The popularity of social media, from Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter and all those other ways we type notes to each other in front of a worldwide audience, has promoted a lot of talk, precious little listening and even less understanding.
Don't get us wrong. The Internet itself is one of the most powerful tools to have ever been put to use. Remember William Hope "Coin" Harvey, the national political figure, lawyer and author who built the old Monte Ne resort in Benton County at start of the 20th Century? Its remains emerge from the depths of Beaver Lake occasionally when the water recedes from the shoreline. Harvey longed to build a giant structure, The Pyramid he called it, in which he would store all the knowledge of mankind. He became convinced human civilization was on the verge of collapse and some future generation would need the knowledge he was going to preserve.
What’s the point?
The Internet is a powerful tool, but humankind’s use of it so far doesn’t promote the case that we’ve figured out how to communicate better using it.
Harvey could have never imagined the vast storehouses of information known as computers, nor could he have envisioned a network that linked the entire world to that knowledge. Who needs a pyramid when a small device in one's pocket is a portal to the world's knowledge?
The Internet and its World Wide Web has such potential to connect people, and yet it seems so often we squander its capacities. Finding actual "knowledge" on the Internet might have been the vision, but doesn't it often seem to be a needle in the electronic haystack? So much of what's online is just noise.
Perhaps the presence of all that noise is what emboldens some on social media to speak without the kind of self-imposed filter most of us employ in day-to-day living interactions. We're not saying people have different viewpoints online than in person, but in face-to-face conversations or presentations, characteristics such as humility, respect, cordiality and kindness appear to be in far more ample supply than when people are typing away on a social media post, especially if other posts have antagonized them.
Take, for example, the recent developments involving a part-time Bethel Heights police officer who offered his thoughts on Facebook about the Black Lives Matter movement. The officer appeared irked by an idea that black activists tend to paint all officers negatively. He didn't like his profession being maligned on the basis of a few officers' actions, a fair point. But he went on to do exactly the same thing to black activists. "They are nothing but a bunch of hate and they bring with them violence. Bottom line is they tear down your communities and they burn down businesses that had nothing to do with it," he wrote.
Then, the officer started a list of ways to stay alive "especially if you come across me while on duty." His recommendations: (1) Don't put hands where he can't see them. (2) If he tells you to stop, stop. (3) Turn off cell phones because "I don't need an extra recording. I have it all on camera anyway." (4) And "don't point a gun at me."
Bethel Heights fired the officer quickly after learning about the posting, prompting other social media posts from people pondering "what ever happened to the First Amendment?" It's alive and well, by the way. The officer remains free to spout whatever ideas he wants. But the Bethel Heights Police Department isn't required to employ someone who conducts himself in such a way that it sullies the department's reputation and its standing with the community it was created to serve. We appreciate their quick action to make clear the officer didn't speak for the department.
What police agency wants one of its officers suggesting a person can avoid being shot by not recording interactions with police? Pointing a video camera at police isn't a crime.
We appreciate that our police officers are willing to step into tense situations most people try their best to avoid. We need them. But what the Facebook-posting Bethel Heights officer forgot is an officer's responsibility to de-escalate, to do his best to resolve a matter by easing tensions rather than creating them. Faced with unrelenting criticism of police officers and their conduct, this officer decided to speak out in a way that reflected some of the problems with police interactions. He took a bad situation and made it worse. Police officers are expected to do just the opposite.
He deserved to be fired. Indeed, his decision-making left the department little choice.
The challenge on social media is nobody stays with a discussion's focus long enough for any conclusion. First it's about whether an officer should have said what he posted. Then it's about whether the First Amendment exists anymore. Then it's about why the Black Lives Matter advocates aren't speaking out about black-on-black crime that kills more then any officer-involved shootings. Then someone brings up gun control and the discussion really goes off the tracks.
Once upon a time it seemed social media held such promise as a world-changing tool of communication, and it certainly has, but not in the good way we would have hoped. The Internet provokes discussion, but it has the same effect as putting a hundred people into a small room with earplugs inserted, then asking them to solve a problem. Everyone talks but there's not much listening. And often it becomes clear we've mastered the art of expressing ourselves through social media, but not absorbing anyone else's concerns as they express themselves.
Maybe we're still using a set of training wheels when it comes to the Internet. Perhaps we'll get better at using this tool in the years ahead. But the only way it can happen is for the Internet to become a place for listening as much or more as for talking. We're all talking at each other and understanding each other less.
Is that progress?
Commentary on 10/01/2016