Massive Polarization Is Google the Culprit?

Interestingly, I have a couple in my office with relationship issues. While they were conversing, they came to a fork in the road. “How about this?” says the husband, “Let’s Google it.” Both of them, the husband and the wife typed the same query into Google’s search engine and reviewed their results.

Based on their own individual Google search results, they were now equipped for a full-on battle of completely opposing views, thanks to Google.

In Google’s defense, Google is smart. It is nearly sentient. It knows each user, the device they are using, where they are located, and who is in or nearby their current vicinity. What communication languages, formats, providers, and locations they use. More importantly, what they like and what they don’t like about anything down to the most minute detail.

In this case, Google knows that the husband is likely to click on Google search results that will align with the opinions of his macho friends, while his wife is more likely to click on more positive links that reflect the ideas of her friends that see themselves as peace-loving but highly opinionated about what is right and what is wrong.

Same query: Opposing results.

Still, again in the defense of Google, Google is personalizing search results based on the user. That is hugely smart.

On the other hand, Google is perpetuating the one thing that I think is the biggest problem in our society today. Separation. The polar opposition of individuals in the proximity of each other.

Before the proliferation of Google and its manipulation of data and the people who access said data, people self-sequestered themselves into groups of like-mindedness. You could pretty much tell that if a person lived here, or there, they probably had a particular political view or bent.

Here, today, is a perfect example of two people in the most intimate of relationships, almost at each other’s throats, and here I am, watching the entire thing play out before my very eyes.

And this is what is destroying the United States if not the Internet-connected world as well. There is more angst and hate in the world than ever before.

Why?

Not because of Google, though Google does help to feed the fire, for whatever reason.

The biggest problem in the world today, is Judgment. I’m right, you’re wrong.

(Here comes the coding IF/THEN/ELSE routine.)

IF you don’t agree with me, you are wrong.

THEN I must do everything in my power to convert you to my way of thinking because you are wrong.

ELSE you are my enemy and you must be made to suffer some unfortunate fate, if not death, which may be the preferred price to pay for not thinking like me.

Oh, and it gets worse, THE GOLDEN STANDARD, “If you see someone not thinking like you and you do nothing, you are just as guilty as the faulty thinker, and you, too, must be outcast or punished accordingly.”

As an Olympian Life Coach, when I meet with a client, the client does not come into my world. Before the client ever enters the building, I’ve created a safe sanctuary, a sacred space, for that client to come in and be seated. Then I enter the room.

When I enter the room, I humbly and respectfully enter the client’s world. There is nothing for the client to defend. I have no preconceived expectations or judgments. I have respect and honor this person to be who he or she is at whatever stage of life he or she may be in.

I avail myself to the client to help him or her make his or her way through life, and in the best case scenario for me, because this is my mission in life, to help him or her achieve his or her highest and best, and make the world a better place.

That is all. I don’t have any agenda. No path to make them follow. They are the masters of their own lives and missions. My only function is to assist them so that they can accomplish whatever they might like to in this life.

And having this kind of attitude, which also carries over into all other areas of my life as well, I get access to the greatest data and information, that no one (or very few) people in the world ever get to know. My world is so diverse and colorful, I am utterly amazed and gracious every day.

Granted, some of the data, I could do without the knowledge of, but nonetheless, I have a better understanding of how diverse life can be, and I know things that would never make it to the media. I also feel as though I am blessed to be in this (maybe not so) enviable position.

Still, here I am, surrounded by, “YOU DON’T THINK LIKE ME, SO

        • “get thee behind me.” Or alternatively, “go away.”
        • “I hate you!”
        • “you lost your job. Ha!”
        • “you can’t eat here!”
        • “you are not entitled to a helping hand.”
        • “you cannot attend.”
        • “you can’t play.”
        • “you cannot be healed.”
        • “you will go to hell.”
        • “you must die.”

I see the multicolored fanciful beauty of a loving world that welcomed others with open arms, turned into a monochrome planet of THIS or THAT or ELSE, and it breaks my heart.

On that day, I looked out at the world and said, “I am sorry, there is no love in them.” And I wept.

But I tried, and I will never stop, while I still have the breath of life in me.

There is hope. Not only for this couple, but the world.

And there are others that believe… are you one of them?

 

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