Peaceful discussions, anyone?
We can but hope
I was looking into digital detoxing, and it’s certainly something I’ve given some thought to because when you go onto social media platforms these days, they seem so full of venom and hatred, and it’s so easy to get drawn down the rabbit hole yourself. And I like to enjoy life.
I don’t want to spend time firing off angry rants back at those who are posting things that I consider to be divisive and hate-mongering and just generally unpleasant. I’m very much a person who wants to read, hear, and watch news that’s factual and makes my own choices about what I want to agree with, rather than having some self-opinionated talking head tell me what I should be thinking. This can be very difficult these days. It’s very difficult to just get the facts, and also, it seems to me that so many people just read something, watch something, listen to something, and because it fits their own bias... which we all suffer from - they don’t question its source, they don’t question its authenticity and they just repost, reblog it, adding their own comments on and it kind of becomes like an ever increasing vitriol of hate, like chinese whispers.
Yes, I’ve been guilty of it. And it’s very hard not to at times when you read, see and hear stuff that’s obviously completely untrue. The thing is, you could spend all day getting yourself wound up and wasting hours responding to these people, some of whom aren’t even people, they’re just bots or trolls or AI.
And you’re not going to change them, even if they’re a real person, you’re not going to change their minds. So you’re peeing in the wind, really. And you’re just wasting time ranting back at somebody, hopefully somebody, that’s got opposite views to yourself, and unless you enter into a meaningful discussion with somebody whose views don’t agree with you, then you’re wasting your time because you’re not going to change their mind. They’re not going to change your mind. And the only way that we’re ever gonna get anywhere is to have some consensus between each other that we agree to disagree, but in a civil way, and we work towards peacefully solving the problems of the world that come along, and not just try to shut each other down and restrict freedom of speech when we just don’t agree.
I’m very hesitant to want to ban any of the social media platforms. If you really don’t agree with the stance of any of the particular owners, you don’t have to use them. On the other hand, if your views do disagree, perhaps it’s a good idea to use such platformsmore to strike a balance, so you don’t have an overwhelming opinion from just one side.
Being silent is being complicit in the promotion of the views of other people, isn't it? If we don’t argue back? But hang on a minute, I’ve just said we shouldn’t be arguing.
Arguments can, and should be constructive, not mind,ess insulting ranting
Why are the people that you are following better than the people that I follow? Why are the politicians that I agree with better than the politicians that you agree with? They’re the sort of discussions that we should be having. on a mature and civil level, not just ranting and calling each other fascists and libtards and, the like.
The whole nine yards of name-calling doesn’t get anybody anywhere. My wish for 2026 is that, and I don’t think it’s going to happen, it would be nice for more people to sit down and have more reasoned discussions about how we are going to solve all the issues we have in the world today.
Well, there we are. That’s just all off the top of my head. I haven’t rehearsed anything. I haven’t scripted anything. So it’s probably a bit of mumble jumble. But anyway, let’s all try to live in peace with each other, even if we don’t agree.