Those days, the sweetness of listening and responding

“Those days, the sweetness of listening and responding, of enough distrust to research and think critically, seem long gone.

Politics now, and whatever cultural game that’s going on, seems like a screaming match of us-versus-them. It’s noise and it’s grandstanding and its virtue signalling to a paying constituency. Everyone has an opinion about everything, and there’s often no room for questions, for complexity, for nuance, and especially none for dissent.

All that is expected is quiet acquiescence and then the dutiful regurgitation of whatever chant or mantra your political side is spewing this week.”

Full quote from @swordandpencil from his recent substack.

I don’t know, maybe it’s always been this way? If it has, the only thing that’s changed is that social media companies have figured out how to turn our attention into revenue. The algorithm searches for things (and people) we hate and drives us to respond so they can serve us ads to some drop-shipped, white-labeled, plastic gadget that we don’t actually need.

I’m convinced if I leaned hard into one side of the political field or another, I could get a lot more followers to this page. In fact, with it being election season I’m pretty sure politically charged content would perform much better. And especially *this* election.

That’s the thing though…followers? Growth? Engagement? How much is enough? To that end, who is seeking platform and who is seeking truth?

Josh’s email was mostly about seeking truth. The questions we ask, these posts we make…they should get us closer to truth, right? But I’m convinced, the people and these platforms we parrot - they’re looking for growth not for truth. We’re so wrapped up in *what* we think when *how* we think is so much more important.

The truth is shocking sometimes. It should force us to evaluate and re-evaluate our beliefs and sometimes we should be humbled that we got something (or someone) so completely wrong.

It’s ok to have opinions and it’s ok to share them. I would humbly suggest every now and then to ask yourself “why am I posting this?” And if the goal isn’t in search of truth, what’s it in search of?