The Fracking of Humanity
Once a divide transcends a generation, it is difficult to veer off the spiral of differences and pain that follows.
Hello everyone, you favourite written radio is back! In today’s episode, I want to leave you all with a prompt- Now, these days (and more than likely in the future), the word ‘prompt’ will become more and more associated with LLM’s and artificial intelligence, but I’d like to argue that there is another use case for it: Data.
It’s easy to come across the phrase ‘the data never lies’, but one can see different, sometimes even opposite stories with opposing conclusions derived from the same data. Data here is the anchor, a beginning or reference point for these stories- much like a prompt, whereupon a multitude of stories can be be spun off using it. Furthermore, there is rarely a definitive ‘right answer’, correct thread or accurate story. With that, Let’s see a prompt and what story we can cook up….
Cats v.s Dogs, Boys v.s Girls
Prompt for the week:
In the FT article by John Murdoch, data served to show that the ideological opinions held by the younger generations have begun to sharply diverge, to the point where it is suggested that Gen Z should be seen as ‘Two generations, not one’.
What precipitated this change? the article refers to the #MeToo movement being the flash-point, and this does seem to reflect the pattern seen across these tables: Women almost universally sharply veering to the more liberal side, as the movement party symbolized the push for women to have more control and say in their everyday surroundings and environment. The Men’s movements agrees to a reactionary movement, being more more varied than the women, where it is a sharp negative reaction in South Korea or a more subdued reaction, where the trend appears to follow pre-2010’s trend.
But while I believe the movement plausibly sparked this leftward shift in women’s views, it does less to explain this sometimes opposite reaction from men. Furthermore, this does little to explain the broader realignment of young men and women into conservative and liberal camps respectively on other issues.
So how could a small differing of opinions in reaction to a movement about a relatively specific issue morph into an entire ideological divide? Personally, I think that the fracking effect of social media is to blame.
Social Media - The Fracking of Humanity
The great divider of our time, social media displays a similar process to fracking, in the service of data mining: Fracking exploits cracks in the earth’s surface, opening them by injecting cracks with water, chemicals, and sand at high pressure, with the goal of widening the cracks enough to enable black gold to be extracted from it.
Similarly, social media seeks to exploit differences, pumping them with bias, misleading or slanted posts. Nuanced opinions lose out in favour of black-white extremes. This eventually creates high pressures of one-sided and charged posts (echo-chambers if you will). this pressure creates permanent rifts within the warring factions, generating a near- endless churn of content and digital gold(information and data points), with people constantly posting or farming engagement.
Perhaps this is how this men-women divide was created, With the movement being the spark, and social media working over time to deepen this rift.
Future Implications
With this divide only looking to get wider and more lasting, it is inevitable that relationships begin to worsen, likely to lower an already declining global marriage rate, especially as political ideology is seen as increasingly and increasingly important in dating and marriage, with cross-party marriage’s numbering approximately 4% in the USA.
Side note, there are literally dating sites designated for liberals or american conservatives- you will never guess what (apparently) the biggest red flag is for women.
Depressed marriage rates will surely only further precipitate the decline in children and overall population. With falling populations, governments will likely to get involved for political and economic reasons. After all, what use is power if you can’t exert it on anyone else? Governments will be wary of falling populations as that in turn leaves a smaller pool of manpower for armies and defence, and fewer economic agents to spend and consume and get taxed to keep the gears of economies grinding along.
However, ‘governments getting involved’- whether its longer maternity/paternity leave, loans, tax relief or other financial incentives, these appear to be expensive relative to the impact, which historically has been short-lived, as those planning to have babies anyway accelerate their plans. Much like handling a rope, it appears as if it is much easier to pull back on birth-rates, rather than to push them forward.
And these efforts were all in the service of inducing married couples to have children, but what if the adults are too busy arguing over politics in the first place?
When I say the rift is only looking to get wider and long-lasting, I truly doubt that the opposite is likely to happen. Currently these 18-29 year olds are in university, entering or settling in into the work environment- still in the formative stages of their lives, but still without that influence on the world and around them.
However, when these people begin to grow older, they’ll slowly transition to become producers, politicians, bosses. They will stop being influenced and begin to influence. Instead of voting they begin to be voted for, and instead of choosing what to watch they will choose what others get to watch. And with that, its almost safe to assume they will take their political leanings with them, inevitably having them seeping into every-day life.
So far these differences are taking hold, but if they last a generation, then it is exceedingly unlikely for these differences to be reconciled as not only will the external world be moulded by this schism, but when the generation grows up and has kids of their own, they will follow in their parent’s footsteps…
Politics will keep an especially close eye on this change. Normally ages vote in blocks, older lean conservative and are more keen to vote, and therefore are often a key base for conservatives. Typically younger generations lean heavily liberal, but don’t necessarily vote with the same intensity as the elders, so their needs are often neglected compared to other age group with a higher tendency to vote.
However, with this divergence, conservatives would surely look to jump at the chance to capture some of these votes away from liberals. Division might also invoke more urgency in the men and women, which may mean higher numbers turn out to vote, in turn incentivising liberals to pander to the women more in order to capture the votes.
Of course, once there are votes to be won, the scene will be acidified with modern day politicking, fueling anti-other-side sentiment, only furthering divisions among the men and women.
However, one could argue that even though the differences appear to be tending to uniform split of conservative= men and liberal= women, one could argue that the actual long term steady state of such a situation is that ideology will be split 50:50 in both men and women.
By incorporating the above considerations, lets assume there’s a 70/30 split in every gender for each party- i.e. 70% of men are conservative, the rest liberal, and vice versa for women. If ideology does become one of the dominant factors/pre-requisites for marriage, lets say the 30% of conservative women marry someone from the 70% of conservative men, and the liberal men marry someone from the majority liberal group. (the remaining 40% of men and women are unlucky- there is a steep drop in births).
When these couples have kids, they would be raised in a united household, and it such a scenario it is easy to see that it would be important for the parents to ensure their kids grow up with the same political leaning as themselves. This will lead to most (lets assume all) kids following their parents in political belief (warning: don’t try too hard- the harder you push your politics onto your kids, the higher the chance they switch).
With kids following their parents, this leads to the idea that now political ideology is split 50-50 in men and women, depending on the leanings of their parents. Assuming the cycle repeats and repeats, these percentages are likely to now remain stable, reaching a steady state.
But of course, this doesn’t bode well for humanity either- if one country has a population split almost down the middle, how can they unite into one? Intranational tensions are likely to be much more serious than they currently are.
Overall, I believe it is vital for society to try halt this divergence soon, as we are on the clock: once a divide transcends a generation, it is difficult to veer off the spiral of differences and pain that follows.
Everyone knows saying something is infinitely easier than actually doing it, so what’s the solution? How do we stop it? One solution is to cut-off the pump: end the tailoring algorithms on social medias, driven by engagement, which (as covered in a previous broadcast,) is fueled by hate and anger. Destroy the ability for echo-chambers to be created, let humanity decide what deserves to be shared or not. Society is formed by a clash of ideas, ensuring that only the best survive, but echo-chambers are like petri-dishes, enabling bacteria to grow unabated by reason, common sense and general values.
Seeing content that doesn’t completely mimic your opinions is a GOOD thing, keeping one grounded in reality and perspective. Empathy is also a powerful tool, learning about someone framed as ‘the other side’ pales in comparison to learning someone as simply just someone else, with different opinions, living their own lives.
These echo chambers demand complete extreme uniformity: you are completely for or against something, and those who hold the opposite opinion are devils. I promise most normal people hold a positive indifference towards a majority of political opinions, and if strong opinions are held, they are nowhere near as extreme as depicted on social media.
But this is where my version of the story will end. If I see interest, I’ll do some more work with this ‘prompt’, but I am keen to read what you can come up with this prompt!
I reckon I haven’t exactly solved the challenge of life, so I’ll say I came close.
Make sure to give this broadcast a coherence score!
That’s all from me for now, but stay tuned for future broadcasts,
This has been Kunga’s Written Radio,
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