Cyber cesspool

When Ray Robertson uses public transit, he realizes how different he is from the vast majority of modern human beings.

“Observe a bus full of near-comatose, infantilized commuters — heads lowered, fingers busy, eyes glazed,” Robertson writes in The Right to be Wrong.

“I don’t own a cellphone, perhaps my proudest act of social disobedience,” he declares.

Robertson has a large and varied body of written work, including nine novels, seven collections of non-fiction, a book of poetry and a book that inspired a film script. Born and raised in Chatham, he now lives in Toronto.

In this slim volume, Robertson distills wisdom about the importance of free speech and full-throated debate to a civilized society from a wide variety of commentators through the ages, from Xenophanes through William Blake and Friedrich Nietzsche — and that’s just on one page.

Robertson does own a laptop, but he pays other people to promote his writings on Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook’s algorithms “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness to gain user attention and increase time on the platform,” according to Max Fisher, author of The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World.

Robertson quotes Fisher saying those algorithms “deliberately shape our experiences” and change “how we think, behave and relate to one another.”

Robertson adds that our collective cyber-addiction causes “anxiety, loneliness and depression, as well as significantly contributing to a marked decrease in the ability to concentrate on anything longer than a pop-up ad for Black Friday.”

In this not-so-brave new world, social media stampedes public opinion into mutually exclusive camps who refuse to listen to each other.

Robertson uses his own nuanced position on COVID-19 and vaccines as an example of how judgmental the mob can be.

Robertson was vaccinated twice to lessen the symptoms of the virus. But when he wondered aloud on Instagram why Walmart was open but bookstores were closed, every “COVID-19” in his post was deleted and replaced with a government message urging people to get the jab.

Official messaging that hospitals were “overwhelmed” conveniently ignored the fact that hospitals had been underfunded for decades, Big Pharma made unconscionable profits from the pandemic and there should have been a cost-benefit analysis of the lockdown, Robertson says.

But all three of those moderate positions were easily shouted down on social media by people accusing him of being a right-winger, anarchist or conspiracy nut.

Given the topic of social media and the lies they spread, readers may be surprised at the lack of focus on the person who uses social media the most to spread his own version of “truth.”

U.S. President Donald Trump is mentioned a mere three times. In the longest reference, Robertson says when people feel insecure, they crave a strong authority figure.

“Ergo, Donald Trump. It takes a village to raise an idiot.”

Humour, satire and ridicule are vital to public discourse in a democracy, he says. He quotes Muriel Spark saying if only people had laughed at the Nazis, “those tyrants wouldn’t have had a chance.”

Yet Robertson inexplicably does not follow up those observations with a comment on Trump’s tyrannical relationship with the media.

With the completion of mergers his government approved, Trump’s oligarchs now control virtually everything Americans read, see and hear.

Not only has Trump refused to acknowledge the right of others to be wrong, he rejects their right to hold any opinions different from his.

Before this book went to press, Trump had forced those oligarchs to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and threaten ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Trump has verbally abused journalists who ask him hard questions.

These appear to be perfect examples of Robertson’s thesis, yet he does not mention them.

The only antidote to the negative effects of social media, Robertson says, is the hard work of reading, reflection and genuine, respectful interactions with others.

“We don’t owe the world an immediate and easy answer to anything. We do owe ourselves the opportunity to look and listen, though, to inspect and scrutinize, to contemplate and critically assess,” he writes.

Robertson’s plea for civility will likely not be heard by those who would most benefit from his message — the trolls and thugs who intimidate others on social media.

But by simply stating what he believes, Robertson is affirming his own right to be wrong — or right.

Donald Benham is a freelance writer living near Beausejour.