More on Zuckerman’s homophily and Obama’s empathy. Cross-posted from TPMCafe.
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We had an interesting discussion yesterday about the tendency we all have to choose information that validates our beliefs and reject the information that doesn’t. The conversation focused mostly on the politics of the moment, both the conservative/liberal divide and the Obama/Clinton divide. Certainly, we can see in some of the discussions that devoted supporters of both sides have a tough time digesting bad info but love to trumpet good info. That’s an important thing for us as a community to contemplate.
But it’s also essential, I think, to broaden the focus from just our little world of debate to the whole world itself. In fact, I think Obama has pointed us in a direction that encourages us to break out of these mindsets even beyond our partisan politics.
I wrote last May about a speech Obama gave in which he argued that we as a country suffer from an empathy deficit. He said, at the time:
There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
It’s an important point, and one that is foundational to his form of communitarian liberalism.The question, though, is how we get there. Some of it has to just be cultivating more selflessness as simply a mental habit. Make an effort to think more about others, try to be more patient and open-minded, etc. That much most liberals usually agree is important.
But we can also now do it with information consumption. In this era when we can choose whatever information we want, we can cultivate our empathetic imaginations by making an effort to learn about the lives of folks different from ourselves.
Ethan Zuckerman, the founder of an organization called Global Voices that aggregates reporting and opinion from the blogosphere all over the world, calls this tendency for birds of a feather to flock together (socially, imformationally, whatever) “homophily.” Homophily, he argues, makes us stupid. His point is essentially the same one that Atrios made in my post from yesterday. We all have tendencies to be hacks.
The opportunity we have, though, to cultivate our empathy (a desire Zuckerman ascribes to “xenophiliacs”, people who love to learn about things that are different) is amazing. Zuckerman’s approach is to reach out across the globe and try to bring “global voices” into American conversation. So, instead of relying on what the New York Times says people in Iraq are saying, we can go over and read it on their blogs for ourselves.
The same is possible, I think, here in the US. Obama asks us to learn to put ourselves in the shoes of a steelworker, an immigrant cleaner, or a child. But, as new media and high-speed internet proliferates, maybe we’ll be able to go out and read their blogs as well. Find out from them what they think, what their lives are like, what they believe.
The choice online, then, is fairly radical. We can choose to be homophiliac hacks who read only content and live in only communities that validates us and our beliefs. Or we can cultivate our social empathy and reach out across not just the partisan or ideological spectrum, but also racial, class, age or gender divides that exist within what is supposed to be a single national community.
It’s increasingly a matter of what information we choose to consume.
