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Age Of Aquarius, New Age & Tolerance Of Diverse Ideas

Gloucestrian

Ephemeral Spectre
Joined
Jul 30, 2016
Messages
415
Location
Gloucester
Something that has been increasingly bothering me in recent years is the intolerance to diverse opinions. At the end of the last century, probably due to the new millennium, there were a large number of people who were promulgating new age attitudes and some pretty far out views. You only have to look at the earliest surviving threads in our very own IHTM section to see the kind of far out topics of discussion and largely people seemed more tolerant and willing to suspend disbelief.

In those days I only ever lurked on here, I didn't have a computer of my own until late 2004 when I was first able to afford one. But I was around on the early net, from about 1994, using library computers.

Now by the standards of the days I was distinctly not new age, being a rather old school liberal and quite conventional in my thinking on most things. New age stuff and much of the topics discussed in esoteric circles seemed hilariously credulous to me but I was, and remain, quietly fascinated by the unusual, the strange and even the very out there ideas that people had. So I liked the early web and its "every idea is valid" and worth discussing on its own terms approach.

Sadly we seem to live in a new age of an entirely different kind now. An age of relentless cynicism, of hostility to those who think differently. At first I thought a little scrutiny and rigour would be for the web but now I feel otherwise. While news media get away with publishing absolute garbage as fact with very little push back from the public, if someone posted today that they had a telepathic experience with a heron I imagine there would be no shortage of "brave" persons ready to ridicule and dismiss.

Thanks to the moderators here this forum does seem to have escaped the worst that our time has to offer but I do think that even here the tone has shifted to a generally dismissive one. Not a complaint, just an observation from a casual poster.

I disconnected from so-called social media a long time ago now and I do wonder how much responsibility lies with social media for the weary, cynical and unpleasant nature of the web. Certainly it seems to have emerged as the dominant tone online after the rise of Facebook and Twitter.

The saddest thing in my opinion about this change to a generally dismissive and cynical discourse is that it is probably hurting most those who are part of a minority. After all it is minorities of all kinds that are most likely to have experiences that are uncommon, not just of the Fortean kind but in every area of life. Yet their experiences are increasingly invalidated by a mainstream that grows ever more homogeneous and controlling.

I felt an urge to post about this in part because I feel that this is a phenomenon in itself of Fortean interest, and because I am interested to hear the thoughts of others here in particular why that new age openness has disappeared.
 
I wonder if its something to do with the vastness of the internet?
When chatrooms and forums and comment sections became common place, you were still generally talking to like minded souls. Whether it was gardening or ufos or music or whatever.

Like going to the pub and chatting with your mates. Now their might be someone else there who over hears you and joins in, or argues with you, but at the end of the evening you all go home and its done.

It was fun to 'chat' to someone online who was from the other side of the world or who you would never interact with irl. It was exciting the world opening up this way.

But with the likes of twitter etc suddenly its less defined. Its just the whole world shouting at once. If you have something say, no one can hear. As in real life, the person with the loudest voice wins. But as irl that person might not be the best informed or interesting.

In the pub you just either get fed up with hanging with that person or you can tell them to shut up.

Online its a few billion people doing it. And threatening them while they're at it. And they can do it because theres little come back. They and you could be anywhere and anyone doing anything. The globality has given people an excuse to bring their anger out and drowns out the additional good and nice that is alongside.
 
I'll play devil's advocate. Forgive the broad strokes.

One strand is that the Internet has evolved so far that it now offers a plethora of fact-checking tools that may be used to verify locations, times, dates, identities etc. with relative ease. The result is that the debunking of false claims has never been simpler (if one knows what one is doing), and, to be charitable, the number of verifiably false claims made here manfully competes with the number of those that have stood up to robust scrutiny (I speak here of first-hand accounts). In fact, some of the claims we've seen over the years have been so transparently wrong that one comes to feel a nagging admiration for the hard-working hoaxers who have crossed every 't'and dotted every 'i' in a serious effort to deceive us: at least there's a worthwhile game to play in ferreting out their tiny oversights! There is in all this, of course, the danger that one will become hardheaded and thick-skinned to the point where even genuine cases might be dismissed, but in such a case I'd rather place the blame on those who paddle in the waters of Forteana for the thrill of deception than point the finger at the would-be marks they target.

