LogFAQs > #940781358

Zeus posted...

People have always had wildly different interpretation of events. While people like to think that life was more uniform, keep in mind that the US has always had competing press and the lack of regulation in the news has ensured multiple narratives exist.

Yes, but I'd argue that in the past, different perspectives tended to be linked to ethnic/political distinctions (ie, the Spanish Empire saw the New World and what happened there in very different terms than the French or English, for instance). In shared cultural spheres (like the lesser US or the greater Western cultural sphere in general), you tend to have slow consensus formed through interaction. The only real limit you'd have for most of human history was physical distance.

Today we've kind of functionally eliminated physical distance as a limiting factor, though political and social sphere distinctions are still extant (ie, the Chinese are going to tend to see the world very differently than a teenager in Iowa). But we've simultaneously made it easier than ever before in human history to ONLY interact with people who already agree with everything you already personally believe (the echo box scenario), so people can essentially create their own sociocultural bubbles by consciously seeking out like-minded people, regardless of location.

50 years ago I'd generally have the same sociocultural outlook as my neighbors, because we'd mostly be exposed to the same information sources, hone and disseminate opinions via interaction with similar people, be molded by similar cultural expectations and assumptions, and so on. That's still a factor (and likely will always be), but now I can also deliberately seek out others to interact with to reinforce my existing philosophy while locking out anyone who disagrees or attempts to make me question my world-view.

Even here, I could easily have just clicked ignore on your account and safely hid from everything you said rather than attempt to engage with you. If I was a less conflict-driven personality (from a long line of argumentative assholes), I might have done so. By doing so, I'd prevent you from ever altering my views (or even simply forcing me to confront and explore/expound on them them via the need to defend them).

I'm not saying people in the past couldn't be closed-minded (that's likely been a human trait at least since the theoretical "Neurological Revolution" ~50000 years ago), but we've created uniquely effective ways to exacerbate that problem that have never really been possible before.
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