What We Wish For
Be careful of it they say, with good reason. What you wish for may be a problem solution that brings unexpected and regrettable consequences. It actually nearly inevitable because it happens all the time. It’s been happening continuously ever since humans first began to think they were in charge. It happens so often that it is presented as the stark lesson of a bunch of fables, proverbs, etc.
You may be acquainted with Aesop’s “Frogs Who Wanted a King” fable. The frogs complained to Zeus to send them a king, and then complained again when all he sent them was a log. Zeus rewarded them with a heron for a king.
Huge tech companies who own or control social media platforms have joined forces to help American democracy in its most dire moment of need. A heron was preying on us, and caused chaos to the point of great harm to the pond. Luckily, a pack of friendly otters showed up and drove off the heron. Would that they were on the scene much sooner!
The damage to society has been enormous so far and it can be fairly blamed in large part on these same companies for being manipulated by a demagogue and enabling his rise to power; power they knew he would abuse along with the norms of a formerly enviable first world country, because he said he would do exactly that.
So, they enabled the heron’s tyranny that Trumpism is and then were forced to try to kneecap it in mid-rampage. For that, they could be kind of heroes.
They may have prevented the worst in this case, and not wanting to get anywhere close to this happening again, they’ll have to look at tightening their policies. They must. But, who does the recalibration? Will restrictions be incremental, or ground shifting? What criteria for filtering threatened harm is just right? What degree of implied harm is threatening?
We don’t want anything like this kind of division in society ever again, the line between fact and fiction must be kept much sharper. But we also don’t want control of society’s permitted speech to get co-opted entirely by media and tech behemoths. People would be well-served if company policies were aligned with both a reasoned interpretation of Constitution rights and with diverse perspectives on what is the common good. But how material is the common good to billionaires and trillionaires? Was their real complicity just an error in judgment, uncertainty about where the Rubicon is until someone was about to cross it? Or, was it anything other than that?
Their pressing task now is to reinterpret the fourth estate ground rules, respective of the other three. The fourth estate used to be newspapers. Then it was network broadcasts on radio and TV. (Homework lesson: learn the other three if you can’t already name them. You might be surprised. Hint: they’re not branches of government.)
It seems logical and prudent that their near-term policy changes would be incremental. So/but, doesn’t incrementalism necessarily point to eventual concern over lopsided control? And wouldn’t we be by then already powerless to meaningfully resist their control? Whether or not that control is ultimately employed in a harmful agenda of global corporations is one of the important debates of our time.
It’s tempting to think, to hope, that massive tech/media corporations will continue to show an understanding of what is in society’s best interest. After all, they were all start-ups not that long ago and the founding culture featured some reassuring mission statements. Was that then and this is now? The biggest question is what comes later if they get it right, and what comes later if they don’t?
Our case is not quite a parallel to Aesop’s fable in all respects. It’s true, we grew complacent with the logs Zeus gave us for political leaders. It’s true that we really don’t like being preyed upon by the heron, especially not by this odious and ravenous orange one. But now we find ourselves in company with something like a pack of friendly otters who drove the heron out of the pond. Thanks otters. What nice otters. Wonder if they only eat fish?
There’s this other nagging difference with Aesop’s pond: ours is warming. The frogs, fish, otters, herons and everything live in a warming pond and Zeus can’t send any ice if it’s all melted.
The heron kept us frogs freaked out and thoroughly distracted, and there’s even another fable about some frogs who didn’t pay attention while the water gradually warmed.
