I'm reading "The Great Delusion Behind Twitter" (NYT).
Midway into that diatribe against Twitter, Klein takes what he calls "a weird turn" and starts talking about the Quakers:
In a typical Quaker meeting... community members “sit in silence together for an hour or so, standing up to speak only if they are led to do so, and then only to share some insight which they sense will be of value to others.” If they must decide an issue collectively, “they will wait in silence together, again, to discern what has to be done.” There is much that debate can offer but much that it can obscure. “To get a clear sense of what is happening in our lives, we Quakers try to go deeper,” he writes. “We have to let go our active and fretful minds in order to do this. We go quiet and let a deeper, more sensitive awareness arise.”...
Then he gets back to the diatribe against Twitter.
Democracy is not and will not be one long Quaker meeting. But there is wisdom here worth mulling. We do not make our best decisions, as individuals or as a collective, when our minds are most active and fretful. And yet “active and fretful” is about as precise a description as I can imagine of the Twitter mind. And having put us in an active, fretful mental state, Twitter then encourages us to fire off declarative statements on the most divisive possible issues, always with one eye to how quickly they will rack up likes and retweets and thus viral power. It’s insane.
I think it's funny that this is the only story about Twitter on the front page of the NYT. It exudes a desire for Twitter to just disappear. It's hurting us, don't you know? Well, it's surely hurting elite media, which seem to long for the days when they could speak and the people would listen. But that wasn't like a Quaker meeting, where everyone observes silence and is committed to the good of the group, even if those in elite media — such as Mr. Klein — dearly believe that they are "standing up to speak" because they are "led to do so" — led by their elite status? — and that they only speak because they have carefully determined that what the say "will be of value to others."
I am sympathetic to the idea that people need to calm down and think more deeply, but there will always be aggressive, vocal people who barge forward and dominate the debate. They're never going to be quiet. You're only going to inhibit the people who are already restrained. And more and more people these days are afraid to say anything at all. It's a complicated problem.
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I'll bet even at Quaker meeting you always have that guy or that lady who always has to say something.
Little Ezra Klown.
...those in elite media — such as Mr. Klein — dearly believe that they are "standing up to speak" because they are "led to do so" — led by their elite status? — and that they only speak because they have carefully determined that what the say "will be of value to others"
Exactly. Why do progressives only bring up religion when they want to make political points? Because their feelings are at the heart of both, their politics that shift with the prevailing wind and their religion which worships the human heart or Gaia, depending on which progressive you talk to. Man is perfectible! Twitter, not so much.
Quakers are no less subject to aggression as a personality trait then anyone else - they are just supposed to subsume that trait, if they have it, in a sense of group welfare. But I'd put money on finding the same few people's being moved by the Spirit to speak more often than the general run of congregants at any meeting.
I didn't scare quote moved by the Spirit because, for all I know, God bestows that kind of aggression on some people for the purpose of making them leaders.
Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee.
I guess that makes me a Quaker. Joined Twitter only because it was cutting off my ability to read tweet threads without joining. But have never tweeted, sent DMs, etc.
"I think it's funny that this is the only story about Twitter on the front page of the NYT. It exudes a desire for Twitter to just disappear. It's hurting us, don't you know? Well, it's surely hurting elite media, which seem to long for the days when they could speak and the people would listen."
Funny and revealing. And it's also funny and revealing that Ezra Klein didn't publish a diatribe against Twitter when it was beavering away at the speech rights of the New York Post over the should have been infamous Laptop from Hell.
And congrats on the plural verb. We need reminding from time to time.
Sounds like they have the exact opposite of hot takes.
And I'm guessing not many bar fights either...
"It's hurting us, don't you know? Well, it's surely hurting elite media, which seem to long for the days when they could speak and the people would listen."
That's just layer 1 - just the sentiments of the Editor's Desk. But that is not where the company lives.
The real hurt is with the CFO. The CFOs of elite media are hurting. Elite media used to be a very lucrative field, and for the NY Times almost a monopoly level of gain. Now it's all just table scraps.
Think of all the reasons that horse buggy manufacturers gave, for why engine powered cars are bad.
But that's wasn't like a Quaker meeting, where everyone observes silence and is committed to the good of the group, ...
Klein longs for the day when media communication comprised an obedient congregation and a unified media preacher: Cold Comfort Farm
There is nothing that Ezra wrote that couldn't have been said anytime since Twitter's founding. The fact that he is saying it now that it is out of the control of his ideological allies is the tell.
How about the lying NYTs take this moron's advice and stfu?
The psychological effect Twitter 2.0 is having on liberals is awesome.
It's like watching the "coo-coo for Co-Co Puffs" bird.
What these crazy libs like Ezra fear the most is...
Irrelevancy.
