noun: an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced, and alternative ideas are not considered.
My social media feed contains posts from some people who express views that are repugnant to me, and those posts concern me, because they come from people with whom I have a relationship. Those relationships, for the most part, are the by-product of a shared interest in a certain sport: billiards. It has always surprised me when a pool hall player sends me a “friend request.” My first thought is always, “Really?” Six years ago, when I played pool in a bar in Mooresville, Indiana, some young people found it amusing to threaten me with the fate of Carol Jenkins, the young black woman murdered in 1968 in the so-called “sundown town” of Martinsville. They laughingly threatened to take me to “see the sign.” I had a strong, quiet discussion with them, one where I did all of the talking and they, the listening. I never again heard those kinds of veiled threats from those young men. But they represented the un-silent minority, expressing out loud the opinions shared by others in the pool hall. Some other pool people made some loud and rowdy and thinly veiled racially disparaging comments about a president of the United States. My response was to eschew the standard garb — the team shirt — and to wear the many shirts and buttons I got as a partial benefit for working for the election and re-election of that president. Still: I get requests, and accept them.
I remember my son using the term “confirmation bias,” and when I investigated, I wondered if I was looking for the things and sources that confirmed what I believed, rather than an unbiased collection of facts from which I could determine the truth. It is difficult for me to say; I cannot remember having a “deeply held belief” from which I have been weaned. (I’m sure that with some serious reflection, I may find something.) But my behavior has changed over the years, the result of conversations with people I respect and of reading books and papers written by other people I respect. Attitudes that characterized my behavior thirty years ago have been recognized and modified; terms that were commonly used to describe people have been discarded once I was made aware of the culturally insensitive or inherent bias woven into them.
In February 2014, I revisited an issue that I had surfaced in May 2013; “Politically Decent,” recalled my ranting, saying that “Some people spit the term ‘political correctness’ in a derisive and dismissive manner…” continuing, “I deplore the term because it is damagingly dismissive of the concept of decency.” In today’s overheated political climate, the term is often being applied to behavior that demonstrates cultural awareness. Some members of my family who are in my social media feed use terms that will forever be offensive to me, and I hide those posts, just as I hide the mean-spirited posts of both the people who share a political view with me, and those who don’t.
Maybe I am creating an echo chamber of sorts; I’d like to believe that I have made good choices and I want to continue to live with them. I do recognize though, as the musician George Benson sang in 1977, “Everything must change/nothing stays the same…” That echo can resound in my chamber, with this coda: “Except, rain comes from the clouds/sun lights up the sky/(and) hummingbirds (do) fly…”
cjon3acd@att.net