It’s a small world…but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
Steven Wright
I heard an interesting observation a couple of days ago about the way the up-and-coming generation is processing information. Research is revealing that they’ve become so accustomed to the overstimulation of their screens that they’ve developed the skill of being able to quickly evaluate and discard content that comes to them visually. Thus, if you try to use a video to convey information to them, you could quite likely lose them very quickly because they’ll immediately process its value and choose to tune it out. I don’t think this is necessarily cause for alarm. It’s just that the communicator has got to understand the audience and adjust to its particular way of receiving information.
When I was growing up a half-century ago, media was delivered in a fairly simple “one-dimensional way. What we saw is what we got. The closest thing to something that could predict our spending habits was the Nielson ratings system for television. It told the market that “x” amount of people were watching something – even getting into the demographics of it all. But it couldn’t tell us that those people logged in and bought what they were seeing…because there was no “logging in” and no immediate connection between what we saw and what we bought. We saw an ad in a magazine. We turned the page. We saw a commercial on TV, we changed the channel.
But today, when I read the Times on line I’ll see the exact same ad 3 or 4 times as I scroll down the page. When I watch a YouTube video I get the same thing – targeted ads breaking in every 5 minutes. And, as if to say “we’ve got you pegged,” those ads might be for the bike parts I was looking for in a Google search just last week. The targeting now is multidimensional. They’re coming at me embedded within the very thing I’m trying to see. And when I click on it, I’m only reinforcing their algorithms and encouraging them to give me more.
So there’s a school of thought now that actually believes that the best way to engage this up-and-coming generation is through personal interaction. Face-to-face. Go figure. A generation that the oldsters mock for being buried in their phones, and the best way to get through to them is by actually talking to them. The problem here of course being that you’ve got to get their attention first.
But this way of evaluating and discarding information has its problems elsewhere, namely in the standards by which the evaluation is being made. We are all inclined to make evaluations based on perceived value to ourselves. But it is only recently that the constant influx of information has led some to develop the “habit of discard” so quickly. Perhaps then, this generation has become so accustomed to being quick in shutting down that which they don’t see as self-fulfilling, that it has seeped far too deep into who they are. And so, if they determine something is not of value, they have to be convinced otherwise. Meanwhile, the older generations who don’t get this don’t understand how to handle it. These are people who would simply roll their eyes and put up with it, even if they didn’t like what they were seeing. They’d at least go through the motions, and they expect the same of others. So now, they may be tempted to think appeasement as the best way, and while there’s nothing wrong with adjusting to the way people perceive the world, there are still times when people have to make the hard calls. It is in these cases when so quickly discarding what the older generations are saying that we see a degree of peril.
The real challenge comes when we add another layer to the mix. On the January 29th edition of the NY Times “The Daily” podcast, there was a portion of the conversation where a woman who followed the Q Anon movement (Valerie Gilbert) lamented to her interviewer (Kevin Roose) the way she was being treated by her now estranged friends:
Gilbert: I guess I felt unseen with certain people. And with Q community, you know, it is moving to me.
Roose: Yeah.
Gilbert: So anyway, it feels right. And in terms of finding myself alone right now and wanting it that way, it’s OK. It’s all OK. And like I say, if friends who are different from me didn’t patronize me or scream at me and say, “I’m worried about you” — that is the most [EXPLETIVE] patronizing thing you can say.
Roose: Or isn’t somebody worrying about you, isn’t that loving? I mean, that doesn’t sound patronizing to me.
Gilbert: No. No, not when I then tell her, I have never felt better in my life. Not when I’m actually happy. If I was complaining, that’s one thing. No! I think that’s horrible. I really do. “I’m worried about you” — that is patronizing. You know? What if I said that to you: “I’m worried about you. You work for The New York Times.” That’s none of my business. You like it. It’s your job. I mean, I’m guessing. I don’t know. But you know what I’m saying? We are in different worlds.
This is a case where someone’s “autonomy” interferes with her ability to see the boundary between an occupation and a delusion. All that matters to her is that people play along. To do anything less was “patronizing.” “No. No, not when I then tell her, I have never felt better in my life.” That was her measuring stick. “I may be delusional, but if I tell you I’m happy, you are wrongto worry about me.” Not just wrong, but [EXPLETIVE] wrong.
Where these two meet – the ability to discard information that we deem of no value to ourselves, coupled with assigning value based on personal feeling rather than an objective truth – leads to the great disconnect. We cannot simply say, “If it is of no value to me, I am not obligated to assume the value to which you assign it” because sometimes the value I assign to something is objective and necessary outside of your personal preferences. And likewise, to say “if it’s of value to me, you are wrong to believe otherwise, regardless of your belief’s place in reality” is equally dangerous.
This is important because we need to understand too that the world does not think the way we do. It’s a kind of “cultural imperialism” to expect anyone to adhere to a morality based on our personal values – especially if those values are informed by a society that insists on allowing its members to define their own truths. We cannot expect the rest of the world to believe as we do. We cannot expect them to see us as the champions of human progress when we are unable to come to a consensus with other cultures on just what human progress is. A nation whose citizens have become so enamored in their own personal value (not values) brings suspicion rather than trust when it seeks to lead the societies of the world. A common cause by which we can live and to which we can agree with the rest of the world cannot devolve into the championing of countless individual causes which conflict with the values of other nations. Americans may have been perceived as arrogant bullies in the past, but it’s equally unhelpful that we become a nation of naïve, and self-absorbed bullies as an alternative.
We need people of sound judgement to get past this. Sadly, there are far too many cases where those receiving the information cannot see beyond themselves, but this isn’t cause to give up on them. There is still a lot of wisdom in the older generations, and we’ve got to get that wisdom across to a generation that receives and perceives things differently. Sitting on our porches yelling “get off our lawns” isn’t helpful at all. Believe it or not, pining for the “old days” passes as an insult to many – they just don’t have the patience for it (it should be fairly obvious that someone else’s “old days” are meaningless to a younger generation). And yet it’s extremely important to be able to somehow pass on the best of the old days.
To be a successful member of a global community means looking beyond one’s own cultural preferences and understanding that the world isn’t “just like us.” The “old days” are filled with the failures of past generations, but they’re also full of the lessons learned from those failures. To think today that being unlike us makes those others wrong is the same arrogance that has plagued America in the past. To think though that this time it will be different is a mistake we shouldn’t be making. It’s something that maybe the older generation can help us to avoid.
But the first step is to communicate. We’ve got to learn how.
