I have spent the last few days listening to international authors talk about our world…as it once was and as it is now. We reflected on the rapid changes we have undergone this century and, particularly, in the last decade or so. The constant theme in all the discussions, was the impact of social media.
Yesterday a panel asked the question: Do books still matter?
Authors agreed they did, however all spoke of the downgrade in discourse, language and literacy and the rise of populism resulting from ‘social media’. Prominent UK author Alexander McCall Smith gave a fictitious example in a recent short story of the taxi driver who was reasonable and pleasant to his customers and then had to ‘go to taxi driver school to learn how to be confrontational’.
Other panel members spoke about the reactive and ‘angry’ discourse on social media. People were always reacting to something yet it was initially thought social media would help build positive interactive communities. In some ways it has fulfilled its initial reason for being, yet we cannot ignore the damage it has wrought on our civil society when AI generated militia pages are circulated to contest a free and fair election if the result does not go the way of a particular candidate, and where violence is threatened and organised, and activated.
When Pluto moved into Aquarius on November 19, 2024 we all breathed a sigh of relief. Surely now the power was in the collective hands. What we failed to realise is the extent we would have to wrestle power back from the all pervading oligarchy that has been built around social media…the so called tech billionaires, among them the reported richest man in the world Elon Musk (yes I did nearly forget his name after calling him Leon Musk for so long).
Ironic indeed that their fortunes have grown on the content ‘we the people’ provide them with daily, free! Ironic isn’t it that this free content we provide empowers them into positions where they become unelected officials in a government with the power to take away our social security pensions, and our cries fall powerlessly on their social media. If it seems like a giant con, it’s because it is and has been.
And when we consider all of this, we realise why Pluto in Aquarius will uncover corruption and, with effort, return the power to the collective. Already we are building new social media less prone to oligarchical takeovers, and using and nourishing independent media while rejecting legacy media.
After the US election I felt the energy of revolutions of the past, not the American revolution but the French Revolution. Yes, a revolution is coming, one where the people will stand up to the privileged and the obscenely corrupt profiting from power. They should watch themselves. As we’ve seen in Syria and are witnessing in Georgia, people power is a force that can overturn corrupt regimes and, with persistence, be a rallying cry that would curdle the blood of the tyrant and his armies.
Time to reflect. My break away with authors, writers and journalists on the ocean and traveling to Tasmania, has been good for the soul. New perspective has altered my bitterness and cynicism post US election, into a healthy realism that has new insight and purpose. This is a time for collective power to rise.