Here's the leaf of a spiderwort (Tradescantia sp.) in front of a buttercup (Ranunculus sp.) at McKinney Falls State Park on April 14. I assure you this is not how you would have seen things had you been there.
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Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous.... [M]any of America's key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s... got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level (national, state, and local), and it was so pervasive that it established new behavioral norms backed by new policies seemingly overnight. The new omnipresence of enhanced-virality social media meant that a single word uttered by a professor, leader, or journalist, even if spoken with positive intent, could lead to a social-media firestorm, triggering an immediate dismissal or a drawn-out investigation by the institution. Participants in our key institutions began self-censoring to an unhealthy degree, holding back critiques of policies and ideas—even those presented in class by their students—that they believed to be ill-supported or wrong.
Those insights come from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's recent article in The Atlantic, "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid," in which he criticizes extremists on the political far right and far left. Check out this thoughtful, thorough article. You're also welcome to listen to his recent 87-minute conversation with Andrew Sullivan on The Weekly Dish.
© 2022 Steven Schwartzman
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