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The internet may well be the root cause of today's problems… but not in the way you think

May's scapegoat and Trump's Twitter rants are damaging society

Been here before

This behavior is nothing new in the broader arc of human history – the same process was behind many of the religious wars that have ravaged the human race throughout history.

And so it is with the young men that decide, against all reason and compassion, to kill their fellow citizens in cold blood thanks to a mix of messages – most of them wild distortions or calculated lies – that made them feel powerful.

Killing yourself in the name of a belief is obviously much more extreme than voting for a foolish economic policy or electing a wholly unqualified leader. But then when it comes to terrorism the whole point is that it only requires a very small number of people to have a big impact.

The co-creator of the internet as we know it today, Vint Cerf – the man who devised the protocols that make the spread of information so fast and simple – once famously observed: "The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society."

Cerf's mirror analogy is good – but it fails to properly account for human behavior. What we see in the mirror changes as our perception of ourselves changes. If told you look ugly, you will doubt your attractiveness while looking in the mirror. If you are angry, seeing your angry self in the mirror will only reinforce that state.

What the internet has done is remove the delay – the time it takes to stop acting impulsively and to be open to more calm and reasoned voices. It has also made it possible to listen to as many different voices – and to pick what those voices will say. You are free to reinforce your beliefs in a way that was never possible outside of tightly knit communities before.

Safe space

So Theresa May may be right. In theory at least. If you remove those "safe spaces" you remove the ability for people to develop extreme positions. Except someone has to decide which spaces are allowed and which are not. And then someone else has to check on everyone's behavior. And that is the path to authoritarianism.

What is the solution? Well, the end of religious wars came about largely because of two things: greater personal and economic freedom and better education.

The people who voted for Donald Trump – at least the ones who shifted the election – are notable by the fact that they have less economic freedom. They feel constrained, put upon, made to feel less-than. And those in the position to do something about it did little or nothing about those people's situations for long stretches of time.

The same is largely true for Brexit. The "elites" outlined all the reasons not to leave Europe – and every one sounded like it would only benefit themselves. The manual laborer in Middlesbrough doesn't give a damn about the stock market.

Every time there is an atrocity, there is an effort to dig into what made someone become a public murderer. But that effort is never honest. There is a need to condemn. Explanation can very quickly feel like justification.

But here's a prediction: not one of the people who drove into, stabbed or blew up innocent people felt that they had much in the way of economic or personal freedom. And every one of them surrounded themselves with viewpoints that counteracted what mainstream society was saying. They were getting the messages, they just decided they were part of the problem.

The answer to wild voting patterns and destructive human behavior is not – nor has it ever been – to clamp down on people further. But that is the pattern that we have seen time and again in history because the dark forces that drive destructive behavior also empower those who promise to counteract it with even greater force.

Censoring social media, listening in to everyone's conversations and using the internet as a political scapegoat are very convenient solutions for someone who will never recognize that they are part of the problem.

And later this week, the UK will likely continue to reinforce that belief by voting Theresa May back in as prime minister. If she does make it back in, there will be a fair case to make that it was the internet to blame. ®

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