Saturday, March 14, 2015

But Is There A Vaccine?

This explains a lot about how we are all becoming infected by internet viruses - and I don't mean the ordinary "computer" viruses that McAfee and Norton can fight off.

I found this little video to be an interesting demonstration of how we can be influenced and manipulated by ideas and ideologies and by our own emotions and biases; and it explains, in part, why we, as humans feeding on the internet for information, are so polarized.




My question is, seriously, "Is there a vaccine?"

2 comments:

Russ Manley said...

Cute video, well constructed.

Of course as with any "germ," the best preventative is not to come in contact with it in the first place. That's partly why I gave up TV watching 20 years ago.

But it would be immeasurably harder to give up the internet now, which is useful for so much more than mere passive entertainment, as TV is/was.

The vaccine, or the antidote, would be something that neutralizes the infectious qualities of what we absorb from the web - i.e., rational thinking, or some transcendent philosophy of life, such as religion used to give. But who has time for reason or religion when they are so busy keeping up with stupid cat photos??!

This video really says nothing that hadn't been said already in pre-internet days, but it's a timely reminder of crowd psychology and the ever-present dangers of groupthink and fanaticism. Just look at today's furore over what the Dolce & Gabanana (sp?) guys said. People - mostly gay - are ready to cut their heads off just like ISIL thugs, over a simple opinion.

I read a little bit further and found one of the guys saying, "I grew up in a traditional Sicilian family, and I can't imagine growing up without my mother."

Well, neither can I.

It's one thing to adopt a child/children who would otherwise be orphaned and deprived of any family whatsoever. It's another thing altogether to start making kids out of your own whims and desires.

But of course, this applies to straight people too. The UK Parliament just passed a bill allowing 3-person embryos. And for the last 40 years, every starlet and wannabe in Hollywood has been proudly doing the single-mom thing, quite deliberately, depriving kids of natural dads.

But ya know, I'm just not going to bother bringing any of this up on the BT. My voice counts for nothing in this big wide world. And more than that, why ruin a perfectly good anger epidemic for my readers? It feels so good to be mad as hell - people love to groove on righteous anger, ya know?





Frank said...

When I heard of the Elton John - D&G controversy this morning I thought the same thing - is there any public statement now that is not controversial or polarizing or an invitation to jump in to a public brawl?

There are infinite aspects to almost any subject it seems, none of which embody the entire Truth, IVF being only one topic of many.

I was even upset when I saw that someone had pranked Howie Mandel by streaming hundreds (thousands?) of rolls of toilet paper over his entire Hollywood mansion.

This is where my brain goes: there are people who can't even afford toilet paper and may be stealing it from a McDonald's bathroom for personal hygiene and these people are using it like it is nothing; what about the environmental impact of such waste? Where does it go? Was it one of the products of a Koch brother's company? What does it mean that some people have so much money that they can throw it away for a silly prank? Why are we even subjected to this on the morning "news"?

I'm not sure there is an effective immunization regime against these infections or any protection short of complete isolation. Always wanted to live on a desert island.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails