The political bias potential hill

Posted By Mahabodhi on Feb 22, 2024 | 0 comments

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…

© Mahabodhi Burton

3 minute read

Diving into the Preface of ‘The Buddhas and Global Governance,’ this excerpt explores the way that going to extremes can be the way of things in politics. It follows on from ‘Compassion and its enemies’ and is part of the larger post ‘The Twitter Files.’

The Middle Way

Carroll spoke of a middle way between the extremes of too much and too little compassion; in fact, the Buddha expressed his teaching as ‘the Middle Way’ between extremes: one needed to avoid the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism: that either all phenomena are underpinned by a fixed unchanging essence (eternalism,) or that nothing continues after death (annihilationism.) It is human nature to go to one extreme or another: either retrenching into dogma, in the former case; or giving up, thinking: ‘What is the point of building anything anyway: everything is going to come to an end?’ in the latter.

And we not only see these tendencies in religious life, we see it everywhere: including in politics: where the harder thing is to ‘stay in the middle:’ marrying the opposites. Ricky Gervais’s ‘centrist coward’ is therefore doing the harder thing: by trying to occupy the middle ground.

The ‘political bias potential hill’

This difficulty illustrated by an analogy: suppose we take a bowl and place a marble inside the edge: when we let go of the marble, under gravity it will move towards the centre, then will oscillate back and forth until it comes to rest in the middle; in physics, this shape is called a potential well. But suppose we now turn the bowl upside down and create what could be called a potential hill: this time, when we place the marble on the top of the hill, at first it will slowly move away from the centre, and then pick up speed as it accelerates down the hill.

Staying in the middle ground requires effort! Those who call their mild political opponents ‘Trotsky’ or ‘Hitler’ are not really making that effort: they are taking the easy path: of polarization, and now there are many things about their opponent that they just do not have to think about. I am reminded of a passage from John Cleese and Robin Skynner ‘s book Families And How To Survive Them:

‘What’s so funny about really extreme political sects is their inability to get on with each other. They’re always splitting up and forming separate groups, which then split up after a time. We had a lot of fun with this in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.’[1]

The Socialist Workers Party hates the International Marxist Group; and so on! Cleese’s therapist suggests that the source of the antipathy is that the ‘other’ (group:)

“Stands for a lot of things (a person) can’t bear to see in their own personality.”[2]

Of course, it is very hard work to try to overcome these polarizing tendencies: especially when we get comfort and affirmation from membership of a group. But we must keep making the effort to bring into being an awareness of ‘the other’, otherwise our natural tendency is to ‘drift down the hill into unawareness:’ into viewing ‘the other‘ as an object in our way: thus, not really human.

Libs of TikTok

Another account placed on Trends Blacklist was Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok.) Founded in November 2020 by Chaya Raichik, it often consisted of reposting videos other people had made public on social media; for example, in 2022, Raichik posted videos of physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital discussing the gender-transition procedures they offer to kids and teens. The Libs of TikTok site was placed on the Trends Blacklist and designated as ‘Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting,’ meaning with a senior group including Yoel Roth, Twitter’s Global Head of Trust & Safety.[3]

‘Twitter suspended the Libs of TikTok account repeatedly for up to a week at a time. The reason Twitter provided Raichik for the suspensions was that she had violated Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy. But in an internal [senior group] memo from October 2022, the committee acknowledged that this wasn’t actually true.

 

“LTT has not directly engaged in behaviour violative of the Hateful Conduct policy,” it said.

 

‘Libs of TikTok was not guilty of any “explicitly violative tweets,” the memo stated, but “the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct.”

 

‘The memo noted that, as a result of her “continued pattern of indirectly violating” Twitter’s Hateful Conduct Policy, Raichik’s posts had tended “to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities.”

In other words, what in former times might be classed as genuine investigative journalism into the ethical practice of medical professionals, was now deemed ‘unsupportive’ and therefore violence–directed towards the LGBTQIA+ community; whereas encouraging violence in the other direction—’merely harmless activism,’ is completely justified:

‘Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes. But when Raichik informed Twitter that her address had been disseminated, she said that Twitter Support responded with this message:

 

“We reviewed the reported content and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.”

 

‘No action was taken. The doxing tweet is still up.’[4]

Imagine the chilling effect on your freedom of speech, if hundreds of activists turn up on your doorstep.

The chapter continues by exploring Buddhism and Politics.

[1] Robin Skynner and John Cleese. (2009) Families and How to Survive Them. Random House. p133.

[2] Ibid. p134.

[3] Roth came under intense questioning during the US Congressional Hearing on the Twitter’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story. ‘“Who the hell do you think you are” Former Twitter execs squirm during US Congressional questioning.’ ANI News. YouTube. 9 February 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ_D1x4wjgY

[4] Ibid.