On the opposite side of the coin, if I had to identify one trend among those offering unusual claims to the public, it's that they are becoming more emotionally needy and less prepared to hear alternative explanations or undergo rigorous interrogation (I don't mean throwing them against the wall, you understand). That is to say that we see more people washing up here with pre-formed explanations for their claims, seeking validation, not exploration or discussion; as exploration and discussion are really what we do here, they often end up slinking away, offended that we've not accepted their experiences as proffered. If I had had a genuinely baffling experience, one that was so out of the ordinary as to defy my own powers of explanation, my sole purpose in laying it out before an audience would be to seek understanding of what could have happened; many, in contrast, seem to wish for us to slap them on the back and tell them how fortunate they are to have had a life less ordinary.

I think this is part and parcel of a societal shift. For a number of years now, people in general and young people in particular have been told that their views, opinions and judgments are valuable by sole virtue of the fact that they are heartfelt, and that truth and utility are second-order considerations. If you think you met a yeti, and you prefer to believe that it really was a yeti, then the fact that there happened to be a skiing convention for furries in the vicinity should not be allowed to compromise the warm glow and sense of identity you enjoy as a member of the fraternity of yeti witnesses.

And here we have another facet of the Internet: communities, which are a blessing and a curse. With so many of the traditional structures and institutions of society in ruin, the virtual community is a godsend for many. The problem for us is when these communities become so dogmatic that all experiences must be squeezed and funnelled into a set of established conceptual straitjackets, each with its own 'shake and bake' nomenclature: Alien abductees, UFO witnesses, ghost-hunters, cryptozoologists, spiritualists etc. have all developed their own lexicons that allow members to communicate effectively about their experiences. Well, that's only natural, but, I'd argue, the very constraints of these experiential frameworks often lead to the contortion of the phenomenological experience itself. By this I mean that those joining such communities have a tendency to reinterpret events in terms of pre-established philosophies, massaging, emphasising and de-emphasising various aspects of their raw experiences and sublimating the qualia in order to meet the accepted standards of the community. One result of this is that the wondrous variety of the strange is becoming rather formulaic, in expression but also in terms of interpretation.

True outsiders are the best and most interesting people with whom to speak, but they're a dying breed: another significant trend in society is that the alternative has gone mainstream, and even supposed radicalism has become rather conservative in terms of what one is allowed to be radical about and to what degree.

For my part as a moderator, I do my best to ensure that everybody gets a fair hearing, but if it becomes clear that someone is deliberately attempting to deceive us, I'll happily set the lions on them.
 
Something that has been increasingly bothering me in recent years is the intolerance to diverse opinions. At the end of the last century, probably due to the new millennium, there were a large number of people who were promulgating new age attitudes and some pretty far out views. You only have to look at the earliest surviving threads in our very own IHTM section to see the kind of far out topics of discussion and largely people seemed more tolerant and willing to suspend disbelief.

Here are some preliminary comments in preparing to address the issues you raise ...

I find it interesting that you pegged the height of "new age" openness at the very end of the 20th century, with the slide into cynicism / intolerance occurring thereafter. For me (and, by extension, my American baby boomer generation ... ) the heyday for expanded horizons, new attitudes, and exploration of new ideas occurred during the Sixties and Seventies. Owing largely to economic problems and the trials of family / work life as the Eighties got underway, there was a general retreat in the direction of practical / profitable interests and attitudes.

In the course of this shift some folks abandoned their interest in alternatives / oddities entirely, while others simply didn't invest any more time in exploring or exploiting them. There's a significant difference between these two outcomes. In the former case the scope of actual or potential belief is narrowed, making novel / alternative orientations non-starters to be dismissed. In the latter case these orientations aren't so much dismissed as de-prioritized for investment of one's time and energies.

My point(s) ... A shift from exploratory wonder to some degree of pragmatic cynicism is common as a component of individual life in a modern / post-modern social setting. This doesn't refute or rebut the trend you describe, but it suggests the trend's intensity and character might vary depending on the time, the place, and the person(s) involved. Distinctions and generalizations aren't easily framed or readily defensible at this scale of concern. It's complicated ...
 
... Sadly we seem to live in a new age of an entirely different kind now. An age of relentless cynicism, of hostility to those who think differently. At first I thought a little scrutiny and rigour would be for the web but now I feel otherwise. While news media get away with publishing absolute garbage as fact with very little push back from the public, if someone posted today that they had a telepathic experience with a heron I imagine there would be no shortage of "brave" persons ready to ridicule and dismiss.

