Ignorance in an Internet Age
One would assume that humanity would be at its most humble. Living with the totality of human knowledge at our fingertips should cause us to question our limits. However, instead of humility, we seem arrogantly convinced our personal experience is the ruler we measure right-thinking against.
It is no secret that there is a profound division in our new social environment. Ironically, this division is happening in the context of instantaneous accessibility to a critical element of empathy–information of experiences not only about the other but from the other. Although the information revolution exposes new pathways of crucial self-reflection in intellectual diversity, we have tended towards a kind of schizophrenic denial of the potential fruits of this cultural transformation.
It has long been discovered that intellectual ignorance paradoxically correlates with intellectual confidence. The default epistemological position is to underestimate the sphere of knowledge required for expertise radically. For example, when I was first learning music before I was exposed to expert musicians, I was under the delusion that I had achieved a high level of skill. With the invention of YouTube, that bubble quickly burst. Only with an increase in metacognition is a realistic self-evaluation possible.
However, in our current context, we face the social influence of being "unique" while facing pressure to "fit in." There exists not only an incentive for ignorance but the social conditions for perpetual ill-information. We see this explicitly in the problematic sphere of social media. To self-evaluate is to invite external criticism and therefore lose one's uniqueness. We can, however, still "fit in" with like-minded non-self-reflectors. Although both become a kind of fiction, we maintain our sense of uniqueness and need for group identity. We are quickly surrounded by and cheered on by the narrow-minded.
The problem now is that there is virtually no movement towards new understandings of the self considering the other. In turn, there is very little empathy for those who do not share our points of view, points of view that are increasingly ill-informed. I believe we are witnessing this vacuum in every arena which traditionally aspired towards robust dialogue.
For example, progressivism seems dangerously unaware that not all social movement is forward motion. Take the almost ceremonious glee when specific individuals lose their jobs because of that one tweet. Losing a job is humiliating, often financially devastating, and can negatively impact spheres outside the work environment. Yes, someone losing their job for prejudice is justified. Would I want a person who humiliates and attacks someone because of say, their sexual orientation or race employed in my organization? Absolutely not. But it is possible, believe it or not, to reservedly celebrate punitive justice and hope that restorative justice eventually wins the day. If we truly believe the other side is in the wrong, we will embrace the task of understanding the inner workings and motivations of that wrong to disassemble it lovingly. We must always allow questions and resist the universal trend towards fundamentalism.
Theologically, this lack of self-reflection takes shape in our reversal of the "hearer" and "speaker" of divine revelation. As hearers, we have no assurance of truth, "save only those things which are given to us in what has been said to us" (Karl Barth, The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life, 11). We are not God. This is a fundamental precept that is shockingly difficult to grasp. And with the modern self poised as the arbiter of revelation above the community, or "rule of faith," the hearer becomes the speaker, and all spoken words become guaranteed truth. This is why we continuously encounter absurd exegetical and theological statements spoken with impunity. Non-reflective statements are spoken among other non-reflective speakers. Uniqueness is maintained, and group identity is secure.
The age-old warning against idolatry applies. We gravitate towards casting God in our image instead of the other way around. There is a cascading collapse of the hierarchy of knowledge and wisdom. The authority of God through the community to the individual is now being reversed. Instead of a great awakening of our inner being by God's narrowing revelation, both God and the self are reduced to a hollow shell. And without depth, there can be no transforming love of God and neighbour.
Therefore, we must embrace that the unique individual and the alternative other is not a mandatory dichotomy but a necessary modality. That God created diversely and not homogeneously demonstrates the broad landscape of human identity. We must, therefore, see our world of information as a profound gift. Thankfully, never before has the limitation of human ability ever been more clear.
