With the advent of the internet, we are no longer living in a fragmented world. Gone are the worries of isolation and loneliness. Now more than ever, we have the ability to be brought together in ways that were previously thought impossible. The individuals who once would have been castigated as fringe members of society can now find community with such vast numbers the thought is staggering.
A grown man can now choose to worship cartoon horse characters, and while those around him may still antagonize him, he nevertheless can retreat to an online domain and find hundreds of thousands with the same passion. As can be seen in those who are self-proclaimed Bronies. A man of this nature who would have previously had no peers within his immediate environment can now bolster his attitudes and desires through the commiseration found in these online groups.
The benefits of this widespread interconnectedness are unclear as, in many ways, the phenomenon seems to foster social regression more often than not. Seen in the development of online organizations such as the incels and the far left or right political echo-chambers. Groups of this type being allowed to exist en-mass, propagating maligned values, must in some way serve as a detriment to society.
The Dream That Should Not Have Been
I personally hold the idea that we might all, at once, find groups to share our most deviate dispositions should only ever have been a pipe dream. A world in which anyone can find a group to talk shop over their most perverse obsession, the world in which we find ourselves today, will only diminish further until we have successfully normalized that which should, in every sense of the term, be considered pathological.
To be sure, we have made commensurate strides in stripping the pathology away from specific ways of being, normalizing that which should be normalized. Some phenomena, such as men expressing their feelings and seeking help for mental issues, shouldn’t be considered pathological, and we have been working to rectify our attitudes in those areas. In general, the leaps we have made in reducing mental illness stigma are undoubtedly excellent and beneficial for society.
However, other behaviors have become normalized, which ought to have remained abnormal. As seen in the release of pedophilic content on Netflix in 2020, a cornerstone blunder of our era.The fact that such a large company’s marketing executives thought that such content could and should be released for consumption reflects the degradation of our societal values.
The Benefit of Pathologizing
It is my understanding that such occurrences, which are becoming more widespread, could be linked to our desire that all our behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, and desires should be acceptable or, if not all, at least most of them. Our merely seeking to view the abnormal as normal does not free us of the moral ramifications of that which we have grown to accept.
Part of the benefit of having the ability to castigate those who deviate too far from particular norms lies in the potential to select for optimal, desirable, and moral behavior within social environments. Pathological behaviors and attitudes undoubtedly exist. The art is in defining them.
Suppose you can fall back to an online chat room with those who share your devieance, and you almost always can. In that case, you will protect yourself from the forces of your environment that might have otherwise disinhibited the undesirable behavior or attitude. Brining all pathological behavior into the realm of the accepted.
In these online shelters, all those maladies we sought to free ourselves from fester. For all those wonderful connections made online, and there are many, I personally have made good friendships online. There just as many if not more toxic bonds formed through the love of something illicit or hatred of a group of people.
Prudence Over Purity Tests
I am not saying that we should return to a puritan world of witch burning and purity tests, but I do think that we should practice more prudence when normalizing otherwise pathological phenomena. I am not the arbiter of normalcy, and for that matter, neither is the reader of this post. Although, I am sure that there are moral truths that are discernable and universal. It is to those immutable truths that we ought to turn our gaze as we further attempt to define the parameters of our society.
Ever since Nietzsche astutely wrote about the death of God, we have, as his Madman suggests, been tilting through an infinite not. We have been unable to walk with our feet firmly planted on dry earth. We have diluted our sense of the transcendent, and we now lack the ability to find true north. If we continue in our current manner, protecting and nurturing those deviants among us, we may only have Bronies and incels to deal with now. Fair enough, but we may well end up with much worse. Such is the lot of those who have attempted to unhinge the earth from its place in the heavens.
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Wow, Adam. Profound blog today! I have referred in a couple of places to the dangers of “silo-mentality” of social media; only following those who echo my views, etc. Your challenging thoughts about portend what we will probably see in the near future with education being focused on redefining what it means to be male or female. 2 Timothy 3 is occurring and too few are recognizing it.
Stay faithful in prayer, diligent in study and open in your communication of important truth. Whether your followers are few or many, what matters is that you follow Jesus to do what He want you to do. yours and His, c.a.
There’s a quote that I like from Frank Herbert: “You cannot have a thing without its opposite.” Personally, I have met so many wonderful people online who share my interests, and my life is so much richer as a result. But for all the good things the Internet offers, there are bad things too. I for one do not want to abandon the good stuff the Internet offers, so it’s important to find ways to deal with the bad stuff, somehow.
I understand those sentiments. I obviously use the internet and I use it every day. I do think there are plenty of good things but I think that it could be restructured in a more edifying way.
Nice post! What concerns me is the desire for censorship. I tend to lean libertarian so I like to think private companies have the freedom to censor material they feel is unfitting for their platform. That being said, the instinct to shut off connections between individuals in these groups via censoring seems incredibly short-sighted. Just finished Fatal Discord, a dual biography of Luther and Erasmus, which is fascinating. The Reformation showed that once people have the ability to communicate, attempting to strip that away almost always seems to be counter-productive. Not sure what solutions you think there are, but I really think it’s going to come down to people casting a more prudent and wise vision for connection across these divisions than the being promulgated en masse.