There are three key factors that have fostered the degradation of mainstream / institutional journalism in the ways you describe.

The first is the increased immediacy and tempo of news updating. It's assumed that the key to success (in the business of journalistic media) is to provide quick dissemination of breaking news and similarly quick updates. This has resulted in an increased tempo of changes in information sources, to the point the data is shifting faster than folks can absorb it. Depth of reporting has been steadily devalued in favor of immediacy and "freshness."

The second is the growing tendency to slap an overarching theme or memetic wrapper onto a breaking story so as to provide a convenient handle by which the tempo-challenged audience can grab onto and follow the endless stream of updates. This facilitates navigation as things change, but at the expense of framing the unfolding story in a certain way.

The third is the emergence of social media (more on that later ... ) allowing any yokel with an Internet connection a pair of heretofore unknown capabilities: (a) the ability to copy, amend, and regurgitate (pass on) whatever the original sources provide and (b) the ability to generate personal commentary made available every bit as globally as the mainstream media's own products.

The first factor impoverishes a story's substance; the second renders it thematically trivialized, and the third allows who-knows-who the ability to exploit the story in who-knows-what way(s).

Nobody's pushing back on the mainstream sources because the name of the game is to spin / twist / forward the material as fast as possible so as to promote oneself as a player.

Given the homogenization these factors induce in the outgoing data stream it's not surprising that the result is creation of an instantaneously hooked and progressively dogmatized audience.
 
Wow, food for thought indeed EG. I shall have to absorb that a bit before replying, though I want to thank you and Ladyloafer and Yith for your interest and thoughtful replies.
 
For my part as a moderator, I do my best to ensure that everybody gets a fair hearing, but if it becomes clear that someone is deliberately attempting to deceive us, I'll happily set the lions on them.

Just an aside and I know I've been a major part of the problem. but I've noticed a real shift in the tolerance from the mods recently. You are much more threatening than you were a few months back. I get it politics, covid, etc - nooo and all that.

I'm ok with it. As I've always pointed out there are fair stricter forums out there. Just wondering if there is "Mod" fatigue or is it all down to just arsehole members?

Do you schedule breaks? Do you take time out?
 
The third is the emergence of social media (more on that later ... ) allowing any yokel with an Internet connection a pair of heretofore unknown capabilities: (a) the ability to copy, amend, and regurgitate (pass on) whatever the original sources provide and (b) the ability to generate personal commentary made available every bit as globally as the mainstream media's own products.

Isn't this a thing we were all looking for for years? The "Yokels" having the freedom to express themselves? We can't have it both ways. Yep - I'm not a big fan as to how it has turned out either.
 
Just an aside and I know I've been a major part of the problem. but I've noticed a real shift in the tolerance from the mods recently. You are much more threatening than you were a few months back. I get it politics, covid, etc - nooo and all that.

I'm ok with it. As I've always pointed out there are fair stricter forums out there. Just wondering if there is "Mod" fatigue or is it all down to just arsehole members?

Do you schedule breaks? Do you take time out?

To be completely candid, we've realised that 80%+ of the time we spend talking to and about members is to and about the same half a dozen members. I'm not exaggerating for effect here.

There has been a collective decision not to permit this to continue (because that really can be exhausting). So the nudging, winking and nodding has been replaced by telling in the case of those who have received countless nudges, winks and nods already.

We completely understand that there's more real-life crap out there that is so all-encompassing that it's hard to keep off the board despite its divisive nature, but most people with whom we've communicated grasp that the aim is really quite important.

Mod fatigue? We check in and out as we have to and let one another know when we're less or non-available for duty. There's no rota.

Note: we do not actually possess any lions.
 
Following on from Yith's comments ...

There's no fixed rota in effect, but there's a daily cycling in staff oversight that derives from the fact the staff is distributed all around the globe.

In a similar vein ... There's no fixed set of portfolios among the moderating staff, but there are differences in which aspects of the overall operation (techie stuff; database hygiene; security; crowd control; customer relations; etc.) one or another of us may prioritize or engage during a typical day (or night ... ).

