Culture and Social Media

Out of three books as scrutinized by four eminent scholars comes a remarkable communality of concern: an unquestioning desirability of liberal democracy, the need to protect it, its foundation in a democratic culture, that culture’s reliance on habits of deliberation and vibrant local communities, the philosopher’s responsibility to conceptual clarity. All of us involved in this symposium are on the same field.

We are all much excited by the impact of modern information technology. Steven Zipperstein offers a passionate plea for its democratization. I agree, and have offered recommendations to that effect.

But if Steven and I were to sit down and deliberate carefully on the matter, would we really conclude on a positive note on taming what I call the Wild West of IT? Do we really believe it is politically or technically doable? Is technology changing the world so that our good old resort to sensible regulation has just been overtaken by technologies of a radically different kind?

Take what we broadly call social media. In writing How Democracies Live, I went out of my way to be “fair,” recognizing the blessings while treating the downsides as costs we should try to eliminate. Today I would probably write with more gloom.

Why is the world of social media swamped with vicious ugliness? There is glorification of violence and sexual abuse (much against children), misogyny, gun worship, sadism, persecution of identified individuals, seduction to suicide, vile pornography, and so it goes on. It’s simply terrible out there. Sophisticated platforms are designed, dedicated to social destructiveness of the worst order. Most of us try to close our eyes to what we can, but it keeps flowing. Steven and I agree it should be regulated, and let’s hope something can be done.

But why is all this awfulness there in the first place? We who are concerned with democratic culture are really in want of basic decency. Can we have that culture when it is clear that people disregard decency with ease, once given the means?

As a defender of democracy, I am a defender of the individual and their rights and freedoms. But I live with the dilemma that I do not think highly of the human animal and its instincts. I am an Aristotelian and think of people as social (he said “political”) beings. Individuals on their own are damned; it’s in community with others that we can hope to find dignity. Without community, we are without anchorage in an overwhelming world we cannot master. Self-realization depends on social guidance and social control. (These matters are much rehearsed in my treatment of freedom in How Democracies Live.)

Social media technology gives the operator potentials that are extremely difficult to handle. The setting makes it too easy to be mean. You can be in the privacy of your bedroom and with only a smartphone, quick as a flash, post a nasty rumor about someone you happen to dislike, possibly with tantalizing photos or videos. The purveyors of extreme pornography work in the dark. In such settings, perfectly ordinary people do and say things they would naturally refrain from in a setting where they would have to look others in the eye. Furthermore, the technology makes it too easy to be effective. You are able to feel the flow of power, influence, fame, renown. The reason there is so much ugliness is that the protection of social control has been institutionally removed.

Can we introduce good social control by way of regulations? To some degree, perhaps. Steven and I hope so. But it is, in a way, a self-defeating enterprise. A democratic culture, we are reminded by Beverly Crawford Ames, is one in which simple virtues like freedom of expression or rule of law are “taken for granted.” That’s what makes it culture. If taking virtues for granted depends on social control, if we are offered arenas free from social control, if that results in virtues being abandoned, if we then turn to rescuing virtues that are no longer taken for granted by the force of regulations—is what we then have culture, or is it coercion? The world of IT, and with it social media, is here to stay. Is that also, inevitably, a world in which nothing can be taken for granted? If so, what remains of culture?

P.S. I was bemused by Jan Zielonka, who thinks our books are “nostalgic” because we “do not question the view that democracy is a matter for nation-states only” and, in my case, because I “reject the need for bold democratic experiments.” Really? Speaking for myself, I very much look beyond the nation-state, and recommend (among other ideas) laying the foundations for proper global government (with, e.g., taxing powers and global police and military forces) by putting the United Nations family of organizations under the management of democratic councils of representatives elected indirectly by and among national elected representatives. As for national experiments, I propose extending voting rights to children; imposing on citizens a duty to pay for politics, with institutional provisions of equality, thereby breaking the political power of private money; mechanisms for citizens to pay taxes voluntarily; a radical decentralization of government power to local governments, as in the Westminster model of redesigning the way Parliament works; in Washington, DC, breaking the back of Supreme Court aberration (as Robert Dahl called it); and various other snazzy matters. The criticism I usually get is that I’m “unrealistic” (which I know I am and which doesn’t trouble me in the least).