In such a saturated media environment, it is rare for an article to cause such a splash. When Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and Katy Perry all speak publicly and positively about it, you know it has cut through the media noise and had an impact on a wide array of (American) society.
The article is by Jonathan Haidt, an American psychologist and professor at New York University. He has written a number of bestselling books including The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind, focused on the mass psychology of today’s society. In this article he looks back at the past ten years of American life and looks at how it has all gone so wrong.
He contextualises the history of humanity as a journey of being able to cooperate at larger and larger scale. And the internet has allowed us to cooperate at global scale. But it has come with its drawbacks. He identifies three major forces that social scientists believe are important to hold groups of humans together at larger and larger scales – social capital (extensive socials networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. And Haidt makes the argument that social media has weakened all three.
This is a long article but it has uniquely important insights for those seeking to understand politics in 2022 and how we contextualise the past 10 to 15 years. For while this article is focused on American politics, the insights apply across the world.
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