IMHO it's fair to say there's been little or no drift in the staff's attitudes and opinions regarding acceptable behavior, but (as Yith indicated) we're progressively dispensing with the behind-the-scenes nudging that's proven both laborious and decreasingly effective.

The most dramatic visible shift has been our crackdown on "politics." The motivation / policy isn't new, but the ineffectiveness of prior cautions and declarations has led us to simply skip forward to active sanctions and quit wasting our breath when some folks don't or won't listen.

Now, back to the stated topic ...
 
Isn't this a thing we were all looking for for years? The "Yokels" having the freedom to express themselves? We can't have it both ways. Yep - I'm not a big fan as to how it has turned out either.

Let me illustrate with a true story ...

It was the early Nineties. I was in a new position as the principal investigator setting up a lab dedicated to demonstrating and researching the prospects for networked collaboration (distributed teams; online realtime group work; video conferencing; etc.). I was preparing a demonstration of the newly emerging "magic bullet" that was going to change everything - Berners-Lee's HTML and ubiquitous sharing of all types of data in a fashion most anyone could use. This was the Web, before it was commonly called the Web (hell - before most folks outside tech specialties and academia knew there was an Internet).

One afternoon my colleagues heard me utter an exclamation of distaste and launch into a cursing fit fit for a sailor. They rushed to my office area to ask if there'd been a breakdown of some sort. I pointed at my computer monitor and said, "Take a look at this ... This is going to ruin everything ... "

Some computer guy at a university had set up a rudimentary webpage for his young daughter, which displayed a message introducing herself and presented a photo of her pet. The webpage was entitled "My Dog Muffy."

I told my coworkers that before it was over this sort of casual personal trivia would come to dominate the Net to the point the sort of unified world "library" (broadly construed) toward which we were working would be drowned out by such "noise" as this.

For years thereafter the phrase "My Dog Muffy" became a stock label among my teams and the labs for trivial Net exploitation.

Here's my point ... My Dog Muffy represented the ability of the Net to give anyone and everyone a megaphone via which they could broadcast who-knows-what globally. The more megaphones thus handed out, the higher the noise level. Give enough people the ability to shout, and they'll begin shouting among, and in unison with, themselves. Correspondingly, they will progressively cease listening and reflecting.

It was an obvious recipe for a cacophony of mindless chatter and / or outright BS - or, as I prefer, a "cacaphony."

Around a dozen years later even the originally most skeptical among my colleagues admitted I'd seen it coming when MySpace broke onto the scene. Once Facebook emerged I lost all hope ...
 
Sturgeons law?

For those unfamiliar.

img_0950.jpg
 
Moving back to Gloucestrian's opening points ...

... I disconnected from so-called social media a long time ago now and I do wonder how much responsibility lies with social media for the weary, cynical and unpleasant nature of the web. Certainly it seems to have emerged as the dominant tone online after the rise of Facebook and Twitter.

As my earlier posts should indicate, I would place a lot of blame on social media for facilitating trivialization of online communications / interactions. One aspect is condensing acceptable postings to the point they can hardly be called "contributions." Another aspect is the increasing frequency with which posters post nothing of their own but simply lob some third party's creation over the wall for anyone's perusal. Finally, the shift toward highlighting one's personal scores (e.g., "likes"; "friends"; etc.) has led folks to game these purely "social" metrics in and of themselves.

Personal publicity / promotion / spotlight-grabbing is the name of the game, and anything that draws attention becomes a "good thing" if that's how one views the game. This explains why so many folks engage in hijacking, spinning and / or outright hoaxing to draw attention.

... Which leads me to ...

...The saddest thing in my opinion about this change to a generally dismissive and cynical discourse is that it is probably hurting most those who are part of a minority. After all it is minorities of all kinds that are most likely to have experiences that are uncommon, not just of the Fortean kind but in every area of life. Yet their experiences are increasingly invalidated by a mainstream that grows ever more homogeneous and controlling. ...

There are two sides to this issue. Yes, the regimentation induced by fitting into and playing the "social games" of trivialized online life produce a sort of homogenized crowd that at best is a group-sourced virtual idiot and at worst a mob-sourced virtual oppressor.

If (big "if" ... ) all folks relating or forwarding weirdness reports were entirely truthful and attentive to facts this would indeed represent most, if not the whole, of the problem. However ...

There are many parties out there who are trafficking in ersatz weirdness (i.e., BS, bogus reports, etc.) for the sake of inane jollies or the sort of self-aggrandizing gaming social media supports.

