The Discource Deficit
Social media is filled with people having too many opinions. Too many opinions mean too many biases. This means too many things to get offended by. That has turned us all into an outrage generation. It was still better when there was a clear demarcation between how we behaved online versus how we behaved offline. There was a modicum of decency involved when we interacted with people in reality. That wall has been breached now.
We are a generation that is staring at an existential crisis. Any country with a fertility rate lower than 2.1 is going to die eventually, and I am talking decades, not centuries. We have countries that have too many nuclear weapons lying around. Economies are collapsing, people are dying to make ends meet, debauchery is at an all-time high. We are in the middle of societal collapse; it's not an eventuality but a reality which we only need to observe.
And yet we outrage like there's utopia waiting for us on the other end of our outrage. Even if we won the debate, what are we going to get in the end? Having too many opinions is not a sign of intelligence; it's a sign that you have borrowed too many opinions from too many people, people whom you should have avoided. Why do I say borrowed opinions? Because no thinking person would have so many things they didn't like. When you think about things from the point of causality, you don't get mad; you gain insight and, by extension, awareness.
People are least aware of why they exist. They are least aware of anything that goes on inside their head. They are more aware of why a certain immigrant group is the cause of their civilization's downfall than introspective about why they are so angry all the time. Even when you ponder upon all the things that went wrong in your life, you do not get angry; you probably feel sad about wasted opportunities but seldom angry unless you think one person is responsible for your downfall.
Awareness does not bring anger; it brings insights. It brings clarity of thought, which is what's lacking in the outrage generation. Not everything out in the world affects you in a literal sense. There are a lot of things we don't like, but those things can exist without you reacting to them. When you come across something on the internet that you absolutely hate, think about why you hate that thing. Is your hatred coming from a certain belief? Or do you know some facts about the topic that everyone's clearly missing? Is the fact being assessed independently on your own? Or did you borrow it from someone?
The more you practice questioning your anger, taking a moment to reflect upon why the anger exists, the less you focus on the person and instead focus on the topic, and maybe approach it from the point of awareness. It's not a bad thing to feel anger—we are humans, after all. It's a bad thing when you cannot keep it under your command. After all, if anger is a mere emotion, doesn't it feel foolish to not be able to control a simple emotion? It's not like we cannot control emotions; we can hide our guilt and shame just fine.
The constant outrage on social media has now begun to reflect in our everyday lives. A healthy discourse has become impossible where you let the other person make a point and then counter it with another factual opinion. The goal of every such discourse was to narrow down to a point that is the cause behind all of the conflicts, and once highlighted, you instantly work upon resolving it. Discourse in ancient societies was considered a virtuous act.
We need to dial down our outrage and increase our awareness behind it. One can criticize an idea or government policy, but those criticisms must come from independent assessment instead of borrowed opinions from a YouTube video or, worse, a TikTok video designed to manufacture outrage en masse.
You cannot hate Muslims just because you hate the idea of Islam. You cannot hate immigrants just because you hate the idea of too much immigration. You cannot hate a countryman just because you hate that country. To separate the person from the idea is the most important skill of a person engaging in discourse. After all, the fight and outrage was against an idea to begin with, wasn't it?
We don't need more outrage; we need more discourse among people from all walks of life. Utopia, I believe, would be developing the ability to take feedback from healthy discourse and improve upon the insights.