Why such inescapable rabbit holes?

 "Curiouser and curiouser!"

The bored girl Alice could not resist temptation nor the adventures that awaited. It has been a while since I read Lewis Caroll, but I do remember the nonsense that awaited Alice in Wonderland. The story that unfolds after she follows the white rabbit is whimsical and dangerous at the same time. My college lit class studied the book's symbols and Victorian references at length, but I still think the appeal of the story is its oddity and adventure. What if there were such a universe down a rabbit hole or through the looking glass? Would you go down the rabbit hole?

 

We started listening to a podcast called Rabbit Hole about what the internet is doing to us. Based on the YouTube radicalization of a twenty-something in West Virginia, the investigation looks at YouTube and its algorithms and how they shape thought. The content is well-researched and thoughtful, tracing how this young man oscillates from conspiracy theories and truths on all sides of the political spectrum. It is well worth a listen, especially with such a powerful platform like YouTube at the center of the discussion and knowing that its reach is unimaginable and global (see this article about Brazil). About half way through the series, I can draw parallels with which stories are and which stories are not coughed up on my Twitter, Google, or Facebook feeds. It is alarming, particularly so when we seem so ready to take what we see and hear at face value.

I want to think about this. How did we get here?

• Are we not teaching and practicing enough critical thinking? Not only our "children" but also our adults do not seem to have the media literacy to validate sources and fact check information. When our "feeds" give us like-minded and like-sourced material, it can pull us down a tunnel of misinformation in which every publication swirls together into a loop of the same lies or truths. Would we recognize real facts if they came from another source? Do we have enough practice at dissonance and adequate exposure to multiple sides of an argument? Can we teach ourselves to get out of the rabbit hole? Can we resist the temptation of an incendiary and righteous trip down the rabbit hole in the first place?
• What responsibility do big tech companies have in all of this? Have they built such perfect artificial intelligence that feeds into our vulnerabilities as humans that we do not have the will to escape? Where is personal responsibility in all of this? And, if big tech has some responsibility, how shall they enact it? Flagging or removing content is a form of censorship. What power to decide what can and cannot be seen... should this be in the hands of a company who wants you to watch and who depends on your views to generate income? should this power be in the hands of government who might easily manipulate the masses?
• Can we escape our polarization - socially and politically - to come together over anything? Can we agree that some ideas and symbols are simply hateful and should be stopped altogether? We are so encamped in our positions that I have doubts that we can recognize the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts... let alone the emperor without clothes!
  
• Is this a new problem? I suspect it is a different problem. Not that talking heads, tabloids, or idle gossip did not spread its fair share of misinformation, but this is so much more instant and so much more available than ever before. Why wouldn't you believe an authoritative voice on YouTube or a Facebook post that your neighbor shared? At what time in history did we have so much information at our fingertips? How do we sit through the tea party and sort through surprising fact and absurd fiction? When did high quality journalism become something to attach? When did our media become entertainment relying on clicks and likes? What it always this way? Is there any source that we all collectively can trust with the facts? If not, truth seeking is a rather weary journey.

See? There are a lot of serious questions. As for me, I'll be on the look out for that pesky white rabbit.

Sometimes you have more questions than answers

 

Two summers in college I worked as a camp counselor in the Black Hills at Outlaw Ranch (OR). It was an impressionable time and one in which I was susceptible to bouts of reflection and philosophizing. It was a Christian camp, and I was surrounded by other truth seekers and in really good company. We spent the summer creating community by hiking at sunrise, singing silly songs, worshiping by the fireside, canoeing across the lake, and mucking bathrooms, cabins, and the kitchen. The summer at OR was divided into two distinct types of camps: youth camp for different ages and family camp. Personally, I had never experienced family camp, but we had speakers and musicians and families who came for a week at a time. As counselors, this meant that we adopted families of all ages and led activities for kids in the morning and families in the afternoon. The guest speakers often were thoughtful professor types or authors or thinkers from the greater South Dakota region. The musicians created music connected to their faith journeys and the area. For me, the time with peers, families, thinkers, music, and nature was a perfect input for a bit of wondering and questioning.  

One of the summers I was there, the other counselors and I spent a lot of energy questioning what we knew to be true about our faith and the world. We received a guest speaker one week who shared a life journey in which he lost and found his faith; he was a relentless questioner. I liked this but it was new for me to be exposed to Christians who were willing to ask deliberate, tough, earth-shattering questions about religion, the bible, and Jesus. It felt refreshing and a bit dangerous. Even now, I remember a distinct conversation about reconciling doubt and questions with faith. Our guest shared his view that the best faith arises from uncomfortable questions. In fact, he went further to say that his faith was kept active and alive by questioning and coming back for more conversation. Describing his journey as one in which he always emerged with a pocketful of questions but has determined to keep moving forward, propelled by his faith, he was a good model for how I felt at that time. It is a phrase that I have tucked away for over twenty years and keep circling back to. I do have questions.

That was a long narrative to say that I have found my voice and have begun to write. The pandemic has given me space to question, and I have a lot of questions right now that I would like to explore. After a meandering walk through my neighborhood, I am confronted with the inexplicable end to a paved path before meeting another. Even those who constructed the path must have wondered as they painted a large question mark at the end. Did they run out of asphalt? Was there no plan to continue further than a certain number of meters? Was the plan altered after or before this bike path was built? What was going on here where the sidewalk ends after several kilometers? There are interrupted sidewalks like this all over Brasília. Why? I guess I will have to keep asking and to be comfortable with a pocketful of questions.