The hot response culture (why reason and compassion should prevail)

Your smartphone has seven million times the memory and 100,000 times the processing power of the guidance computer on board Apollo 11. Have you wondered what we're collectively doing with all that power? Are we spreading more heat than light, or finding constructive solutions?

These are important questions, given the range of hugely significant challenges - and opportunities - we face.

On present evidence, it seems many of us may be more interested in producing heat than light.

According to a number of studies over the past decade, we may have become so enamoured with emotional over-reaction that we're permanently changing the way our brains work.

In her book Stop Overreacting, therapist Dr Judith Siegel used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track how the brain diverges from its normal functions during an emotional over-reaction.

She found that in a normal reaction the areas of the brain responsible for judgement and self-awareness light up at the same time as those responsible for fight-or-flight reactions. However, when we overreact, only the lower function areas fire up, which means we're in danger of acting without proper judgement.

In line with this, some neuroscientists express serious concern that a cultural trend toward emotional immaturity, combined with rapid response technology, will permanently alter the way our brains process events.

Some predict that we may soon become a generation desperately in need of empathy and wisdom, but unable to express either. These warnings have been in place for several years, but we are arguably much closer to this dystopian scenario than we've ever been.

Ten years ago, academics lay at least part of the blame for our shortening emotional fuse squarely at the feet of reality television.

"People can be seduced into thinking that [overreacting] is the most common way of reacting to life when it's not." So said Rodney Carter, a professor of communication studies and government at the University of Texas.

At the height of reality TV's popularity, he noted that the genre "hyped all the emotions". Exposure to a steady diet of reality TV, he claimed, left people feeling that they couldn't just be happy, they had to be ecstatic. They couldn't just be upset, either - they needed to be "violently angry".

It seems we've learned nothing about the dangers of over-reaction since then. Dr Carter's comments are just as applicable to today's social media - perhaps even more so.

As with reality TV, even mild exposure to social media can leave us, on a subconscious level, feeling that the world is a more course and threatening place than it actually is. We react with fight-and-flight, but without judgement or self-awareness.

The way people organise around social media is helping to produce a public discourse in which meanness replaces open-hearted engagement. It seems that we value instant, emotional over-reaction more than moderate language and carefully considered and proactive responses to problems.

A case in point: earlier this week an otherwise proficient British university lecturer was fired for expressing views - in moderate language, in a one-on-one conversation - that were considered to be "potentially racist". His views, as they were reported in the press, might be considered slightly stereotypical; they were definitely clumsily expressed. But they were found to be only "potentially" racist. Yet he lost his job.

In a slightly more sane era - a few years ago - this teacher would have been invited to a conversation with his oversight. He would have been asked: "What exactly did you say? What did you mean? On what do you base these opinions?" Then and only then would a decision be made on his suitability for his role.

He likely would have been advised that remarks like these, in today's febrile environment, might be misconstrued and he would be best to keep them to himself in future. Let's be clear: his remarks were not adjudged to be racist, but only potentially so.

This is a small but important step into Minority Report territory, where we effectively adjudge someone a law-breaker before any crime has been committed.

Many people seem inclined now to believe that the best reaction is a "hot" one; that calm deliberation is almost always unhelpful. We've created what I'm going to call a "hot response culture" (HRC).

In the UK, we saw this culture dominate our social discourse on Brexit.

At first, social media provided a helpful platform for debate on the pros and cons of Britain's departure from the EU. Over time, as confirmation bias and information loops kicked it, people grew more entrenched in their beliefs and less likely to respond cordially to even respectful dissent.

When at the end of last year Britain officially left the European Union - the shape of the post-divorce relationship is still being negotiated - the ardour of online debate cooled relatively quickly.

Yet the HRC hasn't cooled down. It has simply found new points of focus.

Today, the HRC expresses itself in discussions on gender self-identification and transition. In some quarters, public figures in the arts and elsewhere have been cajoled, disowned and threatened because their views don't sync with the norms proposed by self-appointed cultural arbiters.

My point is not that social media are the root of all evil. Far from it - these platforms have provided great benefit, in particular affording us the opportunity to pursue collaborative innovation. If we are now closer to solving pressing global problems than we were a decade ago, it is partly because of social networking. The internet is connecting researchers charged with finding a COVID-19 vaccine.

My point is that we gain nothing and lose a great deal when we congregate too quickly behind barricades; when we shout before we speak and fail to think before we do either.

Granted, the Covid-19 lockdown was traumatic for many people and the unfolding pre-vaccine transition period carries its own anxieties. Some people find it cathartic to gather in protest given the privations of the past four months.

However, in the realm of worldviews and ideologies, we should not replace conciliation with a desire for outright conquest. Whether they adhere to our way of thinking or not, other people are more than the sum total of their ideas. Human beings are often far more nuanced in their thinking than forums like social media will reflect.

Issues involving race and gender are hugely important. Much will flow from how we resolve the questions locked within them. It is because they are so weighty that we should resist the temptation to take the easy route, resorting only to either "cancel culture" or outright, instant vilification.

If we believe that someone else's ideas need to change, we must acknowledge that this won't happen without an act of will on their part. We encourage this through engaging, explaining and attempting to persuade, with a mixture of empathy, reason, conviction and compassion.

Revolutions, it is said, eat their own young. Leaders or would-be leaders of highly flammable rebellions often later find themselves rebelled against. They are burned by the very fire they set alight.

Why is this? Because shouting loudly, or issuing threats, provides catharsis only for the shouters. With even the most righteous of causes, such as the struggle against racism and the need to seek a common understanding on gender, being loud on its own does nothing to convince others that ideas have merit in themselves.

Heat, however vociferous, eventually dies down. Only ideas born from and carried forward with the light of reason, passion and compassion will survive.