The state of The State is the state.

For today's installment, I want to type out some mental wanderings about the State. I still intend to stay away from politics, so don't get cute with me. I'm thinking more the along the abstract concept/"Social Contract" kind of line, and less the "OMG Glenn Beck is such a sack of shit when he talks about progressive liberals! Wah!" line. As much as I would like to post a never ending stream of witty insults relating to the latter, I'm not sure contributing to the noise will do much good anymore.

We've heard about the increased polarization in politics, but I think it's way more than that. Polarization applies to every aspect of our socially organized life, and in that way, it becomes the state of Our State. The internet has allowed us to move away from "old" media sources that, however clumsily, forced us all into new grooves in the road. Now everyone can pile in their "indie music" station wagon, or the "Web 2.0" bullet train, and just go flying all over the road. I am by no means trying to assert that more freedom is a bad thing. I am, however, suggesting that our conception of The State assumes a certain amount of social cohesion that we can now almost entirely circumvent.

No longer a Society
Our State no longer functions on the basis of society itself. Increasingly we are becoming little more than a conglomeration of micro-societies, because we as individuals identify more and more with a particular group, and that group is usually very insular. By allowing us so much more choice and variety in the information we take in, apparently we all choose to take in information that underscores what we already believe. This invalidates our social contract, but in a very deceptive way. The State tells us that we are a great democracy, a people united with the common good as our singular ambition. It's a nice thought, and it may have been true at some point, but not anymore. One problem with being stuck in an echo chamber is that it gets so loud so fast that individual voices and intonations are completely lost, and all that remains is the noise. Now we are left in a house full of noisy rooms, with each room vying for supremacy by trying to be louder than the rest. And in this noisy house there is very little conversation between the rooms. I'm sure there are some people in the halls trying to have a civil conversation, but by now they must be damn near deaf.

Let's try this again
I believe we need to rewrite our social contract for the networked age we are in. Our society (and by extension, the State) stands on the ideas of men who could not conceive of a steam engine, much less a global network of instant information exchange. I am not suggesting that the old ideas have no value. They have served us well for millenia in some cases. It is just time to rethink their application a bit. For instance, the Platonic idea of Philosopher Kings as the ultimate rulers still stands strong in modern society, but not in the way I think Socrates would have liked. Hell, a society ruled by Philosophers rose and fell hard within a generation of Plato. We still place high value on intellectual ability, but the capital that value can generate only relates to information which is quantifiable. While we value intellectual ability, we do not value the intellectuals themselves unless they supply us with information we can collect and aggregate and assemble in our various echo chambers. So now we have a society that praises itself for providing everyone with access to information, but derides true intellectuals as elitist. I believe that if curiosity can be made a powerfully positive social element, this animosity towards intellectuals will slowly fade away. This State was conceived by intellectual, curious men. When did mental ambition become such a bad thing?

Wait. I think I'm just yelling into the echo chamber myself now.

Shit.