Something I have been thinking about lately is how substantially our interactions are impacted by the narratives created on issues. I feel like as a society we have hit a point of collapse in how we disseminate information. The outlets we use to be informed have financial and political interests in framing situations to push objectives and socially we are becoming tribal in a sense, speaking in communities that support group held ideology's.
I was speaking with some people last week about the Rittenhouse situation and the more I looked at it the more I saw how the media voiced narrative impacted our views. In spite of shooting 3 white guys theres a lot of opinion that he is a racist. In spite of working as a lifeguard in the town and his father living there there is a widely held belief that he traveled to the city as an outsider.
Im not trying to get into the Rittenhouse stuff. But just using those bits as examples. Maybe there is some parallel to how rumors naturally gain traction in social interactions but its very notable how prevalent it is. How situations immediately become polarized and how even when you dig for the truth its just so hard to find objective information. We live in a day where political interests are even capable of convincing masses of people that our elections are stolen resulting in violent riots.
Im curious how everyone trys to counter this. Or even how many people take steps to try to counter this. These toxic rhetoric's result in a very real cost in our society and even in the people we get close to. Socially if someone tried to convince you that your girlfriend was cheating on you with the goal of splitting you up you might want to fight them. But how can you fight institutions that exist to profit from fostering division and hatred? Why is there such little accountability for spreading lies and how can we even insulate ourselves from this toxicity?
On the Rittenhouse thing I probably spent 5 or 6 hours digging after it happened and I still had truckloads of misconceptions. Between misinformation campaigns and our inability to break away from our established ideology's it just makes it so easy for conversations to go badly. Even understanding our own bias and how it causes us to jump to support misinformation is just so hard to recognize, much less counter. Im curious if there is some metacognitive process that could be used to counter this and if there is some social skill that could mitigate its impact. Or even if others see it as such a substantial issue on the macro and micro levels of our lives.