URSABLOG: Empty Vessels

It drives me crazy. Having gradually weaned myself off Instagram (too distracting and disruptive), then Facebook (increasingly irrelevant and then Mark Zuckerberg’s recent statement ending fact checking and promoting free speech being the final push I needed to eject) I am now left with LinkedIn. What was a relatively sober ‘professional social platform’ is now becoming prey to what is happening to social media in general: enshittifcation, the process whereby in the curious process of combining manipulative algorithms with the desire for increased advertising revenue the quality of the platform decreases irredeemably. I now spend more time on LinkedIn deleting irrelevant and stupid posts – why do they think they should suggest these to me? – than actually reading anything of value. There are exceptions, but not as prominent on my feed as they used to be.

A number of people have recently asked me why I blocked them on Instagram, and that they miss me (less so on Facebook it must be said), as though I had dumped them, or died. I told them – rather pompously I suspect – that it was nothing personal, but I just found I wanted to live a more authentic life, and not one held hostage by how I presented myself in stories and posts, and how I reacted to other stories and posts. It was strange – but instructive – that some people seemed to take it personally that I had left social media, as though I was restricting their god-given right of access to me (or a version of me)  and I was also depriving them of their right to send messages – not just personal texts but also via posts and stories that may (or may not) be meant for me to see. But I had decided that if people really wanted to get in touch with me, they could find a way – I hardly live an anonymous life in a cave in the middle of nowhere – to engage properly and authentically. I have been proven right in this, at least as far as I know, but who knows what I have missed? Probably nothing that important.

What really drives me crazy is the posting of quotes, or calling on some authority – sometimes accurate, sometimes misattributed, sometimes made up – to promote something that is entirely irrelevant or even flatly contradictory to what the person quoted or cited stood for, let alone the context in which it was written or said. Peter Thiel, the American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist, managed to do this in a recent puzzling op-ed piece for the Financial Times, where he seemingly inadvertently revealed through a mostly incoherent diatribe containing unprovable conspiracy theories and bro-philosophy both lacking in substance and context his grip – or the lack of it – on the world that most of us live in. Or maybe he was being too clever in ways I could not fathom. I in no way disrespect his achievements or his wealth, but I cannot be convinced – especially now – that I should listen to his version of reality just because he is rich and successful. But I can note the pattern.

His article was part of the war on elites – or the liberal elites as we must call them, because Thiel, however he styles himself, is obviously an elite as well – that, in all honesty, they had coming to them. Group think – sometimes arrogant – combined with comfort and wealth and a distance from the very people that they should be trying to persuade and support has encouraged people to look for alternative ways of thinking. When people feel as though they’re not having a great time, and are not encouraged by the future prescribed for them by the very same liberal elites that think that they know better, it is not good enough just to say – like I just have – that those pushing a different agenda are shallow and have dubious motivations just because they disagree with them. Without a rebuttal, and new ideas, and a concern for the people they wish to serve, they too become hooked on obsessions that many find puzzling or offensive. Civil discourse – for want of a better phrase – seems to me to have lost a sense of perspective and cannot distinguish between what is essential, important or simply desirable.

This is not an anti-woke vendetta, and neither is it a counter-attack on the new political realities of the West. I hope I am, and will remain, sufficiently independently- and open-minded that I can see – with some level of detachment – the merits or otherwise of any proposals or ideas currently doing the rounds. And fortunately, as I tend to be intellectually – if not socially – a bit of a loner, I am not a signed-up member of either team, or in fact any team, that feels it may deserve my loyalty. Except Liverpool Football Club of course.

But I wonder. Is this open-mindedness just an excuse to avoid taking a stand when something really important comes up, when I should not only have an opinion but should act? Would I recognise such a moment when it came up? Would I have the courage to act? Past evidence suggests otherwise; I hope I will surprise myself if and when the opportunity arises. As I get older I realise some of the things I once felt were very important in my life have been revealed to me as being less than substantial when tested, but at the same time I worry that by wanting to see both sides of both sides, I will end up being a straw in the wind, blown one way or the other by prevailing opinions.

The fact that I am driven crazy by some of the LinkedIn posts gives me hope however. I know that using Nietzsche to illustrate the danger of toxic work-place environments is unwise, and unintentionally hilarious. Nietzsche’s life cannot be described as the last word in working in teams, and I can imagine he would be baffled by the demands of mundane office work after declaring the death of God. Holding up the example of Marcus Aurelius as model of leadership by quoting a few lines from his meditations will only confuse the head of a chartering desk who needs to fix ships in a poor market; not only would his Stoic philosophy – self-restraint, duty, and respect for others – be inappropriate in that competitive environment, it was also completely abandoned by the imperial line that he anointed to succeed him.

However, in a world where everything is up for grabs, it is no surprise that people will grab for something, anything, that will help their cause. I count myself as guilty of this as anyone else, knowing that I too have used ideas or works of literature that I have not studied sufficiently deeply just to show off my wide intellectual range. I, like most people, know nothing.

This is why – not just online, but in all areas of life – I trust in conversations, whether dialogues or wider ones. I am encouraged by the development of podcasts where people can take more time to develop and get their ideas across, and also be challenged about them at the same time. I have come to distrust soundbite sized statements, however inspirational or entertaining they might be. I myself find – and apologies again to those who find this blog too long – it takes some time to get my ideas across in one short statement, or one pithy email.

But whether Instagram, Facebook, the Financial Times, the BBC, CNN or Fox News, Trade Winds, or LinkedIn not to mention books, plays, films and art, market reports and conversations with clients, fellow professionals, colleagues and friends and family, I have found it useful to reflect on the information received, and the arguments made by asking the questions: What? Where? When? Who? How? Why? Of course sometimes my prejudices get in the way so I disregard or pay special attention to the Who or the What without considering the How and the Why. Ideally – if I have time – I will ask myself the full six questions, and come to different conclusions than perhaps what was intended. But that’s up to me, and there is every possibility that I am wrong.

You may accuse me of overthinking – it won’t be the first time that accusation has been made – but the reason I get irritated by inappropriate quotes isn’t just because it offends my intellectual vanity, or because I have taken the time to appreciate the wider context and they haven’t, but because every bit of data – used in the widest sense of the word – is something I can use and act on. Or not. When it is distorted or manipulated, or just badly used, it is just a waste of time.

I don’t care – and neither should you – how people get their information, or how they express themselves in the world; to do so would go against the very open mindedness that I profess to have. I can express an opinion about anything but what matters is not the medium, but the message, and the action – if any – that follows it up. Maybe I get irritated by the twisting of quotes and the arguments of people I respect because I have not created any work or argument of any worth itself. In my gradual migration away from social media towards what I describe as authenticity, I am coming to the conclusion that the very authenticity I crave is an empty vessel. But that’s not such a bad thing I suppose: a vessel – whether a wine jar or a ship – has to start empty before it can be of use.

Simon Ward