EPISTEMIC CHAOS FOR MORE PROFIT

IT ENDANGERS OUR DEMOCRACY

 Moral and ethical leadership is the glue that holds a constitutional republic together.

An emotional filled January 2021, plus the deadly coronavirus pandemic, has been very difficult for me. Watching with increasing sadness the second impeachment trial of Donald J Trump, his shenanigans, seeing strong evidence of a deteriorating American political system, democratic principles and institutions, a changing Republican Party and under Trump’s autocratic leaning leadership, to like an apocalyptic and dishonest personality cult and sharp divisions in the society have not been very easy to watch.

Before I share my thoughts with my readers about these issues, I would like to explain the meaning of a rarely used word epistemic for better understanding. Its origin is Greek word “episteme” which means knowledge. Epistemology on the other hand, is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, method and limit of knowledge.

I was shocked and appalled to see on TV an unruly, lawless and angry mob, inspired by the President of the Republic, to attack and destroy his own government’s Capital building. With the goal to scare, kidnap and even hung its Vice President and certain members of the Congress, disrupt and prevent the certification of official election results, by the joint session of Congress, on January 6; upon Mr. Trump’s loss of a fair and square election for the presidency of the United States.

 As a doctor, I think trying to turn official election results with the help and support of his changed Republican Party, and an unruly mob to his favor, by unleashing a wild insurgency is not a sign of normal state of mind, thinking or behavior.

I remember having the same horrible feelings, about 20 years ago, when I watched two hijacked jumbo passenger airplanes crashed into the twin towers in Manhattan on 9/11.

To me, there are eerie similarities between these two events. They share the same illegal, mindless and sinister aim and behavior by attacking and destroying the symbols of our democracy, our freedom and our way of life. The only difference is that one was foreign terrorist group, radicalized by Jihadist religious fanatics, the other is domestic terrorist group, primed and radicalized by our own president’s conspiracy theory and lies that he won the election, but it was stolen from him.

I wondered how and why anything like this could this happen in 21st century America?

I know that I am the least qualified person to answer this question. I am neither a social scientist nor a behavioral psychologist. However, I have my own opinion. It appears clear to me that people, not only uneducated but also well-educated people, can be brain-washed and cynically managed by repetitive exposure to misinformation and lies. I also believe that the American society has greatly changed, by becoming remarkably gullible to believe in what they hear and see from their leaders and on social media, without any thinking and evaluation.

While I was searching for more information to make sense of all this, I came across an enlightening book entitled The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, written by Dr. Zuboff, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School.

As I understand it, according to Dr. Zuboff, the deterioration of moral, ethical and intellectual codes in our society started more than two decades ago, with the discovery of internet (www) and the establishment of few fledgling private internet companies. Today’s mighty Amazon company started as cheap book seller on internet. Their motto was for free access to their website by people for news, information, socialization, friendship, expression of their opinions and the exchanging of ideas, pictures or videos. But people have to register under their real identity and share some personal information about themselves with the companies and, all these information become the private property of the company.

On the other hand, the government wanted to know what is going on with their people, with foreign   governments and agents, through the information gathering and surveillance by their own public information agencies.

These reciprocal needs to know and information gathering between the government and the private internet social companies coalesced, especially after 9/11. Private internet companies given limitless power by the government, without any control, check and balances, social responsibility to do whatever they wanted to on their website.

Consequently, a digital version of the wild-wild west is created, where anything and everything goes. Soon afterwards, many more internet companies, many bloggers and politicians joined in. They spoke their minds. Lawlessness, lies, conspiracy theories, denial of the truth and science, fake news, pseudoscientific facts, misinformation, pornography, sexual abuse, human trafficking, racism, terrorism, fanaticism and cultism flourished on the free internet. A monstrous epistemic chaos was created; all cultural and moral human values started to disappear. Lines between the truth and lies, between facts and fiction, between virtual reality and real-life reality became blurred and even disappeared. Actually, this digitally created chaotic, atrocious and confusing environment generated more traffic, therefore more profit and publicity, for social media companies, right-leaning politicians, the TV, press, and radio talk shows.

It is my understanding that this out-of-control internet freedom, without any social responsibility and knowingly was what created epistemic chaos, in the long run and caused the rewiring of our brains, shortened our attention span and rational thinking. All these factors help to cause the January 6th events to occur in Washington DC.

I was encouraged to see Twitter and Facebook cancelled President Trump’s accounts before his presidency was over. And Facebook started to advertise the necessity of comprehensive internet and social media regulations, by the government, to prevent similar catastrophic events ever occurring again.

Because of the importance of epistemology, we will dedicate couple of upcoming three articles to this subject. More to come!