We all have "that Facebook friend"

After reading the assigned articles, I kept repeating something in my mind that, I had read in the abstract of the Article: Social media and youth political engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth? The phrase said the "[the] principal driver of online political engagement is political interest." Which means that, the only people who are using social media for politics, are the political minds.

This conclusion is not a surprise for anyone that is on Facebook these days. We all have that "friend" that can and will not stop posting political pictures,videos, and yes memes. What the study found, is what most people have experienced firsthand. If you are not politically active, your 7th grade classmates impassioned rant on the 2nd amendment, is not likely to stir your interest. On the contrary, it is likely to make you block or unfollow them. Which is the opposite of any social network or political action.

However, a small positive can be found from the study, is that the "political person" on your social media will likely find others in their network of "friends." Which does help serve as an organizing tool. Evidence of this can be seen from Tunisia during the Arab spring, to the organization of a coordinated, global student walkout in 2019. The writer of this blog can attest to this because,the writer of this blog is indeed "The political person" on many unfortunate souls Facebook.

In my small experience of posting about local elections, I have been contacted by middle school friends interested in local issues. Older relatives, giving advice on policy that was neither asked for, or honestly appreciated. Yet I have also had the unique pleasure of being contacted by an old classmate, that is involved in local politics as well, creating an alliance of two groups of people. So while the idea of social media being binary good or bad, is not really answerable.

It is for better and for worse, a tool used to contact, connect, and create communication. Whether people choose to lock in for that connection and communication is up to the individual. Which in nations, states, regions and towns where voting turn out is decreasing, that can be for the worse.

Learning about crowds from my three year old cousin

While discussing the leBon reading the class as a whole generally settled on two things. That yes, a crowd of people influence each other, in the fashion of "peer pressure" and that the author was talking about another time. A time when gathering in a crowd to hear news, or to watch/protest the news of the day. The fact is, the era he was talking about, was an era where Telegraph was the most widely used information sharing technology of the day. Which means that while his writing is becoming more out of touch with the "modern" crowds, it tells us a lot about historical ones. 

Historically, Crowds gathered to hear news, protest/protect each other, and to witness what was happening. Which leads us to the crowd I observed over the weekend, while celebrating my moms birthday. Being of the Jewish faith, we celebrated the Sabbath by lighting candles, and reciting prayers, as members of my family have done for generations. It is literally a historic practice to light the candles and sing on Friday nights at sundown. As we sung the traditional Friday night prayers, my three year old cousin could be heard "singing along." While she is still just learning English/ "big girl words", she seemed to be getting every 5th word in Hebrew while staying along with the melody, as the adults carried on. After, my brothers and I discussed how we never really read our prayer books growing up,but simply picked up the prayers from the adults in our family. While these facts may have been disappointing to my mother, I found them to be a revelation, and the act of a three year old, learning from a crowd to be very illuminating.

My young Cousin was attaching herself to a crowd, naturally. While this was hardly the only time she had her the prayers (her grandfather is a theological scholar) and repetition has a lot to do with it. Her participation serves as very interesting transition into the second half of this blog assignment, which asked us to look at Aristotle's assertion that man is a political animal. While the interpretation on what he truly meant by that can vary. The interpretation I liked best is that,it is the most natural thing of human kind, to seek each other out, form groups, bonds,& associations for protection and fulfillment. Here my young cousin was filling that natural need to be included, to be a part of the crowd. Which when applying this lesson to  a crowd singing "we shall overcome", one can understand the intense pull to join. Humans like to be in the know, to be involved with the world in which we live, and joining a "crowd" is a just a natural part of that.

I found this article to be very educational, but at times confusing.
While I found this article to be a little more direct.

"To give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”

In the article Looking Back, Looking Forward: ISPP at 40 and Future Directions for Political Psychology author Katherine Reynolds covers a wider range of topics. After reading this, we discussed in class,a few topics, but really dug into the section entitled The Erosion of Scientific Rationalism?

The subsection discusses the perception that the gulf between the scientific community and the general public is growing. Which from studies cited in the article, is proven not to be true. Although, within those same studies is the concerning fact that almost almost 1/4th of the United States does not "trust" science. Further, we applied that to the very controversial topic of Abortion which is incredibly personal, nuanced and convoluted. While not only being an interesting in class conversation, it helped really highlight the concept of motivated reasoning. As most of us did not cite science but only personal experience, or how our values interacted with the issue. Few, if any made arguments based on scientific fact. Which drove home the point of how natural motivated reasoning is.

Motivated reasoning is a term that essentially means "a person’s deference to scientific evidence depends on the specific policy under consideration." Which means that people defer to science/evidence/numbers only when they are in line with their argument, otherwise, they can shrug off evidence. An easier example of this, is the issue of climate change, which most of the scientific community has said is real. Speeches and articles like this Article from the New Yorker that says "sea level is projected to rise more than one foot by 2045, which would put a fifth of Miami underwater at high tide." Lets just say that info has been fact checked, a climate skeptic, should logically change their opinion when presented with this evidence. However this quote from a former New York real estate mogul, highlights the concept of motivated reasoning: "Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!" The quote does not stand up on scientific fact, and stands literally in opposition of evidence, calling it a "hoax". Yet the same man gave the reason of “25,772,342 [undocumented immigrants]” that have come through the Southern border of the United States, as reason to declare a state of emergency. Here we have a clear example of using numbers and evidence when it suits an argument. Which falls perfectly into the definition of motivated reasoning we gave at the beginning of this paragraph.

All of this points to the idea that, feelings, allegiances and emotion, have taken over for evidence in being the barometer of a sound argument. Which while not always a bad thing, can be a dangerous thing when it decides the future and safety of millions. So it can be seen that while scientific rationalism may not be falling out of fashion, motivated reasoning is becoming more fashionable.