The growth of technology in my lifetime amazes me, especially as it relates to global communication of information; much of it not true, and a huge chunk probably dedicated to pornography and other forms of entertainment. Still, I can reach out globally and talk to people in any free country; censored ones if I know what I am doing and they are brave and competent. The concept that I can reach directly out to people who are our national enemies is kind of crazy. I generally don’t do outbound communication with such people, so as to not end up on a list, but I do read their content from time to time. Most of the time though, I just let them be and focus on the good people in radically different locations from mine.
I mentioned my friend from Egypt. We met though a fan page for the Israeli progressive metal band, ‘Orphaned Land.’ I knew he’d be an interesting friend just based on his selection of ear candy. His profile had a fantasy avatar; which I assumed was him in costume altered by CGI. He turned out to be into IT and just a great young man. He had a pretty young woman as a girlfriend. His life seemed to be middle class and metropolitan. During this initial period of contact, I was mentally ill and jobless. He talked about how I could self educate into IT. I considered that, but I was less intelligent at the time due to brain damage from a prolonged bout of mania. I ended up working as Defense Logistical Agency contractor, and I knew we both knew all our communication were being monitored especially during the Egyptian revolution. I lost contact with him, because I wiped out a lot of my social network accounts so the military didn’t think I was up to something. However for a while I had a first hand source embedded in Egypt during the largely peaceful change of power. He assured me that the Muslim Brotherhood wouldn’t come to power, but they did. He was out of touch with the more impoverished citizens. He indicated that the democratic and more moderate parties had no real plan for welfare and social services, and as the poor outnumbered the more affluent, the Mulsim Brotherhood won based on Muslim principles to watch out for the needy. He ended up fleeing to Germany and had PTSD last I heard from him. I miss him. This though is an example of the Internet as a tool for connection between friends what would otherwise be oblivious to each other’s existence.
The capacity for the Internet to bond people from radically different backgrounds is to me the great hope for this tool developed by the Defense Advanced Research Project now half full of pornographic material. I met my Kenyan wife living in a nearby town working on a ‘living stipend’ at a nursing home for the elderly through a dating app. I keep in touch with old friends from grade school, college and the military who were unusual characters bound for interesting lives. I have fellowship with other people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse disorders through video chats for DBSA and AA. I learn how people from a variety of subcultural and diverse demographical backgrounds have come to deal with the struggles of life and find meaning despite the discomfort of being alive. My kids play games. I may related to others by sharing a meme, song or video. It’s a chance to study sociology anywhere I am at. I fell in love with humanity and the internet helps me connect in a way that was last advanced at this sort of leap with the development of public air travel. It’s the most interesting technical advance I’ve seen in my lifetime… and there is a dark side.
The dark side isn’t inherently what people might think. Yes, it’s opened up a new way to monetize human trafficking and sexual exploitation. However while the former is reprehensible, the latter term may be disrespectful to feminist sex workers by questioning their free agency. There is good porn and bad. Pornhub has the capacity for tracking and logs for blackmail of powerful people. More interesting to me though is how Facebook is changing elections and the entire way it’s users think. The danger isn’t the porn (mostly;) it’s the ideological misinformation and overconfidence in sociological and scientific understanding. Our national adversaries love to get people who should be allies bickering. The presence of pseudographic accounts set up by dictatorships is like dealing with a teenage girl with socially aggressive tendencies that operate through exploiting the fears, insecurities, and personality flaws of other classmates into attacking each other. They exploit the psychosis and emotional distress of America’s grossly oversized mentally ill population. Our nation has an ex-president re-running for election that is obviously a delusional megalomaniac, and the polls are still within margins of error of 50/50’ish. Facebook and X have shown me just how serious our mental health crisis is in America. It will bring us into a civil war if gone unchecked. My entire city wreaks of marijuana most days. Bars and liquor stores are on almost every corner in the city. We have an entire district dedicated to breweries and getting drunk. How could we possibly not have a social mental illness problem? It’s just a country ripe for mental illness. There are a lot of magically thinking people conditioning each other into greater maladjusted ways of living life than ever before. Internet from the perspective of sociology is changing humanity and it doesn’t matter if it is a bad idea. We’re headed towards progressive growth, even with downsizing. The path forward will always be about where progress appears to be heading and the strategic way we approach such a goal for the future of humanity and benefit of the individuals willing to struggle. It is interesting to see this blend with technology. These are strange times.
Joker's Wild 