Strange Times Indeed

There can be no doubt that we are living in strange times. Never before in the history of the world have anonymous, uninformed or just not very intelligent people been given the power to direct and control both what information we are given and how to value it. The news we have been given has always been controlled by people who have biases. Whether it was the print media, or radio/television, the people who controlled those news corporations - controlled what news and from what perspective that news got discussed. Those who write the history books have always got to decide what happened. But most critical thinkers and informed readers/viewers knew that there was a bias. There were always other formats that allowed a different level of discussion of the facts.

Social media has in some ways levelled the playing field. One no longer needs to be rich to have a platform to disseminates one's views. Unfortunately one also no longer needs to be capable of thinking outside of a very small box or to be aware of the consequences of that view. Given the all-pervasiveness of social media, the general inability for people to think and their overwhelming fear of appearing to be different than anyone else - one person can make a statement and everyone agrees.

Liam Neilson disclosed that he had clearly violent, racist thoughts over a specific incident 40 years ago. He acknowledged that it was wrong and said that he had gotten help to understand what had happened. Was he wrong - of course, he was. It is clearly racist to blame every person of a certain colour for a specific act. There is now conversation amongst the media and on social networks as to whether or not Neilson's career is over because he acknowledged his behaviour in a very public way.

There has been no suggestion that Neilson has, since that event, continued to have violent racist thoughts, there is no indication that he has ever acted out that rage. If there was a rational dialogue happening - one could explore how those thoughts were formed in a young man in Northern Ireland in the midst of the "troubles". We could learn from those experiences, thereby understanding both how to prevent others from feeling that way and why and how he realized it was wrong. But instead, it is much easier to castigate a well-known celebrity because he admitted that he is human.

In my mind, the primary problem with social media is that it uses a very wide brush to taint everyone with the same attitude regardless of why or when. It is fine to label a person's behaviour as racists but surely context is important. While it might be essential to recognize a behaviour, it seems to me far more important to ask what did that person learn and did the behaviour reoccur?

It is as if some of the commentators on social media believe that we should all leave our mother's womb without faults. However, it is not how a person starts out - it is how they grow that is important.