It occurs to me that I have told people about this idea in person but never really put it into words on this here blog o’ mine.
So here goes :
It’s a very simple idea. I would take the average American news feed and replace every single word that denotes a subgroup of the human race with the word “American”.
It’s simple, but devastating, because it forces the reader to deal with the reality of a news story without any of the social filters that obscure the truth and give people a chance to apply different sets of rules to different groups.
And I am deliberately choosing to use the word “American” as my universal replacer because it’s a magic word for Americans that invokes all their patriotic fervor and makes it impossible for them to discount someone’s humanity.
Here’s an example. Compare these two headlines :
White cop shoots unarmed black teenager
American cop shoots unarmed American teenager
They mean the exact same thing, and yet it’s like they are from different universes. The All American version is far more neutral and makes it impossible to know if the teen “probably deserved it” or not.
It works with political labels too, it’s just a little trickier :
Democratic congressman Joe X proposes new regulations
gets turned into
American legislator Joe X proposes new regulations
Now people don’t know whether they are supposed to agree or not!
Guess they will have to actually read the story and decide for themselves.
On the implementation side of things, in theory it could be done via an automated find and replace. All I would need then is as comprehensive a list of various names for subgroups as I could formulate.
But honestly, I wouldn’t trust it. Automated find and replace schemes have a way of producing funny results and there would always be the chance that I forgot to add some group name to the filter and that defeat the whole point of the exercise.
So I would have to do it manually. Which would be a bit of a pain, but worth it.
The same rule would also apply to any comment sections or forums attached to the site. {{1} No names of races, religions, genders, political affiliations, or sexualities.
But what if that information is vitally important to the story?
If it is that important, it will be obvious from context. And if it’s not obvious from context, then odds are it wasn’t as important as you thought.
But I won’t lie : information is being lost. That’s kind of the point : to get rid of extraneous information and force people to deal with the facts of the matter, without prejudice.
I mean, think about it….in my first example, does it really matter what race the cop is and what race his victim is?
Are you saying there’s a combination of answers to those two questions that would make the cop’s actions more justified? Or less?
That’s the beauty of this idea : it forces people to confront their own bigotry.
It might even reveal some of my own. Shit I didn’t even know was in there.
And that’s fine by my. I make no claims of perfection. Eliminating bigotry has to start with the bigotry within ourselves.
All American News is a powerful tool for helping us do just that.
And I think that can only make the world a better place.
More after the break.
I have been thinking a lot about cynicism lately.
From some people’s point of view, I am an extremely cynical person.
I disagree, of course. I see myself as a realist.
But then, cynics always do.
Nevertheless, I don’t consider myself a cynic because I don’t have a negative opinion of humanity and I don’t claim everything is phony or that everybody is out for themselves only or any of the other beliefs normally associated with cynicism.
In other words, I don’t consider myself cynical because I am neither a pessimist nor a misanthrope. I am, in fact, a humanist.
And it is my ability to see people as they really are, both the good and the bad, that has led me to my humanism.
Because it’s only when you realize what frail, silly, weak, and absurd creatures we are… when you grasps that we’re all children in grown up clothes stumbling through the dark and trying to find the door into happiness – that you understand that nobody is better or worse than anyone else and that it is in the darkness of our confused and needful minds that we are truly united.
So yes, if all you knew of me is that I explain a certain thing as being a product of much simpler and more basic motivations than is overtly obvious, I might seem like a very cynical and even unsympathetic person.
But stick around and you’ll eventually hear me explain some other thing as being the product of much more innocent and blameless motivations than people think.
That’s the thing about being objective in a biased world : viewed from only one side,I seem like a very one-sided person.
And I always strive for objectivity. As Robert Anton Wilson put it, I am one of those people who wants to know what is really going on.
And to people who are used to a more forgiving and negotiable version of reality that is open to being adjusted for your comfort here and there. my view can seem extremely harsh and cold and calculating and heartless.
But I want to know what is really going on because I want to be able to make things better for people and that means knowing how things are right now.
I have a very deep desire to help people, and for me, that means facing the facts, dealing with harsh realities head on. and taking the pragmatic view at all times.
Other people operate on an entirely different kind of reality, and I respect that. I can’t tell you what will work for you. I can only tell you what has worked for me.
And for me, seeing with clarity is exactly what makes me the big soft humanist I am
And that’s the opposite of cynical. Isn’t it?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
[[1]] That, I might have to automate if the volume of discourse was high. [[1]]