How social media is convincing us we are surrounded by idiots

In an exclusive interview with Arabian Business, the author behind the best-selling book Surrounded by Idiots, which has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide, admits the “divide and conquer” nature of the world in which we live in today is “scary”.

In the book, Erikson, who is a guest speaker at this year’s Emirates Festival of Literature to be held from January 29 to February 13, describes one of the world’s most common methods to sort out the differences in human communication.  It is a method coming from the famous DISA profiles, which use a colour scheme of red, yellow, green and blue as a base to describe different behaviour and personalities.

In part one of a wide-ranging interview, Erikson details the basic principles behind the methodology, how this has been impacted by the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic and why it’s time to talk to each other again.

In terms of coronavirus, how has the pandemic coloured humanity?

Oh, dear. I’m a bit scared of that question because there will be some super experts trying to solve the conundrum of what happened to humanity during the major lockdown.

I think, has it humbled us, I would say? Maybe we are, let’s say, more in touch with our possibilities to be thankful for what we have, to be grateful for what we have. It sounds like a cliché I know. It was better before and then all of a sudden there were so many things we cannot do any more, all of a sudden you appreciate it very much. I was travelling all over Europe constantly and now I can’t do that, I haven’t been travelling anywhere since mid-March 2020.

I am appreciating many new things and some old things and I think that’s a good way to look at it. Hopefully, that goes for more than me.

There have been behavioural changes that have been enforced upon us during the past 12 months, can these be sustained in a post-Covid world?

I hope so, but you can never know. When people are struggling we sort of get together and try to sort problems together in trying to cooperate in a more productive manner rather than just yelling at each other and shouting in the streets.

I truly hope that’s what’s going to happen. We have seen through history, people have joined in when they have this common enemy. Now we have an invisible enemy. We need to be aware of the risks of not doing it. We need to put some things that are kind of stupid to fight about to the side and actually focus on what’s important – solving the pandemic.

The pandemic has taught us to be grateful for what we have, Erikson said

Is the world we live in just now more polarised than ever before and is there any solution to this?

In general, when it comes to social media, we are getting very, very, very polarised, that is, of course, true and we can see this. But the world today, it’s so easy if somebody is angry to just spit it out on Twitter or whatever platform you prefer. It’s so easy these days. And in Silicon Valley they don’t deny it, their algorithms are prioritising strong feelings and, for instance, hate is a strong feeling; it seems to be stronger than love, unfortunately.

It looks like we’re extremely divided and if somebody looked at humanity right now, we would appear much more narcissistic and aggressive and polarised than I think we are in real life. You are not sitting around the dinner table with people that you barely know and yelling at them and throwing things at them and calling them idiots and so on, calling your friends to join the dinner and make them shout at the same guy. You don’t do that and it’s not social media’s fault, it’s helping us to show our less charming personality traits.

It certainly looks more polarised, but I’m not sure it is. We need some sort of balancing power, somebody with some common sense to say ‘hey guys, cool it, take it down a notch, let’s have a conversation about this or a discussion about this’ because some topics are so infected you can’t even ask questions nowadays without somebody starting to yell at you. I think that’s really bad.

How do we get that balance?

I think people need to use common sense. It sounds very naïve when I say that, but the problem with common sense is it’s getting more and more rare. It doesn’t grow on trees.

Usually, sensible people don’t step up and say ‘hey, what are you doing?’ Sensible people are sitting down, leaning backwards and thinking, that doesn’t concern me. At the end of the day, it will concern them as well. Some people who are, let’s say, more to the well balanced or even to the conservative side, thinking everything is fine and they don’t have to engage in that type of discussion; well maybe you do.

Maybe you can’t just live your life the way you’ve always done, maybe you have to engage yourself as well. I am trying to do that myself, in a balanced way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work because people usually don’t listen if you have a wrong opinion. That’s also bad. But engage in some things and try to ask intelligent questions and don’t be scared of an intense discussion, online or offline.

You’ve devoted over 20 years of your career helping people to communicate, are we losing the art of communication now?

Sometimes when I give public lectures, people say to me we are communicating more than ever because we have so many tools to use now, but I saw an American study that said only six percent of Americans use their smartphones to make phone calls on and that tells us something. It’s probably different in Sweden and different in the Middle East, but it tells us something. Usually, people send a text message instead of dialling the number.

With all the social media platforms available, are people really connecting with each other?

We can communicate on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or email, all of these things. We are communicating a lot, but what I’m wondering is are we connecting with each other, that’s the conundrum, how can we communicate and connect at the same time positively, because telling that guy he’s stupid and he’s an idiot, that’s not connecting, that’s just, I don’t know what that is, it’s not even communication.

We need to pay attention, we need to really put some effort into this. I truly believe this. One of the reasons why I work with personalities and behaviours and how to understand is that it’s easier to discuss something, regardless of what it is, it’s easier if you understand it yourself and how other people perceive you and if you understand the other guy and the other side of the table; who he is? Why he is sounding like he does? Is he just not like me? That’s valuable knowledge.

Let’s park coronavirus for a minute, where are the challenges going forward, what are we facing as a civilisation?

Polarisation scares me a little bit. I’m past worries, I’m a little bit scared now of what’s going to happen because some forces in society like us to be polarised, they want us to be divided. In English, it’s divide and conquer. They will always try to divide us and take us apart and tell people they are enemies with others. With the culture wars that are going on online, it’s scary and it’s really bad.

We should pay attention because very fast it can go too far and it’s going to be really hard to fix. Some people are saying we are facing dark times in human history. I’m praying for the opposite and I’m sure you do as well, but how can we push the brakes when some people go too far?

I think just average Joe has to step up and say ‘I’m not ok with this’. We need people to interact and be more a part of the public discussion and showing that there are some reasonable people out there, not everyone is hateful or resentful, not everybody is into conflict. We need cooperation, we need the traditional values – look for the similarities. We can learn much there.

Erikson’s best-selling book Surrounded by Idiots has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide

Tell me about your participation in the Dubai Festival of Literature and the message you will be bringing across here?

I’m really looking forward to this. I will be talking about communication and how the people who you don’t understand maybe you shouldn’t label them as anything, certainly not as idiots, even though I write that in my book.

The whole thesis I am driving is that people are usually not idiots. There are idiots in the world, there are ten to 20 people who are idiots and they are moving around so it’s hard to see where they are.

My message is, learn to understand who you are, learn to understand who other people are and see where can you find a good way to communicate. As an example, where are your similarities? What can you agree upon? Where can you team up and agree? How can you make your points of view easier to grasp from another point of view.?