Calligraphy by Mishkin Qalam:
The Name of "Baha'ullah" in the Form of a Rooster (1887-1888)
Creation Place: Middle East, Iran

"…we haven't always insisted upon this in our Social Media presence."

Could it be that Social Media, as presently practiced, creates a pervasive disharmonic resonance? Instead of vibrating at a renewing frequency, might it vibrate all over the place, amplifying not coherence, but incoherence incarnate? This seems to be the case. Worse, the incoherence seems to be spreading. It would have been unthinkable for our current incumbent to have ever been elected dog catcher, let alone President, even in our most recent pasts. We’ve elected scoundrels before, but never one so absolutely incoherent, one apparently incapable of even acknowledging the presence of even our most self-evident rights. He commits greater crimes than those his presumed perpetrators committed when arresting them, and calls that even. He violates the emolument clause with more than mere impunity. He continually violates simple human decency. He personifies the context within which Social Media rages.

Never before in the history of this world had such a powerful potential presented itself. The dream of finally connecting every human being to every other one has revealed just how inhuman we can become together. We might be inherently incapable of creating harmony together. We resonate at frequencies so varied that we disrupt the potential harmony any odd individual frequency certainly seems capable of amplifying alone. We will not, we cannot follow coherently. We dissent, acting out as if wronged. We invent convenient enemies and then wage aggression against them, even if it’s only “pretend.” There are and never were any such things as unrepresentative behaviors. We are whatever we do. We do whatever we are.

We seem drawn to the poison. We contribute our share, which always amounts to much more than our share, of disharmony to the collective. We might innocently commit these sins, but we still commit them and so become guilty as charged. False dichotomy must surely be the result of this churning, opposites opposing apparent others, two sides emerging from some great invisible continuity. Our Social Media exploits these fissures, amplifying them discordantly, encouraging ever greater attempts at reformation that only prove to become even more degrading, amplifying what nobody says they want. We’re all equal victims of it, even the apparent winners, even the losers.

Some insist that the disconnection will ultimately prove to be self-healing, that the fissures produced in early-adoption ignorance might ultimately spark some enlightenment. Perhaps this notion serves as just another poisonous resonance, innocence bent on self-destruction or worse. We are clearly at war with ourselves, even though we scarcely admit it. The age of enlightenment promised better, but better required certain behaviors. It forbade fleeing backward into ignorance, however attractively the old legends seemed to promise. Progress demanded abandoning childish things like omnipotent kings, omniscient gods, and an impotent polity. It required education to fuel an adequate appreciation of all we could never know and of all we might one day come to understand, to counterbalance the endless reassurances ignorance provided. Ignorance endlessly reassures while enlightenment humbles.

Our Social Media selves seem altogether too proud of themselves. We show off to each other, praying for followers in lieu of any actual appreciation. We seek attention and anonymity in almost equal measure. We crave exposure, mistaking that for engagement. Our engagements promise nothing but endless promises. Our purpose seems to be ignominy, or might just as well be. We are definitely not a community, but something more like a wannabe community, as if we’ve forgotten or abandoned the resonance that naturally comes from harmonious interaction. The fractious and ruinous attractions we commonly practice: preaching, teaching, screeching, preening, all unsolicited, these become our resonance, and they have become poisonous. One primary purpose for Unscrolling might be to disrupt the disharmonic resonance. Resonance was never necessarily inherently good, however otherwise we might have assumed. I believe we still hold access to our underlying goodness. It sure seems curious that we haven’t always insisted upon this in our Social Media presence.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz