Do you remember, back in the early days of the internet, before Facebook and Instagram? At the time of Live Journal and blogging? People wrote their thoughts freely. There was no censoring. There was just the freedom of having and sharing personal opinions. And people were respectful of each other. We shared more of what we truly thought. No one was trying to present a perfect image of their lives on Instagram, and there was no such thing as an influencer. We were all mostly normal, ordinary people, still mostly thinking for ourselves.
I miss those days.
G. K. Chesterton said that “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” I believe this statement especially as it pertains to my children. I want them to believe that dragons can be beaten. But right now I am wrestling with what happens when the books we read don't have happy endings? What if the dragons win? What then?
I've been reading a bunch of dystopian novels lately. Some I've read before. Some I am reading for the first time. In 1984, Orwell's characters engage in censorship. The main character's job is to erase and rewrite history so that it reflects what the government tells them it should reflect. The recent banning of President Trump, and others, from social media feels like something right out of 1984. Not only was he banned, his tweets and comments were erased. Gone. Poof. Furthermore, the main character holds on to his inner personal thoughts and beliefs throughout the book before finally becoming a man broken by the government. (Relevant world news: The Chancellor of Germany spoke out against this censorship, Poland is in the process of enacting fines against censorship, and Uganda blocked Facebook and Twitter ahead of it's political election sighting interference by censorship. Twitter did not like this saying it was an infringement to free speech. Pot meet kettle).
In the book Brave New World, Huxley's characters are lulled into submission with drugs. They do their work and live their lives without questioning because they will be rewarded at the end of the day with pills and pleasure. They use these rewards to escape into their inner worlds where they can feel nothing. Life is *so good* that they regularly choose to feel nothing. Our current escapism into the internet, and the dopamine hits we get from the like feels oddly reminiscent of this. Not to mention that all across the country states are changing laws about the legality of drugs.
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand describes a world where people believe they shouldn't have to work to be paid. They thought they deserved to run organizations and have jobs that other people built, even if they have no qualifications to do so. Their belief was that those who are carrying the risks and load of companies and ideas didn't deserve what they had. And then the government took it a step further and passed regulations to force successful companies to sell their hard-earned businesses to others who had done nothing. All in the name of equality. It kind of reminds me of the story of the Little Red Hen, but with a twisted ending that would require the Hen being forced to feed everyone, even though everyone else refused to help her with the work... It also reminds me of some of the ideas floating around about how government should work. People clamoring for democratic socialism and pointing to Scandinavian countries as a model, even though these Scandinavian countries are actually free market economies that more closely align with capitalism than socialism.
Shifting gears a little... another thing that has been bugging me is that I am in need of a phone upgrade (I still have an iPhone 5 because we keep things as long as possible in our family). Anyways, I have been thinking about my upgrade and I know what I want. However I am bummed by the recent censorship by companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. These Big Tech companies (who I love and use regularly) effectively worked to block a new company –Parler– removing this entire platform from the internet by deleting it from App stores and pulling its servers.
I am not an expert in this area, but from where I sit it looks like a small start up went out and built a competing platform to FB and Twitter and Big Tech pulled it, stating that they were not doing a good enough job of policing personal accounts. Nevermind that all sorts of hate and ideology is still being spewed on FB, Twitter and the like, just not from accounts that the technocrats have deemed unfit.
This whole event really bothered me, so out of curiosity I searched for phones that were not owned by these companies. After all, the saying goes, if you don't like a company you can vote with your money. Take your business elsewhere. But what if there is nowhere else to go take your money? What then? I know, I could just go back to the Nokia brick phones or something of that like and cut technology out completely, but I have gotten too used to this convenience, and I love that my phone has a good camera and the connectivity to the internet. Also, I think voices need to be heard, not just self censored and removed because people are frustrated by the system. So not only is free speech being attacked, our free market is also being eroded... Just some things I've been mulling over.
Finally, I was watching Hulu last night. To be honest I no longer watch network television at all, mostly to avoid commercials. We still have Netflix, but due to most of the content on Netflix, I have cut back my viewing and have gone back to mostly reading unless Daniel and I have a show we are binge watching together.
Back to Hulu... we currently have a subscription with our Verizon account. But this service include commercials. Last night as I was watching on Hulu, a commercial for Match.com came on. The concept of the commercial was that Satan was matched with the perfect person, a girl named 2020. I can't believe this is where we are at with commercials. I know they were trying to be funny, but it was so disturbing.
During the month of December I had a similar experience. I was listening to Spotify with my kids. We were listening to a playlist of Christian Christmas carols that went along with a Christmas-themed study we were doing. While listening in the car with my kids, Spotify (which also has commercials) played a propaganda advertisement about how abortion was good and people who had abortions should be applauded. I immediately hit mute. I have not listened to Spotify since. That is my prerogative. I am ready to cancel Hulu. I am bothered by these world views that are bombarding me and my children. I don't want censorship, but I also don't want this kind of world view shoved down my throat, or my children's throats. It used to be that you could trust that the airwaves would be "safe" for your kids before 9pm. That is no longer true.
Anyways, these are just some of the things I've been contemplating lately. They are things happening in the world right now that affect me directly. I hope that in ten years things have not become even worse, but frankly I don't have a lot of trust in our culture, government or media right now. I do, however, have trust in God. So in my little corner of the world, I am trusting God. I am putting my faith in him. I am loving my family. I am trying to shine my light as best I can in a world that is becoming increasingly dark.
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