Slaughterhouse 56

START TIME: 10:35 PM
END TIME: 10:50 PM
WORD COUNT: 530

This week's question: "You order all of your new books online at the library. Do you ever browse the shelves anymore?"

I always make sure to browse the shelves; my mind depends on it.

Because as human beings, it's easier than ever to self-select what information we interact with. We can now wake up in the morning to our favorite song, choose our lunch down to the growth origins of the vegetables we eat, watch and read nothing but news that we agree with, order only the books we want to read, watch television shows that a very small select group like us enjoy, and live in places with people exactly like ourselves.

In 1991, military personnel working at the PXs in bases in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, knew when the troops would be approaching the front. How? They'd sell out of AA batteries, the size that went into Sony Discmans. The Gulf War was the first one in which the soldiers had their own soundtrack.

There's a phenomenon going on called 'The Big Sort" and it's showing that people with like political beliefs are starting to cluster together - the "red" states are become redder and the corresponding is also true. Because we're creating a world where you can interact (virtually) with people who think and feel precisely the same as you do, there's no reason to attempt to interact civilly with people who share the same physical space. Think about your office. There are probably vast arrays of topics that you don't talk about, either by courtesy or by statute.

There are good things about this sort. If I were gay and living in a small community I would probably never be afforded a safe chance to meet anyone like me, but with the internet it becomes apparent that not only are there other people like me, but there are other people in my identical situation that are grappling with the same issues. If I have a rare disease I not only stand a better chance of getting treatment, I have a chance to see how others worldwide are coping.

The bad things, though, are that in an entirely self-selected universe, you run the risk of never being forced to think, see, hear, taste, feel, touch, or consider anything that would ever fall outside of your comfort zone - a perilous situation that leads to diminished powers of argument and reason. Let's say that you consider the steak at Texas de Brazil to be the finest on the face of the Earth. Could I ever get you to consider the entrees at Morton's, or Ruth's Chris, or Lawry's? Or if you were convinced that any one of those other places were the greatest, what would it take to get you to try something different (other than the sheer obnoxious force of my own personality)? The greater the certainty you have of your beliefs, the less likely you are to question them.

What is wrong with politics is only partially due to the participants. It's a climate in which one side believes the other is evil, dangerous, and stupid. And with both sides fanning the flames in opposition to those with the opposite colored pom poms, the situation will culminate in tragedy or doom.

So browse the shelves. It's really important.