mix.
 
As noted on the website of the International Federation for Human Rights, the move not only "restrict[s] the right to seek asylum & violate[s] the principle of non-refoulement & the prohibition of collective expulsions" but also "exposes migrants to a serious risk of torture & ill-treatment by denying them the possibility of filing a claim against law enforcement personnel in case of abuse".
 
But the anti-migrant provision is merely the culmination of an already common practise of automatic deportation along the Spanish frontier. In October 2014, the AFP reported on a video of truncheon-happy Spanish police beating a young, barefoot Cameroonian man & then escorting him, in an apparently unconscious state, back to Moroccan territory.
 
Another good reason to discourage filming the police at work - & another reason the 600-euro fine for disrespecting the police seems a tad steep.
 
The old terrorism card
 
Of course, no citizenry would be completely secure without robust protections against "terrorism" - that time-honoured threat that has, particularly in the post-9/11 era, been invoked to justify the trampling of rights worldwide.
 
In addition to the Citizens' Security Law, the Spanish government has also approved reforms to the nation's criminal code that will greatly enhance its punitive capabilities.
 
For example, folks will now be eligible for prosecution as terrorists for such behaviour as regularly visiting websites deemed to be terrorist-friendly. Helpfully, the criminal code's definition of "terrorism" is sufficiently sweeping to prevent any potential offenders from slipping through the cracks.
 
Included on the list of terroristic acts are efforts to disrupt government functions & "the public peace", as well as "the commission of any serious crime against … liberty".
 
A recent article on the Spanish Gizmodo website points out that internet activity alone "can be punished with 1 to 5 years in prison".
 
Makes you wonder about the whole "liberty" clause.
 
The next step
 
Last month, the Guardian quoted Jorge Fernandez Diaz - Spain's interior minister & the curator of the Citizens' Security Law - on the merits of the initiative: "It's a law for the 21st century. It provides better guarantees for people's security & more judicial security for people's rights."
 
In a matter of 3 seconds, an item worthy of interment in Franco's mausoleum was thus recast as the pinnacle of modernity & justice.
 
By this logic, regression is progress, slavery is freedom, & black is white.
 
Meanwhile, according to the Spanish daily El Pais, a December survey indicated that 82% of respondents believed the law needed to be abandoned entirely or at least modified, while 79% considered the prescribed fines excessive. 71% contended that the project did not aim to ensure public security but rather to protect the government from protests.
 
It seems there's only one thing left to do: Outlaw public opinion surveys.


 Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.