What happens when you live in the echo-chamber

givemeyourtired:

So I’ve been thinking (not being sanctimonious here) on the difference between me and my liberal friends. Because if my liberal friends knew of my blog here they’d probably drop me as their friend faster than if they were holding a scalding pan, despite me identifying as a liberal myself albeit quite a centrist liberal. Yet, unless very extreme, I would never drop someone because of their beliefs. For me to drop someone, it isn’t based on beliefs, it is based on actions, the moment you take bad actions against me, THAT’S when I drop you, not when you just simply have different beliefs than me.

And the difference between my liberal friends and I is simple, I have never surrounded myself with an echo-chamber. Despite having much annoyance at many ideas and moral views different than mine, I have never once completely shut out people based on difference of opinion. This is why I run this blog, I like to engage in multiple points of view of world issues and various politics but I fear co-mingling this blog with my liberal friends. Why? Because when you convene and only speak with others who share your points of view and ideologies, and only ever get your information from news and media which aligns with your political stances; you in fact, become intolerant and unaccepting. 

A lot of liberals (used to be how I was too), have this idea that “intolerance” and “unaccepting” are words that can only apply to people who resist progressive ideas (i.e. the liberal perception of conservatives), but that’s not true at all. Intolerance and unacceptance have no stake in what the idea is, just that you approach it with a closed-mind, that’s all the scenario those words require to become applicable. So when your news media and your ideologically same friends all parrot the same stories and the same misguided aspects of those stories which then you internalise and don’t critically think about or have outside views to balance, then you become more and more sensational and radical, more and more intolerant and unaccepting of anything which challenges your world-view.

That’s why as a centrist liberal who makes sure to listen to both sides, I am much more well-adjusted in light of the inauguration, much more calm, and much more optimistic and willing to see what Trump’s presidency has to offer in improvement for my nation. I’m much more willing to compromise and realise how people can work together despite the divide in the political aisle, than my friends are. And I’m also not breaking out into hysterics and paranoia and thinking the world is completely ending.

That’s why my friends are all sitting on tumblr and posting things like…

“I hope you rest easy tonight, because the millions of individuals that could have their rights, lives, and chance to be here could be gone as quick as the flick of the wrist. I am not safe, my family is not safe…”

You’re a gay white male, you are quite safe I assure you, as is your family, as are all your LGBT friends (including me), and your legal immigrant friends.

“Millions–millions–of people around the globe marched and rallied today (January 20-21, 2017) because women’s rights are human rights.”

Whoever said they weren’t??? Whoever was challenging that notion? No one.

And this echo-chambered existence is why all my liberal friends… 
1. are believing that the White House page change no longer having an LGBT page is the end of their rights
2. are believing that Trump calling out fake news is somehow bullying to CNN because that is one of my liberal friends’ news sources
3. having anxiety attacks and breaking down
4. calling themselves the resistance, not just calling themselves anti-Trump but calling themselves the straight up “resistance” like holy fucking shit, chill, we don’t have a Darth Vader/Emperor Palpatine situation, put down the blaster.

And this is all because they just can’t deal with this massive bubble of theirs having been popped. Since at least the Obama presidency began (referencing a time point, not setting blame here), my friends have lived in these echo-chambers and because they have no balance of viewpoints, they’ve grown intolerant and unaccepting of anything not liberal, that’s why Trump being president is the end of the world to them, they have no other way to see it. 

And what bothers me most is not that my friends have allowed themselves to become so gullible and narrow-minded in their views and sources, no it’s the fact we have let the media become this polarised, because it is doing damage. Big time! The news media is supposed to just report facts, not be biased, yet it has been for a long time now. This may very well be the biggest chaos ever seen in light of a presidential election, and we have the media to blame for it, we really do. The media and in turn those they’ve indoctrinated and spread so much fear into and used as tools to spread fear with, are the problem right now and we need to address it and find a way to reverse the psychological damage in these people who have succumbed to it. Being this hysterical and paranoid and fear-ridden is not normal, by far! 

So this is what happens when you live in an echo-chamber, you may live peacefully as long as things go your way and how you think they should, but you enter this complacency in believing the world is in your control and when you discover it isn’t, your mind and your fellow ideologues’ minds just descend into utter chaos. What happens when you live in an echo-chamber is you lose touch with reality. Never do that, always seek balance and truth, always.

[Jan 27.2017]     316 NOTES  - VIA  /  SRC