Mint chocolate chip ice cream is, in my opinion, the best flavor of ice cream. Maybe that isn’t a popular opinion to hold, or to express. I know lots of people prefer rocky road, or chocolate, or vanilla. But it’s an opinion I hold, and you may, or may not, hold the same opinion. No big deal, right? If I like mint chocolate chip ice cream, I can eat it, and if you don’t, you don’t have to. It is easy to have an opinion, express an opinion, and respect one another’s opinions. That’s what an opinion is…

if you could pick any time in the whole history of the human species in which to live, and you didn’t know who your parents would be, how much wealth or privilege you would be born into, what your race or gender or sexual orientation would be, when would you choose? The only rational choice, in my view, would be now…

The real issue that confronts me when I consider the role of social media is the extent to which it may reproduce or facilitate “binary” thinking—“this” or “that”; us and them (my least favorite four-letter word is “they”). It’s hard to say something with nuance and qualification in a tweet. Memes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories do well in this sort of environment because they stimulate our brains in certain sorts of ways that cause instant, unreflective emotional reaction—it takes just a second to share or post something that viscerally stimulates but often hours to properly examine the claims being made. Those willing to engage in the work of carefully and skeptically examining claims, to be “informed and not just opinionated,” are perpetually disadvantaged in this kind of media environment; truth is the first and biggest casualty. That we talk admiringly now about “his truth” or “your truth” or “their truth” and telling, or seeking, “the truth” starts to sound quaint and old-fashioned reflects the kind of world that this media atmosphere has created.

I am a very sensitive person. I am so sensitive I once punched someone in the face for calling me sensitive (more on that later). I have been bullied, harassed, ridiculed, threatened, and stigmatized—both as a child (for things I’ll get into in a moment) and as an adult (mostly for writing things like this). Being sensitive is a touchy subject if you’ll forgive the terrible pun; it might make a short list of things that people find desirable in a friend or a mate, but it might also make one an object of ridicule and even hatred today…

This isn’t an attempt to solve a problem: the problem I raise is moral, not technical, and therefore cannot be solved by technical means. This also isn’t an attempt to create another evil “they” to shift blame for my own missteps and incompetence onto, be it soci@l med!a or other manipulations of public opinion; I see the moralistic hypocrisy of that, and I reject the idea that we human beings, you and I, are just pawns or unwitting dupes. This is a “me and it” problem, not an “us and them” problem, if you like; if I am right, then I am a sucker, as much as any and more than some, and some time away to clear my head should make that evident. I can’t singlehandedly change the game, but I can leave it for a while.

I don’t teach people to make the world into what I would want it to be. My job, as I see it, is to draw some general conclusions about what social movements are, and how social change works, by looking at how others have done it, how they are trying to do it now, and what can be learned from their successes and failures. Some of the things I have learned from this point of view are not just or moral or uplifting. Many are uncomfortable, amoral, and cynical…