In 2013 we rejiggered the wiring in that mic and I used it on my radio broadcast. That was the first time it had been turned on since the 1940s. We didn’t test it; we didn’t know if it would work at all, but I had decided that if it did, I was going to use it to talk about the truth. And while in this broadcast I focused on truth and the government, I could just as easily have thrown the media in with it. Here’s what I told my listeners: “America, tell the truth. Tell the truth, even if it means in the end it hurts you. America, don’t believe everything that your country and your government tells you. Because while many times, most times, it’s true, in many critical times it’s an out-and-out lie. And it’s not an American problem. It is a government problem. It is a human problem. People want power, and they will do anything to keep that power or enhance that power. It’s incumbent upon you, if you want to remain free, to do your own homework. And if you don’t, you will lose your freedom. And because of that, innocent people will suffer. Truth and justice is the American way.”
The American way. How quaint that sounds. Remember when there was an American way, not a Republican way, not a Democratic way? I learned an important lesson several years ago when I took my family to Poland. Among the people I met there was a lovely ninety-year-old woman named Paulina. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations, which is a phrase used by Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. My family sat down with her and listened to her story. She was sixteen years old, she explained, when she saved her first Jew. During the course of the war she was credited with saving about a hundred Jews. She told us harrowing stories in the most matter-of-fact manner. When my kids finally got up and wandered away, I said to her, “Paulina, I see storms coming in America. I hope I’m wrong, but I see them coming. And I believe this, I believe the tree of righteousness is in each of us, but how do I water that tree? What do I do to make it grow?”
She looked at me as if I were an alien. Then she smiled and shook her head. “You misunderstand,” she finally said. “The righteous didn’t suddenly become righteous. They just refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.”
Well, there’s a place to start, I thought. What she was explaining to me was that people didn’t have to change to deal with changing circumstances, that doing the right thing didn’t require being a hero: You just have to do what’s right. The basic principles of decency don’t change. What was right yesterday is right today and will be right tomorrow.
How do you know what’s right? How do you know what to believe? For some of it, at least, you have to trust your gut feeling. You wouldn’t be reading this page today if you weren’t concerned about our country, and that concern alone is evidence to me that you have a fundamental understanding of right and wrong.
That’s the place to begin. You know the right thing to do; the hard part is doing it.
C’mon, let’s be honest. It’s just you and me on this page right now. Let’s not kid each other; we both know how good it feels to attack political foes, to score points in a debate, to point out their contradictions or when they cite some erroneous “fact.” Let’s not pretend it doesn’t. It does, it feels good. But we also know that at times some part of us is a little embarrassed by some of the things we say or write. It’s probably not something we would do in person. We sure wouldn’t want the people we work with to find out about it. The reality is we know we can get away with it because no one knows our screen name or who we really are. But it’s time to cut it out. It’s time to stop it.
Okay, Glenn, you talk a good game; now tell me how to do it. Let me quote the wonderful Mr. Mark Twain here, who remarked once about overcoming an addiction, “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world,” he said. “I know because I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
As any addict will tell you, wanting to break an addiction is a lot easier than actually doing it. Overcoming your outrage is both a physical and a psychological challenge. As someone who has found himself lying on a floor almost in a fetal position to try to stop drinking, I know how hard it is. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu got it right when he said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Within the science of behavior modification there is a strategy called chaining. Chaining is something a lot of us do on a daily basis without realizing we are following a scientific principle. The basic concept is that every behavior is the result of a series of small actions. For example, it’s incredibly hard for alcoholics to look at a glass of their go-to choice sitting in front of them and resist picking it up and taking just one sip. But there were a lot of steps that had to be taken before that glass got there. The alcohol had to be bought and carried home. It had to be opened and poured. The glass had to be placed on the table. Each of those actions is a link in the chain, and you can lengthen any chain. And the fact is, some links are a lot stronger than others. The longer a chain is, the easier it is to break the weakest link. People using this method to cut down on overeating, for example, don’t buy prepared foods or even keep food in the house. That forces them to go to the store for whatever they want to eat, bring it home, and go through all the steps of preparation. It’s a lot easier to resist going to the store and shopping than it is to stare down a slice of chocolate cake.
Think of it this way: Try to resist eating the second Oreo Double Stuf in the package! I have a hard time not eating the entire sleeve.
Most of use some version of social media to fuel our outrage. We’re generally okay face-to-face with people who disagree with us; our good manners usually kick in to prevent us from confronting them. But our behavior is quite different on social media. For something so amorphous, the Internet is the most powerful tool ever invented. Here’s an interesting fact: It’s estimated the Internet weighs about the same as a single average strawberry, about two ounces. I know that is “true” because I learned it on the Internet. (Actually, I don’t have the slightest idea if it is true or not. But I like it, it’s fun, so I’ll use it!) According to the source I found on the Internet, the Internet actually consists of several hundred trillion electrons, which cumulatively weigh about fifty grams, or two ounces. And yet too many of us allow something with the weight of a strawberry to dominate our attention.
