The current era of tribal, narrative-driven media mirrors the pre-Enlightenment period of vicious religious wars fueled by moral certainty. The historical Enlightenment arose because society grew exhausted by this violence, suggesting that a return to reason and impartiality may only follow a similar period of societal burnout.
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The loss of unifying religious morality created an initial societal void. Social media then amplified this by exposing people to a tsunami of viewpoints, resulting in an 'infinite fracturing of frame of reference' and the creation of countless micro-tribes that erode social cohesion.
Major philosophical texts are not created in a vacuum; they are often direct products of the author's personal life and historical context. For example, Thomas Hobbes wrote 'Leviathan,' which argues for an authoritarian ruler, only after fleeing the chaos of the English Civil War as a Royalist. This personal context is crucial for understanding the work.
Citing philosopher Alex O'Connor, the human brain is not optimized for raw data but for narrative. By asking people to abandon myth and story—the things that feel most real—in favor of statistics, the rationalist movement is asking people to fight their own cognitive wiring.
Ken Burns argues that beyond taxes and representation, the American Revolution was propelled by escalating media rhetoric. The more colonial newspapers labeled the crown tyrannical, the more tyrannical it acted, creating an inflammatory feedback loop that pushed both sides toward conflict.
New technology can ignite violent conflict by making ideological differences concrete and non-negotiable. The printing press did this with religion, leading to one of Europe's bloodiest wars. AI could do the same by forcing humanity to confront divisive questions like transhumanism and the definition of humanity, potentially leading to similar strife.
We operate with two belief modes. For our immediate lives, we demand factual truth. For abstract domains like mythology or ideology, we prioritize morally uplifting or dramatically compelling narratives over facts. The Enlightenment was a push to apply the first mode to everything.
The promise of new media was to foster deep, nuanced conversations that legacy outlets abandoned. However, it is increasingly falling into the same traps: becoming predictable, obsessed with personality feuds, and chasing clicks with inflammatory content instead of pursuing truth.
Pervasive media bias isn't an Orwellian, centrally-directed phenomenon. Instead, it's an emergent, herd-like behavior similar to a flock of birds moving in unison without a single leader, driven by a quasi-religious belief in shared narratives among a specific socioeconomic class of journalists.
The era of limited information sources allowed for a controlled, shared narrative. The current media landscape, with its volume and velocity of information, fractures consensus and erodes trust, making it nearly impossible for society to move forward in lockstep.
Long novels, now the gold standard for deep focus, were once considered dangerous “junk food” that distracted people from prayer and duty. This historical pattern suggests our current panic over digital media may be similarly shortsighted and lacking perspective.