Now that the despised natives of Flyoveria can express their opinions without being shadow-banned, Klein advises everyone to shut up.
I can only wonder if anyone among the NYT's commentariat will make this point, or will it be a chorus of Amem, Brother Ezra!
If Musk's buy offer had been refused, do you doubt Mr. Klein would have got religion?
Everyone should just shut up except for me!
"But have never tweeted, sent DMs, etc."
Ezra Klein issues the new liberal bull De silentiō, and Readering rushes to announce she's always been in compliance.
I am sympathetic to the idea that people need to calm down and think more deeply, but there will always be aggressive, vocal people who barge forward and dominate the debate. They're never going to be quiet. You're only going to inhibit the people who are already restrained. And more and more people these days are afraid to say anything at all. It's a complicated problem.
This is what happens when people stand up to bullies. The bullies get mad. Twitter is now giving the little people the ability to tell the elites what they think.
And the elites now want everyone to "calm down and think more deeply" and claim that the little people who disagree with them are "aggressive" and "vocal."
You brought this aggressiveness and vocality on yourselves by being condescending censorious shitheads.
This is the pendulum coming back at the bullies. We know who is really aggressive and vocal.
And the fascist shitheads need to go.
Also-are we surprised that the architect of The Journolist believe that our betters need to carefully curate the (truthful) information we receive for our own good? Sit quietly in your Quaker meeting everyone!
Gusty Winds (Elon Musk Fanboy) said...
What these crazy libs like Ezra fear the most is...
Irrelevancy.
Tangential and very close in my opinion.
I believe they fear loss of status.
Their entire world view is built on being superior to people from the other tribe.
When put on equal terms without Regime censorship and repression they will have to compete and their mediocrity will shine.
It is their inherent mediocrity that will lead to irrelevance.
Richard Nixon was born to Quaker parents. Mother was a Quaker, father converted.
Achilles at 11:08 nails it. Losing control of Twitter is a blow to bullies like Little Ezra and his lickspittle readers. They are going to take their ball and go home, I guess.
Lol "Now that conservatives can talk, it's time for everyone to shut up!"
An anecdote:
Some years ago I was at a meeting of not more than a dozen people, discussing some concrete issues. Small as it was, decisions were supposed to be by "consensus", meaning in this case not majority but unanimity. After different opinions were discussed, it seemed like a general compromise was taking shape, but that's when one person made use of the unanimity provision to insist that her opinion prevail. She seemed on the verge of getting her way, as people grew tired and just wanted a decision. But as this seemed to violate the whole point or spirit of unanimity, I was annoyed enough to violate that spirit myself, and I withheld my agreement until we could get back to the compromise.
So I'm just making an analogy to the problem of the people who "barge forward and dominate the debate" -- you're not going to solve that by shutting up, or just biding your time. You're going to have to do some barging yourself, and that's what Musk seems to be doing. Among other things, of course.
"We go quiet and let a deeper, more sensitive awareness arise/Then he gets back to the diatribe against Twitter"
Amazing, isn't it, how progs' sensitive awareness always ends up with the same result. Hence no need for "debate."
"It's a complicated problem."
Why? For individuals, it's simple: stay away. For society, it's a problem only as an abuse of prog power, now being remedied. Also not complicated: social media are part of the culture war, currently going through a new phase.
Ezra, you live by speaking your mind.
Even when your mind is empty and you have nothing to say.
I begin to wonder whether people in the media really do believe in free speech.
Quaestor, I left out the part where I thought about tweeting, but my liberal overlords told me my mission was to comment here.
From the article: "That is not to say Quakers have gotten nothing wrong, but what has led them to get so much right? The answer suggested by Rex Ambler’s lovely book “The Quaker Way” is silence.
Maybe this book is the source of Klein's confusion; I haven't read it and therefore can't say. But Klein is clearly confused. It's not the silence that causes their rightness, it is the holy spirit that leads, silence is merely technique.
Thus they don't speak "only to share some insight which they sense will be of value to others, they speak when they believe the holy spirit is calling them to do so.
The Quakers weren't Buddhist monks driving out the distractions of the material world, but Christians, focused on God.
Well, it's surely hurting elite media, which seem to long for the days when they could speak and the people would listen
Well, it's surely hurting elite media, which seem to long for the days when they could speak and be the only ones who could be heard
You are right that if there was a golden age of media, it didn't involve "everyone" speaking or not, as in a Quaker meeting. A paltry few spoke in any public way, and others listened. Hardly anyone lived with a New England town meeting system, which Tocqueville seems to have thought was characteristically American. On other other hand, the media were conscious of a middle class audience that was both moralistic and educated. They presumed a certain deliberation, and this set a tone. One of those editors at New Republic in that magazine's golden age wrote a funny piece about the business of magazines: with gimmicks like tearing off a special postcard, or entering a contest in order to subscribe, editors with their business hats on treated their readers and potential readers as fairly unintelligent children--easy to bore, easy to amuse. Yet an opinion journal, on the editorial side, assumes an intelligent adult audience. One might also think of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in small town Illinois in the 1850s. A level of erudition and marshalling of evidence that now seems to be from outer space.
