Scandals & The Controversy of Being All-Too Human
A social psychological deep dive into our love and hate of human controversy.
What you watch makes you who you are. Everything from The Bachelor to True Crime is a way in which American television has developed new norms in television watching.
Television has become the new authority on how people should act in public, online, and everywhere else in between. The directors and producers are guiding conversations on what is now taboo and what was once taboo is now acceptable.
Television is one ubiquitous medium and in becoming the thing that is everywhere presents itself as an authority on human behavior. Of course, the irony is, is that television content is created by humans, and the content is now taking over for developing expectations on how humans should act in every scenario they encounter.
It is, whether you agree or not, a normalizer of taboos. Case in point is the controversial divide that has arisen out of the work of the comedian Dave Chapelle. If you agree with him, then you are against the trans community. If you are for the trans community, then you have to be against Dave Chapelle.
[For all intents and purposes, I am NOT sharing my view on this, but using this controversy as an exploration of human behavior and perception].
SOCIAL INSTABILITY.
One of the things we study in sociology when it comes to how taboos and controversy shape society is the appearance of stability. Social stability refers to the things we accept as normal and what happens when they are undermined. For many, equality should be a given in any society — so then, stability is defined as when a society celebrates and even modifies itself naturally to accommodate the value of equality. When something is off when equality disappears or becomes disproportionate, then people become critical and argue that there are power dynamics in place that throw social stability off (it’s called Conflict Theory).
The major issue with conflict theory is that it relies on seeing issues, norms, and values as binary phenomena. This or that. Up or down. Right or wrong. In these types of settings, there is no room for discourse. You’re either right or wrong. Although Karl Marx (and Max Weber) was not the father of conflict theory, he is notable for having established it in the lexicon of economics and sociology.
It is the absence of heterogeneity and difference that has become the new way to measure whether or not we’re living in a perfect society. It is in the sacrifice of nuance that we’ve developed a hatred for anything that could be interpreted as a ‘gray area’.
THE DOPAMINE FACTOR.
There is something pernicious occurring under the table that we have to address — we get rewarded for repeating the same behaviors. The cool kid on the neuroscience block, dopamine - which is the most misunderstood neuromolecule, due to its popularity - exposes a problem hiding in plain sight. We’ve all become addicted to intrigue, scandal, and the false divide between right and wrong behaviors.
The spectator role of becoming judge and jury has become so fetishized that it now has bled into social media, to the point we’ve practically perverted manufactured rage into a form of spiritualized virtue-signaling. If you’re not mad about something, there there’s something wrong with you.
What this does is contour human behavior into a set of divisive categories wherein we have to search out things that we might not even care for and construct an opinion just to participate in groupthink to bring something of value. But, notice that the thing being valued isn’t the opinion, but the reconstructed anger that siphons the focus from whatever is occurring onto the person who is mad about whatever event they are meant to be responding to.
We are confusing and conflating meaning as being the same thing as rage. Because we are getting neuroscientifically rewards for it - we don’t want to change it.
How we value what we value becomes a perceptual lens upon which we make claims about how humans should act. Did you hear that? First, the perception emerges, then the ethical judgment arises out of that.
Perception is the ground upon which people make judgments about the behaviors of others. In this sense, perception is the ground of human beings. But, what is the perception if not an individualized experience of reality?
So, where does that leave us when we make judgments about the behaviors of others? It makes us, as the individual feel and act superior to others based on our perceptual values.
Then, if it becomes an idea acceptable to others — the bandwagon effect becomes the next layer - whereby others agree to make this perception into acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Therefore constantly shaping and reshaping cultural values and identity.
Culture is a pattern of values that becomes normalized the more that we accept that to be human is to act a specific way — then to vilify the behaviors that don’t fit within the cultural zeitgeist of the time.
So, to truly alter the values and embrace plurality — we must change the architectural structure of accepted and normalized beliefs — not to necessarily accept controversial concepts, but to see that all norms originated in discourse and to discover new possible horizons for human progress we must return to the lost art of being open to discussion about what is right and who is wrong.
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