We need to stack up about 10 arguments to properly get to the perfect possible path. Putting together enough logic based arguments just seems to take longer to build up into a proper stack of thoughts these days. Earlier this morning I started to craft a weblog post that turned into more of an essay. Over the next few days I’m going to focus in and work on a series of essays to put together a stack of about 10 different arguments that have been percolating at the forefront of my thoughts for the last few weeks related to where we sit now at the intersection of technology and modernity. So much is involved within the broader implications of AI on society that the story is becoming increasingly complex and flooder. Some people would say the zone is ultimately being flooded with artificially created slop. 

It works like this; we have a system where people learn, grow, and experience normativity during the first 12 years (grades) of our educational system. People learn how to interact with others and they learn social norms and generally the basics of interacting with other people. It’s not a perfect system. It has worked out well enough for decades. Interestly enough, I actually believe a separate and derivative system of norm sharing exists within social media and within that space I’m going to include the endless short and some very long videos of people endlessly talking and sharing that currently exist. 

We don’t have a social onboarding system where somebody watches every season of The Simpsons, a series I’m told has been renewed into a 36th season, and they would have been effectively loaded with most everything they need to know about how American society generally functions. Ok – I’m thinking about that one for a moment and if Neo was in the Matrix and was loaded with all 36 seasons of The Simpsons that would absolutely provide a certain perspective about life in America. It would not really be one with civility, a good understanding of the social contract, and a solid foundation of how normativity works. 

I’m trying to make a point here about how an entire generation has been socialized in a different and unexpected way. Foundations of arguments matter. Our shared understanding of political theory and how complex topics are related matters. People are being socialized in a way now that is not grounded. It’s unfortunately not an understanding of the world grounded by understanding and reading the political platform JFK introduced in 1960 or by listening to his speeches. You might say that having read the 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater would help provide a solid understanding of where that intellectual foundation came from. We can extend that argument beyond just considering where politics were in 1960. Much like JFK produced and delivered timeless speeches Ronald Reagan had really good speech writers and to this day you can still read and listen to those speeches and they will help you get a feel for the totality of a worldview. It’s so much more than soundbytes, clips, or just flooding the zone with slop it included an expression of an actual political philosophy. 

My point here is that in the here and now as we face the intersection of technology and modernity the totality of the argument is being lost. A complete perspective is no longer being shared. Within the world of social media sharing content and people just randomly providing narration and color commentary on video games, viral dances, or just the cacophony of whatever is popular at the time has deconstructed the social contract into fragments shattering the totality of the perspective necessary to actually have enough of a shared experience and perspective for civility, civil society, and ultimately community of place, circumstance, and interest to properly function. I’m describing the breakdown of the shared America ethos. It is now fragmented into channels of ethos that are not shared; they exist within ephemeral bubbles. Each experience is now inherently different and ultimately disconnected enough that what we have in common is not strong enough to fuel a social fabric of connectedness; it instead acts like a manifold of difference enginging a world of distinct conflicts compared to some degree of togetherness. 

Some of these screeds are written as a sort of protest against the wave of what is happening. Maybe this argument should be that in primary school we should all have to listen to the best JFK speeches and we need to rewind our political arguments back to the 1960 Democratic Party Platform and we should figure out where we stand now based on that previously drawn line in the sand. Somewhere in that argument is ultimately what I’m trying to say and share within this collection of thoughts that are starting to be more of a chautauqua. Virtue signaling, the way of the samurai, and a variety of other methods have been created to communicate a shared direction based on some type of belief system.