I used to live in Newmarket, Ontario, to some extent settled by Quakers from Pennsylvania about 1810. They may have been refugees from the States, perhaps fearing mandatory military service, but it was more that they were attracted to cheap land which they used to display their well-established farming methods. Almost immediately they faced an epidemic of some kind, which drastically depleted their numbers. They quickly changed plans, from small cemetery, big meeting building, to big cemetery small building (with less of a view). Discussions about moving back to PA became pretty common. Then a guy who was a convert, always perhaps a bit of an oddball, stood up at a meeting and said "I don't believe Jesus was divine." The Quaker who told me this story said something like: the right response would have been for the others to remain quiet for quite a while, thinking. Then someone could have said: that's debatable, let's talk about it some more. Instead some of the regulars started a movement to excommunicate the guy, and he left with many members of the flock to found the Children of Peace. Kind of a 60s feel up to a point.
So again their numbers were greatly thinned. Why oh why did we leave PA? But they stayed. Then there was another schism, coming up from the states (so much for PA). The Hicksites. The trials of Job, man. Prayer and meditation. Lots of prayer and meditation. Keep delivering services to the poor and outsiders, including prisoners.
How quickly the "I'm quitting Twitter" crowd were found to be frauds.
At least with moving to Canada, you got some leeway to find a place and arrange for your stuff to be moved.
Shorter Ezra Klein--Twitter was fine when it followed the party line.
Now--Twitter bad!
There was, of course, an online format that encouraged one to "calm down and think deeply". It was called blogs. But those such as Klein abandoned blogging almost as soon as they could tweet or Facebook. Why? Because getting their "opinion" out for click and cash was more important than brooding and contemplation on a topic.
Of course, sooner, rather than later, the hoi polloi dare to tweet. A real danger without editors, now shadowbanners and censors.
"Ezra Klein learned from the Quakers that you need to shut up".
Would that it were true.
Him and that Zglesias asshole.
I get a Shadenboner when you people pile on in your collective pity party celebrating your inferiority complex.
Ezra Klein + NYT + paywall = will not be reading. But I presume Mr. Klein is unhappy about Twitter allowing people to say pretty much whatever they want, even when it displeases Ezra Klein.
Honestly, now: is there any reason to suspect that Ezra Klein is a better curator of what is newsworthy than the average Joe or Jane on the street? Is there any reason to suspect that the typical editor or reporter for the NYT is more intelligent, honest and wise than the average Joe or Jane on the street?
The old media like to pose as authoritative voices. But if you lie consistently enough, if you make up fantasies often enough, if you attempt to gaslight the public perpetually there is a good chance that at least some people will stop thinking that you're authoritative. They will eventually conclude that you're a propagandist or simply a no-talent hack..
The Quaker theme is appropriate. Twitter is something of a tool of the Devil in that it gives people the ability to wide-band every stupid idea that comes through their head and gives the larger public (who may not be as stupid) the ability to respond.
I would venture that most of us say a lot more dumb, half thought out things that we realize that we do. Luckily for us, our friends and family usually tell us we're being bone heads and the matter passes with out incident. Not the case when we broadcast them out.
Klein may be getting an inkling of what's going on with Twitter, but there's no way he's going to go into the forbidden territory and point out that some of these blue check motherfuckers are not anywhere near as smart as they believe themselves to be.
Who is Ezra Klein and why should I care? He writes mediocre thoughts.
The problem of America is not elites, it is the people who are considered elite.
I went to high school in a town that had long forgotten Quaker roots. Except for the nickname of the football team. The Quakers struck me as the least ferocious name for a football team. I think the reaction of opposing teams was "Huh?".
Klein's column is civility bullshit.
Ah- Quakers and pacifists. I recall one conversions story during my time as a career counselor. Yound sailor suddenly became a committed pacifist, joined a coneveniently located church just outside the main gate that coundeled young sailors on how to use their new found pacifistic beliefs to cut their enlistment short.
Getting arrested in a bar fight the night before his final hearing threw a loop into his convincing the hearing board of the sincerity of his beliefs.
Too be honest, I don't recall ever meeting any actual Quakers in my 67 year life. If I did, they didn't talk about it. People in a whole lot of other Protestent denominations- some of whom wouldn't stop talking about how they were saved. And Mormons who constantly tried to convert others, including me. I'm currently surrounded by Mennonites and Amish. Run into Hare Krishnas and other Eastern sects, Catholics and Orthodox and Jews and moslems, but no Quakers I know of. Maybe 80,000 or so in the USA. So they are a pretty rare breed. Over 360,000 Amish.
