Ask A Genius 709: Toxic Normative Structures
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/02/03
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s shift our focus to discuss coercive structures or what might be considered toxic normative structures.
Rick Rosner: I wouldn’t label them as toxic, rather as helpful normative structures.
Jacobsen: Alright.
Rosner: Here’s the thing, at my age, which is 61, living in America, it’s shockingly disappointing to witness a considerable portion of American adults, particularly among Republicans, embracing unfounded beliefs and displaying aggressive racism. While the media tends to spotlight the most extreme individuals, making them newsworthy, it’s still alarming that surveys indicate around 57% of Republicans doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election and believe in falsehoods.
Just a few moments ago, I was reflecting on this. It feels so distant from the America I knew growing up and throughout most of my adulthood. An America proud of its values—opportunity for all, democracy, the belief in the equality of all men, and the notion of being part of the moral arc bending towards justice. It’s disheartening to see these values discarded by a significant number of adult Americans.
I liken this situation to quantum physics. There’s a concept where each particle in the universe is defined by its interactions and historical interplay with other particles. The closer particles exert a more significant influence through particle exchange. Protons exchange real particles with nearby protons, much like in the gunfight scene from ‘True Romance’, where characters understand their positions through the exchange of gunfire.
The point is, people are similarly influenced by those in close proximity. In small-town America, or even in larger towns before the advent of social media, most of our feedback and societal cues came from our community, from those in our immediate surroundings. My dad and stepdad, both small businessmen, spent their days interacting with the public, deriving their beliefs, understanding of the world, and values from these interactions. Considering my stepdad, who owned a dress store, he engaged in several hundred, possibly up to a thousand, interactions daily. He was at work for about 10 hours, the store open from 10 am to 6 pm, talking to maybe 50-60 customers, alongside his clerks, family, and friends. He’d sometimes visit the nearby movie house, catching parts of films during slow periods.
These numerous interactions were like the ‘pings’ in quantum physics, the exchanges that helped shape his worldview. Although he might have watched a bit of news or read newspapers, and later listened to talk radio, the bulk of his information and social feedback came from his acquaintances and friends in Boulder. Growing up, Boulder was a small community of 15,000 to 20,000 people, expanding to 75,000 by my mid-20s. He practically knew everyone in town who had been there for more than a few years.
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Now, in the era of social media, individuals are bombarded with thousands of messages daily. When you tally up the individual messages people absorb each day, the count reaches into the thousands. This includes exchanging text messages, browsing tweets, scrolling through Instagram, watching TV, and Googling various topics. The volume of ‘bullets’ that we’re subjected to has increased exponentially compared to my dad’s era—possibly by eightfold or tenfold. Most of these bullets aren’t coming from our local community or from the people we interact with in person; they’re from the wider world, often not supporting traditional values.
I was a boy scout, attended Sunday school, participated in student government, and even attempted sports, though with disastrous results. My dad was a sports enthusiast; he played basketball in high school and later became a fervent supporter of basketball teams at the University of Colorado and Boulder high school. He also supported the team at Sacred Heart, the Catholic school, because he and my brother, who played basketball, were friends with large basketball-playing families from the Catholic community, like the Gallaghers and others. These families had numerous children who grew up playing basketball from a young age. Sacred Heart was a hub for these families in junior high before they moved on to Boulder High, often competing for the state title.
This environment was tightly knit with community elements like church and scouts, but such community-centric activities have largely diminished or been overwhelmed by the influx of signals from non-community sources. These external sources often promote subversive and irrational ideas. For instance, Tucker Carlson on Fox News exhibits blatant racism. The feedback he receives, much like that of a high IQ individual who has become vehemently anti-Semitic, reinforces and praises their increasingly extreme views. Even high intelligence, as in the case of the individual with an IQ above 180, can’t counteract the flood of reinforcing messages that fuel such prejudices.
When viewed in this light, it’s understandable, albeit disconcerting, that approximately 50 million American adults have seemingly lost touch with reality.
[Recording End]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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