{"id":13928,"date":"2023-04-23T00:00:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-22T23:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/turski.blog\/?p=13928"},"modified":"2023-04-23T00:00:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-22T23:00:52","slug":"3rd-sunday-of-easter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=13928","title":{"rendered":"3rd Sunday of Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAn echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation, usually for recording purposes. For example, the producers of a television or radio program might wish to produce the aural illusion that a conversation is taking place in a large room or a cave; these effects can be accomplished by playing the recording of the conversation inside an echo chamber, with an accompanying microphone to catch the reverberation.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/a> However, thanks to the development of modern digital technologies, these days such an effect is achieved on computers in an incomparably easier and cheaper way than by visiting an echo chamber; moreover, the parameters of the reverberation can be minutely tweaked by using virtual sliders rather than fiddling with huge screens set around the echo chamber. Yet, despite all the technological advances, the echo chamber is alive and well in its new incarnation as the term to describe a social phenomenon that seems to be on the rise, particularly since the Covid pandemic. <\/span>\u201cIn news media and social media, an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. An echo chamber circulates existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarisation and extremism. On social media, it is thought that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and favour and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/a> However, it isn\u2019t a new social phenomenon; although the Internet has made it easier to create such echo chambers on a greater scale, we can easily find examples of it in the past, such as nazism in Germany and Austria in the 1930s and 40s. You might be surprised to learn that we can see a small-scale echo chamber in today\u2019s gospel too.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story of the two disciples of Jesus, making their way out of Jerusalem a couple of days after his execution, began with them talking about the most recent events. It\u2019s clear from the story and its context that they held deeply negative views and opinions about the whole saga. They were highly critical of the leaders of the Jewish society; in other words, of their political class. We can sense their subconscious disappointment with Jesus, who instead of fighting his oppressors meekly let them kill him in an appallingly brutal way. Perhaps they were angry at themselves for – as they might have assumed – falling for false hopes of political liberation from the Roman Empire. These are my speculations based on the hints provided by St Luke; what we can be absolutely certain of is that the two disciples weren\u2019t happy and, by talking about it between themselves, they had mutually reinforced their negative thinking. Effectively, they created their own mini echo chamber.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what we often do without realising it. Having been hurt by someone\u2019s words or actions we look for soulmates to share our pain and in such a way reinforce our belief that we have been wronged. If the soulmate is favourable to our cause, it winds us up more and more and makes the case against the alleged perpetrator ever stronger. It perversely offers us some kind of mental comfort despite keeping us at a high level of anger. In the worst-case scenario, it can lead to violent revenge, \u201cjustified\u201d by the sense of injustice suffered at the hands of the perpetrator.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two guys on the road to Emmaus were fortunate to be joined by a companion who skilfully, gradually broke the walls of their mini echo chamber. Firstly, he dispelled their assumption that the world revolved around the recent events in Jerusalem: <\/span>\u201cYou must be the only person staying in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have been happening there these last few days.\u201d<\/span><\/i> It was the assumption we are familiar with: when we are hurt, the world must know it and be appalled by it. The disciples\u2019 companion pricked such an assumption by an innocent question: <\/span>\u201cWhat things?\u201d<\/span><\/i> It opened the floodgates of their resentment, anger, disappointment and disillusionment. They angrily told him the story of Jesus (<\/span>a great prophet<\/span><\/i>), his death (<\/span>our chief priests and our leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and had him crucified)<\/span><\/i> and even of his resurrection (<\/span>some women […] had seen a vision of angels who declared he was alive<\/span><\/i>) but they didn\u2019t believe the latter (<\/span>some of our friends went to the tomb […] but of him they saw nothing<\/span><\/i>). In such a way they exposed their grief and anger but instead of a reassuring pat on the back to confirm their views, their new companion offered them a completely different view of those events: <\/span>\u201cstarting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself.\u201d<\/span><\/i> It sparked a new hope in their hearts, to such an extent that they insisted on him staying when he appeared to be parting ways with them. We know what happened later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Staying in an echo chamber seems to be convenient because we are being repeatedly reassured that whatever bad has happened, it wasn\u2019t our fault; that we are the innocent party. Sometimes it can be true. Consequently, it\u2019s the other side\u2019s job to make amendments, to fix the situation, to sort out the problem; my involvement is practically limited to being at the receiving end of such efforts, gracefully and magnanimously accepting apologies. But what if the other party has their own echo chamber, repeatedly reassuring them that they were wronged? Nothing gets sorted out, and the situation comes to a stalemate at best or at worst even escalates. So, being in an echo chamber is detrimental and ought to be avoided.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should let ourselves be exposed to different views and perspectives, not because they are necessarily better than those held by us. When our beliefs and convictions are being questioned we have a chance to develop a better understanding of them, better arguments to defend them or to correct them if they are wrong. Jesus\u2019 biblical arguments on the road to Emmaus didn\u2019t change the past events in Jerusalem a jot but they helped the two disciples to see them in a completely different light and consequently turned them from misery to glory. Quite a turnaround! It can happen to us too if we are open to hearing different opinions, even if the opening line isn\u2019t too comfortable to hear: <\/span>\u201cYou foolish men!\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

Image by Peter H<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAn echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation, usually for recording purposes. For example, the producers of a television or radio program might wish to produce the aural illusion that a conversation is taking place in a large room or a cave; these effects can be accomplished by playing the recording of the conversation inside an echo chamber, with an accompanying microphone to catch the reverberation.\u201d However, thanks to the development of modern digital technologies, these days such an effect is achieved on computers in an incomparably easier and cheaper way than by visiting an echo chamber; moreover, the parameters of the reverberation can be minutely tweaked by using virtual sliders rather than fiddling with huge screens set around the echo chamber. Yet, despite all the technological advances, the echo chamber is alive and well in its new incarnation as the term to describe a social phenomenon that seems to be on the rise, particularly since the Covid pandemic. \u201cIn news media and social media, an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. An echo chamber circulates existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarisation and extremism. On social media, it is thought that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and favour and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies.\u201d However, it isn\u2019t a new social phenomenon; although the Internet has made it easier to create such echo chambers on a greater scale, we can easily find examples of it in the past, such as nazism in Germany and Austria in the 1930s and 40s. You might be surprised to learn that we can see a small-scale echo chamber in today\u2019s gospel too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-a"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}