{"id":103,"date":"2016-07-05T18:19:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T18:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/07\/05\/june-wrong-turns-echo-chambers-and-appearances\/"},"modified":"2022-11-15T20:36:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T18:36:54","slug":"june-wrong-turns-echo-chambers-and-appearances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/2016\/07\/june-wrong-turns-echo-chambers-and-appearances\/","title":{"rendered":"June: Wrong Turns, Echo Chambers, and Appearances"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

We can\u2019t blame June for the volatile weather conditions. Or, can we? Anyway, it wasn\u2019t only the weather that was turbulent the past month.<\/p>\n

When the UK voted for the Brexit, my social networks exploded. Through my colleagues, I mainly know young people in the UK \u2013 all between their early twenties and mid-thirties. They all were devastated and frustrated, deeply concerned when the referendum\u2019s result was delivered. The newspapers I read also went head over heels about the vast negative consequences. To me, it seemed so obvious that the UK had voted for the wrong decision, and I couldn\u2019t wrap my head around how this had happened.<\/p>\n

During the first days and weeks, I haven\u2019t stumbled upon one single positive aspect about the decision to leave. I read through the comments on the Leave Campaign\u2019s Facebook page, just to get out of my echo chamber (a word I found in this German interview<\/a> with Miriam Meckel, and I much prefer it to \u201cfilter bubble\u201d). It is crazy how we are trapped in this shield of algorithms and precast opinions. It really takes some time and effort to dig through this chamber and grasp some different, unheard voices.<\/p>\n

Well, anyway, I did that, but honestly, I did not come across a lot of smart things. A campaign driven by lies, politicians driven by wrong-tracked overzealousness, media driven by populism. Voters driven by the wrong assumptions and untold truths. Eventually, the whole thing reminded me of Platon\u2019s \u201cAllegory of the Cave\u201d<\/a> \u2013 there is so much wisdom and perspective out there, and once you found it, it\u2019s the most shattering process to pass it on. The School of Life YouTube channel<\/a> has some nice, brief memory brush-ups on philosophy, history and the like. I enjoy watching it while brushing my teeth in the morning, or while having dinner by myself at night.<\/p>\n

Unrelated but relevant: This thought came to me while riding the bike down Sonnenallee (not a recommended cycling route), just like epiphanies mainly happen during showers, walks or moments where no pen and paper are available. Anyway, I realized: We, too, are just small \u2014 and sometimes not so small \u2014 parts of other people\u2019s lives. We jump in, we stay for a while, and in most cases, we leave again. We just make an appearance. And after this, things are free to move on without us.<\/p>\n

July marks an important, finalizing month in my current phase of life. The last couple of years were filled with work, so much work, and I truly loved it. But August will be spent traveling (a little bit at least, because I am a horrible traveler), seeing friends and family, buying a proper office chair. We\u2019ll see. But for now: July, some more sun please, and let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We can\u2019t blame June for the volatile weather conditions. Or, can we? Anyway, it wasn\u2019t only the weather that was turbulent the past month. When the UK voted for the Brexit, my social networks exploded. Through my colleagues, I mainly know young people in the UK \u2013 all between their early twenties and mid-thirties. They … June: Wrong Turns, Echo Chambers, and Appearances<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1206],"tags":[140,183,44,41,184,40,3,39,2,43],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christels-corner","tag-140","tag-brexit","tag-christels-corner","tag-english","tag-filter-bubble","tag-newsletter","tag-schreiben","tag-tagebuch","tag-text","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christowski.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}