There is a great deal of data demonstrating that the massive amount of time we are spending on social media has changed, in fundamental ways, how we relate to other people. Americans spend an estimated 10 percent of our time on the Internet, and that has led to a massive shift in behavior. A study published in March 2017 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior reports that even in our sexualized culture Americans had less sex than two decades earlier. That’s incredible; even with the availability of all those meet-up sites and the acceptance of casual sex, Americans—especially millennials and Generation Xers—are having less sex than in the 1990s. They suggested several possible reasons for this, but, not surprisingly, the amount of time spent on social media is considered a primary culprit. Apparently, many people prefer Angry Birds to loving people. That’s one powerful strawberry.
So what is it about the Internet that makes it so hard to quit, or even, in so many cases, to just reduce the amount of time we spend on it? Categorizing addictive behaviors is a complex undertaking. There are some things we get addicted to because they make us feel good, while we embrace other addictions because they allow us to feel nothing. Believe me, it doesn’t feel good to black out when you’re telling your kids about bunnies. That addiction becomes an escape mechanism. The director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA refers to the computer as “electronic cocaine.”
When the Internet and social media first became ubiquitous, it was sort of the Wild West of technology. Remember, in the early days people paid by the hour for access to the Internet. When that format disappeared, advertising became the source of income, and advertisers pay for audience exposure. So how to attract the largest audience spending the most time on a site
became the objective. But as it became monetized and the battle for “visitors” began, researchers began searching for hooks guaranteed to bring people back to a site or a game. Just as the tobacco industry had done decades earlier, they began to look for ways to get people addicted to a specific experience.
Media and news websites have also begun to leverage this technique, with sites like Buzzfeed, Axios, and Politico paying content writers based on the eyeballs they are able to capture and keep coming back. Just as Hearst and Pulitzer instructed editors to use eye-catching headlines and racy images to sell papers in 1900, now “information architects” build web pages designed to captivate (root word “capture”) a surfer’s attention.
It’s been known since the 1950s that the neurotransmitter dopamine is sort of like the barn door to pleasurable experiences. Apparently, dopamine performs numerous important functions in our body, but its claim to fame is that it is the precursor to something we believe we are going to enjoy. It has been referred to in scientific literature as “the chemical in the brain that controls mood, motivation, and a sense of reward,” and in popular media as “the Kim Kardashian of neurotransmitters.” When we sense we are going to be rewarded, the brain releases that chemical into its pleasure centers. It opens the door to a good time! But it’s an anticipatory release rather than being responsible for that feeling of pleasure. There is some evidence that the brain becomes accustomed to the release, and, just as with other drugs, repeating that same feeling over and over eventually requires an increasingly larger dose of the chemical.
In fact, in the 1970s, street drugs—especially heroin—were commonly referred to as “dope,” supposedly because of the high dopamine content. More recently, dope has become a slang term used to describe almost anything that’s great or excellent. I sort of like that, and now when people call me dopey I take it as a compliment.
What happened is that marketers figured out how to use dopamine to attract and keep an audience coming back. “We may appear to be choosing this technology,” Tony Dokoupil wrote in Newsweek in 2012, “but in fact we are being dragged to it by the potential of short-term rewards.” Every ping could be social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell. “These rewards serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine, much like the frisson a gambler receives as a new card hits the table,” MIT media scholar Judith Donath recently told Scientific American. “Cumulatively, the effect is potent and hard to resist.”
While dopamine is associated with pleasure, the much-better-known adrenaline is released when someone is afraid. It’s the yang to dopamine’s yin. It’s the chemical that causes your heart to start beating quickly, your skin to become flushed, and at its extreme, it even affects your breathing. And it also plays a role in your addiction. Solis Arr, the former director of the Student Center at UC Davis, described how this “Micro-Aggression” plays an important part in keeping us hooked: “[Y]our different ideas are not merely offensive to me—they are now creating a mental health crisis for me, and how could you? My hope for anyone addicted to outrage is that they come to find there is a chemical phenomenon that occurs with this feeling. Adrenaline.”
Mr. Arr continued, “Adrenaline makes me feel powerful. It’s far better than showing my fear.” Showing our fear is rather terrifying, actually. He concluded, “I’d rather show strength by attacking your position and showing you outrage.”
These marketers eventually discovered that political debate—although it’s probably more accurate to describe it as political ranting—was as irresistible as an oasis in the desert. Several years ago, Andrew Park wrote about his “obsession with Glenn Beck” in Psychology Today: “I disagreed with everything he said, but somehow I couldn’t get enough of the red meat he was serving up to his fervent audience. I loved to hate it.”
