The right is living in a pivotal time. “Republican” has become an empty word for millennials and Gen Z, and the majority voting bloc looks not to Fox News but to the internet for their daily dose of opinions.
The nature of news itself seems drastically different today than it was several decades ago. Politics is entertainment, involvement is screen time, and the transmission of information is incessant. This strange, new landscape is filled with propaganda, conspiracy theories, algorithms, and larger than life characters blurring the lines between political commentator and popular entertainer.
How can we preserve ourselves as we navigate this world and stay grounded in reality and truth? The answer is to pursue the cardinal virtues, particularly temperance.
Truth vs. Curiositas
Temperance is about balancing pleasure. Oftentimes, it’s only viewed through the lens of portion sizes or refraining from another glass of wine, but it extends to the enjoyment of any good, even knowledge.
Aquinas calls this intemperance curiositas. Unlike the English “curiosity” which evokes an earnest inquisitiveness, curiositas embodies a greed for knowledge that consumes the seeker and, paradoxically, results in the inability to grasp the truth about reality.
Curiositas devours knowledge, not for the sake of truth (as is often claimed), but out of an inordinate desire for more information. It’s characterized by neglecting our personal lives, intellectual pride, and the falsehood that we have the right to whatever knowledge we want.
Both pundit and audience are falling prey to this. Political channels are gossip columns parading around as journalism, and who can blame them? Money talks and its message is that the viewers are eating it up. Statistics showing a daily average screen time of seven hours tell the same story.
Regulating the quantity and manner in which we consume politics can make all the difference. It’s a slippery slope from curiosity to curiositas and the omnipresence of news only makes it easier. Regarding the news, temperance is not burying your head in the sand; instead, it is habitually unplugging and calling up a friend. It’s taking the red string down from the collaged mystery map in the basement and picking up a new hobby. It’s putting aside the quest to discover who runs the world and cracking open a novel.
Plato said temperance instilled harmony to the soul and Aquinas said its second meaning was “serenity of spirit.” The sphere of online politics is a chaotic mess of unrest, and opening the doors wide for that mess to enter our daily lives isn’t being well-informed, it’s intemperate.
Cutting the Puppet Strings
Curiositas leads to missing the forest for the trees, and the forest we’re all blinded to is manipulation. The internet’s decentralized nature may break down the ease of homogenous misinformation, but it’s far from impervious and, if we allow it, can be wielded as a far stronger weapon of propaganda.
Information control, indoctrination, and ideology are not exclusive to regimes. They are just as likely found in the subscribe button and daily podcasts, especially when the news never leaves your side. The bell rings with each latest video and if you miss it, you can watch it later. The algorithm feeds you more and more, delivering other channels like it, and leading you down whatever rabbit holes it likes.
The news resembles social media more each day, and I’m guessing that’s no coincidence when the result is a population whose political ideas have the same psychological effect as a gambling addiction. We the people are becoming puppets of podcasters, and whoever pulls the strings molds our minds. Meanwhile, we remain under the misconception of being free-thinkers.
Temperance, not more information, is the scissors to cut ourselves free. Taking a step back from politics helps us question things without getting hypnotized into obsession, and also keeps us from mistaking orchestrated conflict for an organic shift.
The fight for freedom isn’t just in court cases about unfair censorship or government overreach. That battle is first fought on the fields of individual choice. Technology will control us if we cannot control it, and the most powerful way we do that is the off button.
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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Flickr-CollegeDegree360, CC BY-2.0