I lost track of my point- most pacifists really aren't. And even those that sincerely aren't depend on us freedom loving aggressive warmongers for their freedom to be pacifists. There are no Amish in Europe where they started. Seems their pacifism led to their extinction as the general population wasn't very freedom loving and tolerant of their different beliefs. They survive here because we let them survive. There are about 18,000 Quakers in Great Britain, where they started.
In a typical Quaker meeting... community members “sit in silence together for an hour or so, standing up to speak only if they are led to do so,
Led by who? Why, led by the power of the Holy Spirit to speak, to witness before the Congregation. It's amazing that Klein brings up this example but is so absolutely clueless as to the theology behind it, you know, the shared theology makes it work at all!
I mean, the idea of Being Moved By the Spirit is a common idea in most strains of Evangelical Protestantism.
Go howard! go howard! It’s your tallywacker! Go howard!
New tag: Reticence bullshit.
Who appointed Ezra Klein the authority on any thing? He graduated from UCLA last week. What has he accomplished ? He writes and talks the leftist trope. That's all.
YoungHegelian said...
It's amazing that Klein brings up this example but is so absolutely clueless as to the theology behind it, you know, the shared theology makes it work at all!
I mean, the idea of Being Moved By the Spirit is a common idea in most strains of Evangelical Protestantism.
Like I said above; guys like Klein are not as smart as they believe themselves to be.
Ha! I'd be that guy who made funny noises with one hand under the arm during the quaker contemplative period.
Does anyone here remember that Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon were our only two Quaker presidents?
I think the world would be better if people like Ezra Klein were quiet, but I wouldn't de-platform him.
"Quaestor, I left out the part where I thought about tweeting, but my liberal overlords told me my mission was to comment here."
You do better, Readering, to follow the Quakers. Bye.
Ah yes, that Constitutional seer and genius Ezra Klein, who said in 2010: "“The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.”
Free speech has never been complicated. John Milton nailed it centuries ago. The only people who have a problem with it are people who have fumbled their humble. Truly humble people don't desire to assert their control of others.
Francis Galton, founder of eugenics, came from a Quaker family whose business was making guns for the slave trade. That was OK for a Quaker when the Galtons started in the business in the 1600's but in their meetings over time in the 1700s the Quakers came to oppose making guns as much as making war. They rose at meetings attended by Galtons to make statements against guns and the slave trade. But the Galtons were the third wealthiest family in Birmingham and had built the Quaker Meeting House. They ignored the statements. Then the Quakers sent delegates to reason and pray with the Galtons. The Galtons said they'd been sitting with the Quakers for years; how could they be wrong now? why hadn't the Holy Spirit said something fifty years back? Or a hundred? The Quakers then de-friended the Galtons. It involved no coercion, just that the Galtons couldn't hold any important post in the Quaker Meeting or be buried in the Quaker burying ground.
The chief Galton then pretended to sell his arms business and go into banking. The bank held the mortgage and shares on the arms business. This wasn't evident and he was let back in as a Quaker. The younger Galtons refused to be Quakers any longer and became Anglicans so as to be able to continue without hypocrisy in the slave trade and in the gun trade. When the slave trade was abolished, they sold guns to the North American tribes for their wars. The guns were not very good but having guns led the tribes into several wars against the settlers where the tribes faced better guns and were decimated.
The money from these varied enterprises was inherited by Francis Galton and enabled him to lead a life scientific research which culminated in his founding of the "science" of eugenics. Eugenics showed that slaves, slave traders and slave owners were what they were due to natural selection and the whole was an inevitable part of evolution. Beginning at this moral low ground, eugenics went on to provide scientific cover for the Nazi regime as well as for segregation, thus finding in Hell a deeper depth.
How does this happen?
Perhaps it all began at those Quaker meetings where people kept rising to testify that the Spirit told them that slavery was wrong and that making guns for war and the slave trade was wrong; while the Galtons sat there, proudly repelling the thought that the Spirit was telling the people around them anything worth hearing.
Twitter has never been very much like a Quaker Meeting but the people running it seem to have been a lot like the Galtons. Christians, Republicans, libertarians, epidemiologists - no one had anything to tell them.
BADuBois: "Ah yes, that Constitutional seer and genius Ezra Klein, who said in 2010: "“The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.”
Almost as impressive as Ezra's "crack staff" at Vox claiming there was a 30 mile bridge from Gaza to the occupied West Bank that the Israeli meanies refused to allow the arabs to use....
.......Yes, the bridge is non-existent and yes, those idiots at Vox literally pushed that story.
Because none of those guys knows how to read a map.
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