Park continued, “The futurist and novelist David Brin argued that what I was doing . . . is more than just a guilty pleasure. The outrage we feel when we listen to these rants is a ‘bona fide drug high’ and we are addicted to it.” He then quoted Andrew Sullivan, who agreed, “You go into the bathroom during one of these snits and you look in the mirror and you have to admit, this feels great! ‘I am so much smarter and better than my enemies. And they are so wrong and I am so right!’ ” I think all of us have felt that high, whether we were willing to admit it at the time or not.
Sullivan went further: “Is there anything wrong with letting this addiction guide our politics? Insofar as it distracts from engaging the issues, the candidates, and each other at a more civil and meaningful level, then yes.” Sullivan continued, “If the sum total of our political activity is waiting for the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report to serve up another sound bite . . . then we are shortchanging ourselves and our democratic system.” Very nicely stated.
After the horror in Las Vegas, Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle wrote that he was not at all surprised that the media focused on a stupid comment made by a CBS lawyer about the victims being mostly country music fans, so she didn’t really regret the shootings. Sullivan noted that as evidence of the issue with addiction to outrage, stating, “Addiction compels you to chase a high that only makes you feel worse. It reduces you to a lesser version of yourself. And you can’t stop, because deep down you really don’t want to change. . . .”
Sullivan went further too, in discussing the role the media plays as well: “The [controversy peddlers] know that, rather than endure the misery of withdrawal, the junkies will return again and again for future fixes. This is a business. An ugly business, but a lucrative one.” He’s right; believe me, I know. He continued, “Controversy, real or manufactured, juices ratings at cable ‘news’ networks. It drives readers to partisan websites and listeners to talk radio. It pumps up speaker fees and inflates book advances.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. Sullivan even identified early on how it makes our country vulnerable to attack: “When Russians wanted to mess with the heads of American voters, they trafficked in hyped conflict, Facebook informed Congress this week. . . . The oversupply of controversy is bottomless, because some human somewhere is always indulging a thoughtless blurt, and social media seduces us to publish our blurts for the world to overhear.” Amen, brother.
Social media websites have been the final nail in our proverbial cultural coffin, fulfilling yet another desperate weakness and addiction for human beings: a sense of belonging, validation, and acceptance by the tribe. When you are validated by your peers, friends, and loved ones, your brain is flooded with a potent cocktail of chemicals led by serotonin, which is known as the “Confidence Molecule” among neurochemists. Social validation by way of thumbs-up, shares, likes, and emojis is among the most addictive of neurochemical processes because it directly feeds our precious sense of ego and confirms that we are of value to the tribe.
* * *
In a very real way, you’re being used. You’re being manipulated. On a chessboard you would be a pawn, easily sacrificed for the good of the king. I guess you can take some solace in the fact that it isn’t completely your fault, that you are a victim of biology, neurochemistry, and marketing.
Once we’re hooked—or in this case charged up, plugged in, or battery operated—it isn’t easy to stop. In 2010, for example, the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda asked two hundred University of Maryland students to detach themselves from all social media for twenty-four hours. One full day. One student summed up the results when he wrote, “I clearly am addicted, and the dependency is sickening. I feel like most people these days are in a similar situation, for between having a BlackBerry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable to shed their media skin.”
The one thing I would ask you to do now is take a little personal inventory. Just take a guess how much time you spend involved in political thought and debate and how much time you spend reading, researching, or debating political material weekly.
I’m
not even asking you to admit you’re wrong. As we’ve pointed out, in many cases there is no right or wrong, just a difference of opinion—and it doesn’t make the slightest difference what side of each issue you’re on. We don’t have to agree on everything. Heck, we don’t have to agree on anything—other than the fact we are ready to stop splitting this country into two enemy camps. Advertisers and content managers don’t care about your political beliefs. In some cases, as we’ve learned from the Russian investigation, sometimes there actually isn’t even a human being disagreeing with you; it’s a bot! Whatever position you take, it’s going to take the opposite position to provoke you, to get the adrenaline flowing, to get the dopamine flowing, to get you outraged, and to keep you engaged.
OUTRAGE-AHOLISM
“I am sure I don’t have a problem.”
When I first began studying AA, I wondered if there was a test you could take that would help you determine whether you were an alcoholic. Turns out there is.
I have adapted those questions to America’s current addiction. See how well you do. Now, remember, it does no good to lie to yourself and not answer honestly. It’s not like I am keeping track while you read this book. Unless you are using a reader. I still will not be tracking, but the NSA will. But don’t worry, they already have “everything they need on you.”
1. Do politics or social media occasionally make you say and do things you regret afterward?
2. Do people often recommend that you cut down or stop consuming so much news or social media?
3. Do you speak in absolutes more often than you did five years ago?
4. Have you avoided friends, places, or events because of politics?
5. Would you be disappointed if your children treated others the same way you do in your political interactions?
6. Does your circle of online political allies include people you aren’t completely comfortable being aligned with?