Several years ago I completed a masters degree in Communication Studies, with the focus on communication & culture, and how technology was affecting the ways we communicate. The effects of technology on the culture are never neutral, and one can usually find both positive and negative consequences from pretty much any technology.

Computer-mediated communications technologies have allowed inexpensive, nearly effortless and instant communication with almost anyone else in the world.  As I mentioned in Part 1, easily keeping up with the people we care about can be a great blessing. Learning and interacting with others about any number of topics can be of great use. Such things can definitely be tallied on the plus side.

But there are down sides as well:

• The lack of nonverbal cues (facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, etc.) make it much more easy to misinterpret statements and comments. Sure, things like emoticons help a bit, but there’s a still a good chance of misunderstanding someone’s meaning.
• The communicative norms of face-to-face interaction – politeness, civility, and the like – are easily discarded when the person we’re communicating with is a non-present, non-corporeal entity.
• The ability to find people with common interests and outlooks can – and often does – easily lead to aligning only with groups of self-selected confirmation bias.

Add in politics, and you quickly have a profoundly toxic combination. Identity politics easily drowns out any values or goals that we might hold in common. Things quickly devolve into “us vs. them”. And the outrage can feed on itself and become addictive.

It all conspires to make social media a really lousy place to discuss such things.

More tragically, it’s increasingly creating such anger and resentment in relationships that it’s resulting in such things as family members not speaking to one another, and people skipping class reunions because of political differences online. As I posited a year or two ago on Facebook, social media becomes a crucible in which political issues erupt in a fiery blaze that easily burns away our humanity.

Now, I firmly believe (as I’m sure I’ve stated on multiple occasions on Facebook) that the primary driver behind this phenomenon is that we’ve placed far too much trust, hope, and power in government. We’ve outsourced many of the things that we should be doing in our own communities, but have been too lazy and selfish to do. The current political stakes are so high because we’ve allowed them to become so. Government has effectively become God for a great many people – provider, caretaker, the arbiter of morality. And this, I believe, is true for a great number of people who would otherwise identify themselves as Christians, even though they may not recognize or admit it that it’s true.

The vitriol and anger seems to be spiraling upward at an exponential rate. I’m not sure there’s an easy answer, but I think it begins with those of us – people of goodwill who recoil at such expressions of anger – to be a voice of calm, and reason, and thoughtful, respectful dialogue.

One movement I read about not long ago, which I think is on the right track, is called “Make America Dinner Again”. It’s about inviting people – friends and neighbors, who may not agree on politics – over for dinner and getting to know them, and letting them get to know each other. The idea is not just gathering for a meal – it also includes talking about problems, and sharing ideas to address those problems locally. No one’s required to surrender their beliefs, but in general, people tend to agree on more things than they disagree on. If we have different ideas about how to solve “X”, but we can agree that “X” is a problem – well, that’s a start. And we can begin to see folks as humans, rather than a faceless, dehumanized “other”.

As someone who’s working to become a more faithful Christian, and to take the gospel and the words of scripture seriously, I’m praying for a revival of prayer and humility to sweep the nation, and the world, and for the spirit of God to manifest itself in powerful ways. But one doesn’t have to be a Christian to participate in a deescalation and an outpouring of love.

So let’s do everything we can to not escalate the rancor. Let’s look for ways to foster calm, respectful dialogue. And let’s try to create spaces that can be a shelter in the storm.