Yesterday’s brilliant article Something Is Wrong Online by Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic helped me find a framework to express what has been bugging me since long before the internet. He wrote about the craving for certainty that drives us to grasp for quick answers to shocking events—answers that fit our preconceived notions of how the world works.
The current case in point is the online finger-pointing that began as soon as the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination broke. As I’ll explain, I’m well acquainted with the need to explain the unexplainable, which reaches frantic levels when what’s unexplained is a tragedy. Our online culture is a magnifying glass that turns that tendency into an blaze of disinformation. Warzel wrote:
This is the algorithmic internet at work. It abhors an information vacuum and, in the absence of facts or credible information, gaps are quickly filled with rage bait, conspiracy theorizing, doomerism, and vitriol.
Many of us are familiar with the famous line from Shunryu Suzuki (1904-71), the Sōtō Zen monk and teacher:
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
The problem is retaining a beginner’s mind—aware of what we don’t know and open to possibilities—even when badly shaken. I’ve written before about the most traumatic event in my life—even more traumatic than the accidental death of my son in 2015. Thirty-two years before that, my uncle and aunt were shot to death by their son, the first cousin who had been my playmate growing up....
For more from Mel Pine, check out his Substack page and his author website.
