The Smallest Man
My son hates me. He’s hated me for at least a decade. Sometimes I feel like he’s hated me since the moment he was born, but then I remember him at two, glued to my body as we slept.
After he reached adulthood, he told me that it was my fault he “was so fucked up” – because I had let him have uncensored and unlimited access to the internet.
I now understand that perception is truth. I don’t even feel the need to tell mine anymore.
But there certainly is a kernel of truth to it, isn’t there? Because from where I’m sitting, none of us should have ever used the internet at all.
And yet, he and I have lived our lives here. It’s how we’ve been able to connect with people despite introversion and social anxiety. It’s allowed us to create.
But, as it turns out, he was not spared from radicalization. He has developed absolutism just like everyone else. He believes that the answers are black and white.
This is what happens when we refuse to learn from our elders. When a generation of peers has formed themselves into Groupthink, based on their own very limited experience in life.
This doesn't mean that the elders are smarter. Or that they’re right. It’s that they’ve lived long enough to see patterns that the youth can’t see yet. They have built entire belief systems that are riddled with holes and flaws due to their lack of experience, perspective and hindsight.
If you want to bring a society to its knees, if you want to watch it all collapse, then you do the following:
Create division between the genders, the races, and the political parties.
If you're successful at this, then the ultimate division can occur – family units. Families that would have otherwise banded together and had a chance at survival can be easily ripped apart at this stage of the game. Solely due to text and images they see on a screen.
This is how a virtual fantasy world took my son from me. A world that I have loved just as much as he has, but one that I fear he will never be able to escape.
He’s too far gone now. He still believes that view count and follower count mean something. He thinks all of the comments he sees in support of his preexisting beliefs are authentic. He’s trapped himself in an echo chamber of one, and has fallen prey to the digital brainwashing that causes him to make wild assumptions about the belief sets of others. He believes himself to be intellectually and morally superior, and he clings to the “Us vs. Them” mentality. He sees enemies when there are none. This is what keeps him safe. Keeps his ego intact. He lacks the ability to remain objective and neutral and as a result, he has made himself ignorant. He must know this, to some degree, even subconsciously. He has deliberately chosen what he wants to believe about other human beings and strangely, he has chosen to wage war against them. He is incapable of the mere contemplation of a theory or complex idea. He has become a mimic. A puppet. There can only be two answers – right or wrong. I fear for him, and his inability to see the shades of grey that exist between the vast expanse of these two poles. He reflexively rejects every word I speak. I’m not even sure if he can see all of the things I have been right about in the past quarter century. He must not. If he could, he might have a drop of respect for me. But he has none. Giving me even a smidgen of respect might cause the house of cards to collapse, for the illusion to shatter, and he would find himself in the same space I have existed in for the last year. A space where there is no right or wrong. Where other humans are not threats or enemies. It is the space where the ego has been shattered, and peace is found in the shades of grey. In saying “I don't know.” Where there are no wrong answers, no emotionally charged debates, no “winner” or “loser”, no titles to be won. Instead, there is safety in curiosity, freedom to think, to hypothesize, to conjecture. A place where it is safe to learn, and safe to be wrong. Where growth and evolution and progress are prioritized over individual ego. Where the collective consciousness can be raised.
Please God, keep him safe while he’s still out there in the wild, with no armor against the wolves. Let him know that at any time, he can come home. To the new home I’m building. The last one. The one where it will always be safe to ponder, and to disagree without threat of rejection or abuse or abandonment. Keep my baby safe.
Amen.