As a result, there's less and less that can be reasonably taken at face value.

This means you either have to swallow anything anyone says or "scrub" each story to see if it holds up as a coherent whole indicative of actual weirdness.

My point is that there's a certain reasonable degree of "scrubbing" that any reporter should be able to tolerate. Sure, such cautious preliminary dialogue may be construed as doctrinaire pushback, but impression management cannot be allowed to override topical integrity. I enjoy a good campfire story, but that doesn't obligate me to invest effort in a report without checking to see whether it's nothing more than a campfire tale. There's little point in investigating a report that's so vague one can't get a handle on it in the first place.

As such, I'd submit that not all apparent pushback represents dismissal out of hand.
 
As my earlier posts should indicate, I would place a lot of blame on social media for facilitating trivialization of online communications / interactions. One aspect is condensing acceptable postings to the point they can hardly be called "contributions." Another aspect is the increasing frequency with which posters post nothing of their own but simply lob some third party's creation over the wall for anyone's perusal. Finally, the shift toward highlighting one's personal scores (e.g., "likes"; "friends"; etc.) has led folks to game these purely "social" metrics in and of themselves.

I use the Internet for: a) work, b) leisure and socialising and c) semi-serious research. All three pursuits are very valuable to me in different ways.

As far as I can see, the potential profitability of the Internet always meant that it was destined to be thrown open to the mass of humanity to maximise profit.

The problem--and I suspect from previous discussions with you that you feel likewise--is that unlike television and radio, where one can choose your channel (and decide when to switch), there is a lot of crossover between signals, and the tones and practices of one (non-demarcated) zone can easily spill into those of others, even when they are not conceptually adjacent.

I think we're stuck with it, mate.

And it can--at best--be refreshing.
 
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... The problem--and I suspect from previous discussions with you that you feel likewise--is that unlike television and radio, where one can choose your channel (and decide when to switch), there is a lot of crossover between signals, and the tones and practices of one (non-demarcated) zone can easily spill into those of others, even when they are not conceptually adjacent. ...

Yes, there's a lot of bleed-through and blending depending on which sites one accesses and frequents. Such crosstalk is most evident and least avoidable on the social media sites.

Edit to Add:

Some of this crosstalk effect is magnified by the actions of certain users or groups thereof. It's difficult to escape such crosstalk owing to the relatively unstructured nature of most social media sites.

It doesn't help the situation to have substantial amounts of such crosstalk built into the venue via recommendations, "most relevant" side-links, and the like. Even if other users aren't influencing your possible choices and responses the site itself may be doing the same thing. Such features can be gamed or manipulated themselves.
 
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The top and tail of it is, we have have created a monster with the Internet, and we are just starting to see the results, it all started off with visions of utopia, happy people communicating (lots of stock photos available) and its true in many respects we are better off with it than without it, however some of the side effects on society have been bad, especially with the advent of social media, I really don't know if things will settle down or we will end up destroying ourselves down

Strange days Indeed
 
There are many parties out there who are trafficking in ersatz weirdness (i.e., BS, bogus reports, etc.) for the sake of inane jollies or the sort of self-aggrandizing gaming social media supports.

I feel sure that we had a few examples like that here a number years ago where a new poster would post in IHTM, some people would reply and then the poster would return with "HAHA I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BELIEVED ME YOU IDIOTS". It does put people off a bit.

I think the entrenchment of views come from there being no way to get rid of the idiot that you would be able to get rid of at the pub but who is always there waiting for you to post something on the internet. Plus it is out there for everyone to see, probably for many years. Thus when you post something like "I am a supporter of X but I think they shot themselves in the foot here and Y came across better on this occasion". Your idiot comes along and says "HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY SUPPORT Y YOU JACK-BOOTED NAZI FASCIST?" Well that stings, no matter how unfair it might be and you might then be very careful never to cut any slack towards Y or Y's supporters. Before you know it, everyone is sitting in their bunkers waiting to blow the head off anyone who peeps over from the other side.
 
I feel sure that we had a few examples like that here a number years ago where a new poster would post in IHTM, some people would reply and then the poster would return with "HAHA I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BELIEVED ME YOU IDIOTS". It does put people off a bit.

We also had some cut & paste fiction, which was identified and removed.
 
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