I recently finished reading Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics by theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr. Written in 1932, it is eerily relevant to our world today. Niebuhr addresses the concept of national and class privilege, including the inability of privileged classes to recognize their privilege, the hypocrisies they employ to defend them, and their angry, even violent, reactions when underprivileged classes challenge them.
His exploration of these concepts is aimed at explaining why social justice is so hard to achieve. In his view, “No man will ever be so intelligent as to see the needs of others as vividly as he recognizes his own, or to be as quick in his aid to remote as to immediately revealed necessities.” And even when individuals see the needs of others, he writes, they still view their group as superior to other groups, justifying group self-protection and selfishness by appealing to universal “values.”
Niebuhr is pushing back against those who put their faith in “reason” inculcated by education and the social sciences to make communities, classes, and nations more interested in the needs of those outside their group.
“The failure of even the wisest type of social pedagogy to promote benevolences as generous as those which a more intimate community naturally evolves, suggest that ethical attitudes are more dependent upon personal, intimate and organic contacts than social technicians are inclined to assume,” he says.
In other words, benevolence arises naturally from interactions. It’s more a product of social impulses than reason. And, to Niebuhr, intimate communities are more inclined to protect themselves than to extend the same protections and benevolences to others.
Contemporary research on advertising supports his view that our attitudes are largely “dependent upon personal, intimate and organic contacts.”
“People trust sideways, not upwards,” says foresight strategist Sean Pillot de Chenecey in The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World. He cites a 2015 Nielson study conducted in over 60 countries that showed 83% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising, saying “We believe each other far more than we believe branded messages.” In LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, international relations scholar P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Senior Fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, make a similar observation about the power of messages disseminated by people we know: “If it comes from friends and family, it is inherently more believable.”
Obviously, advertising and education are different undertakings. But Niebuhr is talking about factors influencing behavior change — arguing that personal connections and organic encounters are more impactful than externally constructed approaches.
My work in community engagement and participation is based in large part on evidence that messages from those we love, value, and trust are far more compelling than those from faceless organizations or distant authorities. It was fascinating to me to see this concept expressed by Niebuhr nearly a century ago.
I found myself wondering what he would think of social media and the ability it gives us to make personal connections with people outside our communities, classes, and nations. Would he see it as a way to increase our understanding of the needs of others, making them more vivid and more akin to our own? Or would he see it as reinforcing defensive, self-deluding, and self-protective group attitudes?
That’s the hope and horror of social media, isn’t it? Hope that it can show us our shared humanity, turning “them” into “us” through connection and empathy. Horror that it stokes division and fortifies dangerous group-think by elevating outrage- and conflict-inducing content.
While I recognize the horror, I stand firmly in the camp of hope. Social media gives us direct access to people from groups, classes, and nationalities different from us. We can develop “personal, intimate and organic contacts” with people from all walks of life in ways we never could before.
Sure. It requires intentionality on our part. But isn’t it worth at least trying to find new and better ways forward together.
As Niebuhr says: ‘Where lives are closely intertwined, happiness is destroyed if it is not shared.”
The more intertwined we see our lives with those of our fellow humans, the more we realize their needs are linked to our needs. The more invested we become in mutually beneficial approaches and outcomes. We stop seeing the world as a competition and start seeing it as canvas for cooperation.
In a recent issue of BBC Science Focus Magazine, astrophysicist Avi Loeb says 20th Century denial of how trivial differences between humans actually are “caused the deaths of 3 per cent of the world’s population at the hands of the Nazis and others.” Loeb is currently searching for extraterrestrial artifacts, in part because he believes proof of an alien civilization “would show us more unites us than divides us.”
Social media can show us that right now. No proof of extraterrestrials required. All we need is curiosity and a willingness to connect with people different from us in digital spaces.
Who are you connecting with this week? What are you learning from them?
IT’S FINALLY HERE! Digital Grace: Pouring Benevolence into and Outraged World NOW AVAILABLE IN PRINT AND E-BOOK!
Also from Lauren Hug: Digital Kindness: Being Human in a Hyper-Connected World