David McElroy

I’ve been away from Facebook for more than a year, but I recently waded into the waters of insanity there briefly. It was an eye-opening experience.

Facebook owns Instagram and is pushing users to integrate their accounts on the two services. Somehow, my Instagram settings were changed — without my knowledge — in a way that published all of my Instagram posts to Facebook. This meant I had to spend some time figuring out how to untangle the two accounts again. Out of curiosity, I browsed my old Facebook news feed while I was there.

The experience reminded me why I left. More than anything, though, it left me questioning the mental stability and judgment of some friends who I’ve always believed are good people. The raging political hatred they were expressing left me alarmed.

It wasn’t that I disagreed with the specifics of their political or social positions, in many cases. But the rage and hatred they were spewing made it seem that they had lost all perspective about life. It seemed as though the medium of social media had turned them into raging monsters.

They were angry about things they couldn’t control in the real world, so their rage drove them to scream with hatred of their enemies on Facebook. This does absolutely nothing to change the world around them in the ways they want — and that internal rage appears to be destroying them.

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I was fighting for dominance long before I understood hierarchy. In classrooms, on playgrounds, and on neighborhood fields, I considered it natural that I should be in charge.

I didn’t necessarily like most other people. I didn’t much care whether they liked me. But it was important to me to have as much control as I could get. If I couldn’t have leadership of the larger group, I would at least be the leader of the opposition — those who refused to go along. It was rarely open conflict, but everybody knew which few were competing for power. I was always one of those.

I read a long diatribe online today from a woman who was denouncing “male power hierarchies.” She claimed they were an instrument of “white supremacy” and she claimed white men were trained in this “unnatural power system” in order to oppress minorities.

I had to laugh. Nobody ever taught me to want dominance. Humans are naturally drawn to form dominance hierarchies and certain people among groups want power. Some people tend to be given power, even though some of them — those like me — weren’t the best liked. And this woman who was ranting would be shocked at the vicious power hierarchies among groups of young black men I’ve known. Is their hierarchy all about “white supremacy,” too?

Humans need hierarchies. We couldn’t survive without them. I can’t explain how we decide who gets power in a room, but we’ve all been in plenty of situations when we’ve known — without words — who was in charge and who would lead us.

I’ve sometimes been the one in charge — and I’ve sometimes been the one pushing power buttons to disrupt someone else’s control of a group. Like it or not, these are essential human skills.

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I don’t want to change your political views, no matter what you believe.

As long as you vote, I don’t care who you vote for. As long as you want your side to “take back the country” from “those people,” I don’t have much to say about it. I might agree with you that “those people” are evil for controlling everyone, but that doesn’t mean I approve of your side, either.

There was a time when I wanted to lead this country — through political power — and make the changes that I believed were right. I volunteered in political campaigns. Then I spent years as a highly paid political consultant. I assumed that change should happen through this electoral system.

In my more naive political days, I thought “the people” would follow me when I showed them what was right. Then in my more realistic period — as a political professional — I understood that campaigns were merely about making voters believe that my candidate was on their side. For reasons that I’ve explained many times, I came to understand that this system was immoral — because it was based on forcing one group to obey another group.

Today, I know that partisan politics doesn’t matter. As evil as politics can be — and as much as I detest the narcissists on both mainstream sides who impose their will on us — I understand they’re equally wrong.

I don’t want to change people’s politics anymore. Instead, I want to cause people to examine their assumptions about human life and society. I want to create art and other works that will entice people to look at their unexamined assumptions and say, “I’d never thought about that in this way before. What if I’ve been wrong?”

I want to quietly invite you to discover a new way of thinking — a way that will make all of your old political ideas seem irrelevant and obsolete.

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