Seeds of Wisdom: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." --John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton
In Shelley Powers' last entry ( also here), she writes about the ethics of weblogging. Knowing the effect of many bloggers linking to one story or to one site can have on that site's rank on Google, Shelley asks, "How is this not dangerous?"
In and of itself, a group of bloggers choosing to promote an idea, or a cause, or even just a bit of fun is not dangerous. It's neither inherently ethical, nor inherently unethical. What is dangerous is the power that ensues. There is power in numbers. We've seen this time in and time out. How that power is used is the key to the ethics.
Power has a way of getting out of the control of even the most well-intentioned people. Power does indeed tend to corrupt, and possessing power can become very addicting.
I offer a seemingly innocent example.
When I was in high school, my history class got into a discussion about mob rule and mass hysteria. My teacher claimed that no matter how strong willed you are, no matter how independent you may think you are, you can get caught up by the collective spirit of a mob. We didn't believe her. With the passion of youth we clung to our ideals.
She suggested we do a little experiment. At the next assembly we were to sit in different parts of the auditorium. No matter who the speaker was; no matter what the subject, at the end each member of our class would stand up and applaud. She told us that within minutes we would have the entire audience up on it's collective feet in a rousing standing ovation.
"Yeah, right," we thought, "We'll look like fools and everyone will laugh." But we agreed to try.
The assembly was about some dry, rather uninteresting topic, but at the end we stood. We applauded and soon, just as our teacher had predicted, everyone was on their feet applauding along with us. We were impressed, but not entirely convinced.
We tried it again and it worked - again. No one else even suspected what we were up to. We had the power. We were euphoric with the feeling that we could bring our classmates to their feet. We were the leaders; they were the sheep.
For the next couple of weeks, wherever we went, standing ovations followed, until our teacher put her foot down. There were to be no more standing ovations.
To this day, I remember the heady feeling that power gave us. And to this day, I can remember how hard it was to stop. How hard it was not to give into the urge to try it one more time.
We learned many lessons during that time about power, and abuse of power, and how easy it is to influence a crowd of well-meaning people.
I think most of us learned to recognize the effects of mob psychology and mass hysteria. Over the years, I've heard charismatic speakers and felt the many minds of an audience merge into one. Fortunately, none of these masses were urged to do wrong, and none of them got out of control, but I knew that they could. I knew first hand how easy it was. That kind of power is indeed very dangerous.
The question then becomes, should we ever use it. I think the answer is yes, but like anything dangerous, it must be used with extreme caution. Bloggers working together can have a lot of power and this is not necessarily bad. We must always question our motives, however, and make sure we don't surrender to the Dark Side of that power.
Posted by Cyberkat at May 13, 2002 8:54 PM | TrackBack