As more and more people get more and more connected, a lot of people are celebrating the political impact of the Internet. I’m among them. But all this connectivity could be having an unexpected side effect.
In grad school I once came across an article that argued that nonlinear feedback metaphors and epidemiological analyses were a good way to understand charismatic religious movements in particular, and how social movements are propagated in general.
Randolph Roth, “Is History a Process? Nonlinearity, Revitalization Theory, and the Central Metaphor of Social Science History,” Social Science History Vol. 16, No 2 (Summer 1992)
U.S. history has been regularly punctuated by sweeping charismatic religious moments, evangelical revivals and “Great Awakenings.” Roth points out that, like many nonlinear physical phenomena such as dissipative systems (chaotic, self-organizing chemical reactions), these movements “emerge abruptly and with apparent spontaneity from microscopic disorder.”
Dismissing linear models developed by other historians, and drawing on work by theoretical ecologist Robert May, Roth points out correctly that nonlinear dynamics are a far more powerful way to understand social movements:
Let us assume that the nine members of a small community, because they are confused, indifferent, or ambivalent, at first decide randomly whether to support or oppose an evangelical revival. The random probability that all nine will support or oppose the revival after their initial contact with a revivalist is negligible. (220)
However, like any group the 9 are of course influenced by each other. Since they’re all influencing each other, it becomes a reflexive dynamic rife with feedback loops, and assuming that some of the group buy in to the revival up front, it is easy to see how those feedback loops could create chaotic swings in support. Roth lays this all out with graphics and charts but anyone with any nonlinear intuition will quickly grasp its truth.
This is a fascinating idea with big implications. As Roth puts it, these ideas
suggest that sudden shifts in support for and opposition to reviatization movements are more likely in egalitarian communities whose members are undecided at first about the movements and who are influenced predominantly by small circles of intimates. (225)
Furthermore,
Relationships among community members are as important as charismatic leadership and compelling ideologies in determining the success or failure of revitalization movements…. Where relationships among community members are not favorable, ideolgically compelling movements with strong charismatic leaders can fail despite years of proselytization. (226)
Although Roth does not draw it out, the implication is that disconnected, atomized societies are more stable than highly connected ones. Could it be a coincidence that the United States is the world’s most longstanding stable democracy is also one of the most atomized societies in the world, with our frontier history and our disastrous social geography of interstate highway system, suburban sprawl, and disconnected, isolated individuals who spend their lives in their private homes, their private cars, and their office park workplaces? While societies like Italy, which might have much healthier family and community life, are hardly paragons of political stability?
When you fly over rural Europe, you see how different the geographical pattern is from rural America: a bunch of dwellings clustered together in a little village, surrounded by farms. In the U.S., each farmhouse sits alone, isolated in the middle of vast stretches of farmland.
But hey – at least while Americans are out bowling alone they aren’t spreading around kooky ideas.
But of course of the things that the internet has done is help people connect to each and form communities, link up to others with similar interests and problems and worldviews.
With all this connecting going on, the obvious questions is: could the Internet be destabilizing the US, by creating the conditions for chaotic reverberation of radical new ideas through networks of closely tied, reflexively influencing individuals poised for spontaneous, self-organizing phase transitions?
If yes, one question is whether this is a good thing or something to be feared. In some ways the way I have framed it above, as “destabilizing” the U.S., is conservative. God knows we certainly need an infusion of some fresh, radical ideas in this country. In recent decades, the nation certainly has seemed politically unable to renew itself, move forward, and adapt to changing conditions through fresh thinking. Some revivals are just what we need. On the other hand, these chaotic dynamics are probably behind many a terrible movement to sweep through a society and I have no doubt the American population is capable of generating some really crazy movements.
On the other hand, this all may be attributing too deep an influence to the Internet. It may be that all but a few people are engaged largely in superficial networks and relationships online that do not sufficiently challenge or influence them the way that members of a genuine face-to-face human community do. If, as people constantly complain, the internet serves mainly as a way through which people reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, then few people are going to swing from one view to another. On the other hand, per Roth’s thought experiments, if some idea comes along that is sufficiently new that most people do not initially have an opinion on it, then we could see it spread like nonlinear wildfire.
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