Logos On Line

 I'm following up on my last post which talked a bit about the psychology of groups especially as it shows on the internet.   My main focus was on discourse and how one's language and syntax tends to show what group one belongs to, or aspires to belong to.

This is part of a broader thought, that since the internet operates by means of language and imagery it has to convey meaning mostly through symbols rather than things themselves.   In one way it is clearer and more direct than real life.  In another way, it has already been curated for you to some extent in the exact same way that literature and visual and dramatic arts convey meaning to you.    In my view, this is one reason the internet is so attractive, and indeed almost addictive to some people.  You can practically mainline the creativity of other people, and even interact with and respond to it in real time.

The interactive possibilities make the internet representations much more fungible, if that is the right word.    I'm looking for a term that can quickly sum up everything people do in response to a text or art, whether justifiable or not.    With books, you read and respond privately or with friends, and possibly you write your own book or review at some point if you can write and can find a publisher.   In magazines and newspapers you could write letters and maybe they would be published.    With TV the man on the street didn't even have to write out his thoughts -- he could just say them.   And be on TV!

But all these things had a time lapse and were to some extent managed.     That's not true really on the internet.    Even the censorship efforts, widely publicized, are in themselves a response to or interpretation of content.    This flattening out of the structure and timing of content/response has had a giant impact.   People have done meta-commentary on it of course but they are commenting on a phenomenon as it is happening.    They themselves are immersed in it and are liable to the same horizontalizing effect.     It's difficult to be meta when everything is meta, because then nothing is.

I liked the do it yourself element of the internet when it was still in its infancy, and I still like it in principle.  But you can like something -- for instance, the effects of the printing press or explosion in transportation technology or medical therapies -- and still have some concerns with its permutations.

OK, so that is the broader generalization, which is probably rather obvious; that the internet is a giant representation; it trades in symbols, which doesn't mean that it's unrelated to truth, not at all, but that it has to be understood as communication with all its powers and limitations.    

The more practical point is that when we are appearing on the internet in some way, we are clothed only by what we say and show.   And this casts an intense and disproportionate importance on image and opinion.

I think this is why it's so attractive now to adopt one's opinions wholesale from an opinion- or influence-caster of some sort.    Because we want to wear the same type of clothes as the cool kids.  

This sometimes leads to absurdity, just as wearing the latest trend is the guaranteed way to look silly in pictures a decade or so later.    And it can be toxic, too, of course.   And confusing, and arbitrary.    Someone who has the right set of opinions today may tomorrow have yesterday's set of opinions, which are very unfashionable now.   In Brave New World the social engineers made new purses every season seem desirable so the workers would keep working to afford the new things.    There is a kind of mental and emotional consumerism that's in trade on the internet.

Again, CS Lewis's advice applies -- to notice, to be aware, to resist the pull; to look for the reality, the lasting things, the good and true.