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belonging is stronger than facts

In the podcast I make with Lee Miller called Midlifing Lee and I keep coming back to the ways in which human beings depend on the concepts of us and them. That it’s impossible to avoid what Lee calls us-ing and them-ing”. Or, as blogger Dave Cormier writes, every we’ makes a them’. The way in which we are drawn to we’ seems to tie in so strongly with our need to belong.

Last year I read Roger McNamee’s Facebook exposé called Zucked and noted this:

In an essay in the MIT Technology Review, UNC professor Zeynep Tufekci explained why the impact of internet platforms on public discourse is so damaging and hard to fix. The problem is that when we encounter opposing views in the age and context of social media, it’s not like reading them in a newspaper while sitting alone. It’s like hearing them from the opposing team while sitting with our fellow fans in a football stadium. Online, we’re connected with our communities, and we seek approval from our like-minded peers. We bond with our team by yelling at the fans of the other one. In sociology terms, we strengthen our feeling of in-group’ belonging by increasing our distance from and tension with the out-group’—us versus them. Our cognitive universe isn’t an echo chamber, but our social one is. This is why the various projects for fact-checking claims in the news, while valuable, don’t convince people. Belonging is stronger than facts.”

Up next now: 25 July 2021 Going on for me right now: Reading: Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer by Wendell Berry, Dove Mi Trovo by Jhumpa Lahiri, Consolations by David the show is over
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