HOTSPOT

Many say sharing content on social media isn’t exactly an endorsement. But despite the disclaimers, the choices we make reflect a lot about ourselves and our views on what’s happening and the situation of the world.

I don’t know if you also notice it with your circles, but quite a lot of my friends share content that I didn’t expect them to share like 10 or 15 years ago. The posts could be about the sanctity of life to the concept of rights; the role and history of vaccines to the troubles brought by tyranny;  gender to race; the shape of the earth to public accountability; the record of the first Marcos regime to the reports on extrajudicial killings of the previous regime.

I see highly-educated friends posting content that questions or seeks to turn back the clock on women’s emancipation, and sexual and racial liberation, saying the world survived through thousands of years with such exploitation and oppression, so what could be wrong with them? Frankly, I don’t think they are being stupid. They're serious.

It is easy to dismiss the phenomenon as merely a case of “people being stupid”. But that would be lazy and unthinking. More importantly, name-calling hasn’t exactly been effective in erasing, correcting, or defeating the “stupid” ideas.

One logical explanation that I could accept right now is that this dystopia has seeped into people’s consciousness. Many seem to agree that now's a time when it is open season for all types of ideas and expressions — even to the vilest, most absurd, most harmful, most backward, and most outdated. Being a Karen is considered acceptable.

This has meant trouble in politics and economics, whether domestically or internationally. Many political and economic actors don’t agree with the same history or same set of facts as the rest because they would lose the debate if they did. So they insist on creating a parallel or new reality where history or facts are, at the very least, disputed in their favor. Or worse, revised and tampered with.

It really doesn’t help that the liberals and the liberal-minded quickly blow their fuse about this dystopia. They seem to have this odd expectation that illiberal forces and actors behind disinformation would just fall, fail or surrender without any effort on our part. Or that we just have to wait for people to “wake up”, or maybe shame them into doing so.
Like you, I could unfollow, unfriend, mute, or block friends or other people who harbor, advocate or promote the most outrageous ideas. But won’t that just create an artificial sense of security because the ideas are still out there — reaching, influencing, and persuading others.

Is the problem personal (or individual), educational, media-related, political, or ideological? How about the solutions?

I honestly don’t know the long-term solution to this explosion or dominance of dystopia, but what I’m sure of is that, in some issues, we found our way forward and then achieved some measure of victory.

One example is the mass vaccination against Covid-19 which had a lot of possible reasons to fail: suspicion or revulsion against the vaccines from China, the anti-vax and anti-science disinformation efforts, shortages, delayed arrival of vaccines due to temporary protectionist export bans, and the tiredness and seeming hopelessness of the public after a long period of fascist lockdowns. We managed to prevail.

Although temporary, the suspension of the jeepney phaseout is another good experience. At the level of commuters, jeepney drivers, and citizens, we managed to agree on and defend our shared history, rights, livelihood, and mobility. We also powerfully questioned the viability or feasibility of the program’s schedule, modes of financing, potential foreign control, and current manufacturing capacity. Even Congress smelled a rat (corruption) in the so-called modernization program.

Nobody likewise thought we could have confidential and intelligence funds deleted from the budget of the Vice President and education secretary. Critics were even accused of being anti-peace. However, to everyone's surprise, the CIFs were removed from the OVP and the DepEd.

What did we think, speak, and do? What did we set aside? What was important, and not-so-important? How did we view others and ourselves? Who did we fight for or fight against? Were we extra creative and more committed? What did we share?

I’m asking these questions because somewhere, somehow, in those instances we together beat dystopia and disinformation. We must find the answers to score more and bigger wins.