Norm(s)!

The way I look at it, most people in society agree on a lot of things. I mean basic things: murder is wrong, love is good, racism is bad. We all know that there are some people who don't agree on these things, but we assume they are few in number, and fairly recognizable.

Then there are a lot of things that we know people don't agree on. Some of these are inconsequential. These are things like Coke vs. Pepsi, the Oxford comma, and which way around the toilet paper goes. But some of these issues are consequential, and most of these are what we call politics. Okay, I guess there's religion too, but if you live in a homogeneous area, it may be in that category of things everyone agrees on.

Anyway, that's how I assume the world works, and I think most people assume it works that way. Of course, there are fuzzy areas, like the fact that the list of things we all agree on is constantly changing. I listed "racism is bad" as one thing we have a consensus on. But it wasn't that long ago that it was far from universal. It also wasn't that long ago that "homosexuality is bad" was the near-universal belief, but now it's in doubt, and it appears "homosexuality is okay" will soon be the norm.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I'm finding a surprising number of times that universal beliefs turn out to be less that universal. No, I'm not talking about the beliefs of random nutbars on the Internet; I long ago realized that they wouldn't fit into any societal expectations. I mean people who seem quite intelligent and civilized.

So why is this? One is that it's an effect of social media. Note that we can hear from a person all the time on any topic, there are so many more chances for people to reveal all aspects of their values. You don't just assume that your favourite actor is similar to you; you can go on Twitter and find out. And since you see their view on every topic, it increases the chances that you’re going to stumble across a very unusual opinion, if there is one.

Another is the diversity of modern media. With 500 channels and a billion web pages, it's easy for anyone to immerse themselves among the like minded. Thus the speaker may be fooled into thinking their values are more universal than they are, as the listener is fooled into thinking their values are the norm. A further reason is the sheer amount of disagreement. Yes, most of that disagreement is with the aforementioned nutbars, but social media gives one the impression that disagreement - even extreme disagreement - is normal if not admirable.

(Let’s start a punk band called, “The Aforementioned Nutbars.”)

I guess the lesson here is that society is - as usual - not what it appears. Ideas - even those seemingly entrenched - must be constantly fought for. Consensus should not be confused with correctness.