THE OLD HAVE MADE A MESS OF THE WORLD.
THE YOUNG WILL SAVE US.

1. World leaders are meeting in Spain to decide whether or not to bother with
   preventing the destruction of the earth, like people in a vehicle speeding toward
   a cliff deciding whether to brake or swerve ... or maybe they are simply chatting
   about other things. Powerful senior citizens in the United States – Trump,
   Giuliani, Biden – are trading playground insults, and the middle-aged people                    5
   who make serious decisions about how to handle this emergency seem
   incapable of thinking beyond the singularly imagination-killing criterion of short-term profit.
   
   
2. I began writing this column at a 'Youth versus Apocalypse¹' demonstration in
   San Francisco. The protest, which was led by teens, of course, as well as some             10
   of the twenty-something members of the Sunrise Movement and Extinction
   Rebellion, took place in front of BlackRock, the world's largest investor in fossil
   fuels. There was a little cluster of mothers at the demonstration too, with babies
   and toddlers whose life expectancy, barring catastrophes, extends into the
   22nd century. It was a 'Fridays for Future' demonstration taking place all over                 15
   the world, with half a million mostly young people in Madrid.
   
   
3. Sometimes I think that our species was for most of its history a child: it had
   limited capacity to harm and thus limited responsibility to do no harm. We could
   kill one another, but we did it without napalm² and nuclear weapons. We could
   think small because we were altering the earth with hunting, grazing, farming,                 20
   foraging and building; but most of our traces would vanish and most of our
   impact left no lasting damage.
   
   
4. With the industrial revolution and its reliance on fossil fuels, and with
   technologies capable of changing the Earth on a more profound scale,
   childhood harmlessness faded into the past for those who wielded those                         25
   powers and used those tools and benefitted from it all. Humans ceased to be
   mere mortals, but our imaginations and ethics lagged behind our impact. For
   two centuries we have been in a sort of wild adolescence, too reckless and
   impatient to pay attention, or to listen to those who point out that there are fatal
   consequences.                                                                                                                   30
   
   
5. We are on the brink. In order to retreat from that brink, humankind's
   adolescence must end. As a species, we must act with restraint in the face of
   consequences, must consider other species, humans not yet born, and those
   currently facing dire climate vulnerability around the world from floods, fire, sea
   level rise, crop failure, super-storms and more.                                                                35
   
   
6. We must expand our imaginations and act on a clearer understanding of our
   place in the world and our impact on the future. That means making radical
   changes, like our homes and transport being powered by renewables, and
   leaving fossil fuels in the ground, where they belong. We need to remind
   ourselves why these changes are necessary: that the Earth is finite, that                        40
   actions have consequences that go beyond the horizon of what we can see
   and hear, in time and space. Those who come after us have rights we cannot
   just annihilate. We must make sweeping changes by the end of the coming
   decade, and we must stick to them afterward by remembering why they matter.
   
   
7. What is striking in this moment is that environmental maturity is largely the                    45
   property of the young. Many of the significant adults in the room of climate
   chaos are 16 or 20 or 27, such as Greta Thunberg and the thousands of youth
   like her who are less visible but no less committed. Teens, from Nigeria to
   Alaska, are doing their utmost for the climate, but they control no shares, have
   no votes, sit on no boards: they need us just as we need them. They are the                 50
   leadership at this moment, youth who are thinking about 2100, who are ready
   to change everything, and who understand the gravity and scale of the
   catastrophe.
   
   
8. The young, who have never experienced a below-average temperature on
   Earth, have the capacity to recognise that we are in an emergency. There is                  55
   wisdom in youth, in their lack of attachment to the status quo that is not their
   status quo, and in their ability to imagine profound change.
   
   
9. There have been far-sighted altruistic³ people in every generation, but there are
   signs of a wider evolution of imagination that is taking place among the young.
   We see that profound change in the youth's new ways of dealing with conflict,                60
   rejecting competition and capitalism, while they understand what is possible
   and ethical. Juvenility and maturity are no longer categories attached to how
   long you've been on Earth, but how far you see and how much you care.

[Adapted from The Guardian Weekly, 20 December 2019] 

WHY FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA TRAVELS FASTER THAN THE TRUTH

False news is more novel than true news, and that may be why we share the false much faster and more widely. Prominent responses to false news include surprise, fear and disgust. True news tends to be met with sadness, joy, anticipation and trust. Humans are more likely than automated processes to be responsible for the spread of fake news.

Researchers have studied what they term 'rumour cascades'. A cascade starts with a Twitter user making an assertion about a topic – with words, images or links – and continues in an unbroken chain of retweets. The researchers analysed cascades about news stories that six fact-checking organisations agreed were true or agreed were false. The study found that 'falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than truth in all categories of information'. Of all categories of fake news, false political news reached more people faster and went deeper into the networks than any other category of false information.

The study compared the emotional content of replies to true and false rumours by using about 32 000 Twitter hashtags and a lexicon of about 140 000 English words that are associated with eight basic emotions: anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy and disgust. Were automated processes, or 'bots', the main culprits in spreading falsity? No – the researchers found that humans were responsible for spreading false news.

The researchers were more interested in identifying the factors that spread true and false news; they included interviews with users, surveys, lab experiments and neuro-imaging. The researchers' paper points to some obvious reasons to look deeper. False news can drive misallocation of resources during terror attacks and natural disasters, the misalignment of business investments, and misinformed elections.

More openness by the social media giants and greater collaboration by them with suitably qualified partners in tackling the problem of fake news is essential. Traditional journalists are potential partners too. Since they find, check and disseminate news, they are well placed to assess the reliability of the reports that they receive. They also attract masses of comments online and generate discussions on social media platforms – they have a clear incentive to maintain trust in their own contributions to democratic life.
[Adapted from theguardian.com] 

 Steps you can take to Spot it and Stop it

• Speak up and speak out if you are being bullied or if you know someone who is being bullied
• Speak to your Manager and/or HR who will be supportive and helpful in finding the right way through. Try to sort the issue informally first of all
• Make a formal complaint to your Line Manager, Hospital Director or HR Manager/Lead
• Raise the issue on the staff feedback website with direct access to the CEO

INSTAGRAM: FRIEND OR FAUX?

1. Instagram show-offs are prompting a backlash against over-staged shots. Not
   an Instagrammer? You're missing out on a social network that's stuffed and
   crammed full of artily shot camera-phone photos: people’s bronzed limbs
   (aka hot-dog legs) laid out on sunloungers; yoga poses in front of waterfalls;
   muscled gym-bunnies demonstrating military-grade stomach crunches;                    5
   superfruit smoothies.
   
   
2. Fed up with this digital display of perfect people having perfect lives on perfect
   holidays, a new breed of Instagrammers is coming clean. One couple admitted
   their gap year posts would have been more accurate with images of all the
   toilets they cleaned and beds they made! A Thai photographer has created               10   
   serial shots of photographs in which Instagram posts are juxtaposed against a
   broader picture, e.g. a stylish-looking dinner which does not reveal the chaos
   outside the frame. He includes the background: a cat on the table and half-eaten
   instant noodles.
   
   
3. The psychology of both envy and FOMO (fear of missing out) are fanned by the        15
   flames of Instagram. Teen Instagrammers have found a solution. They post real
   Instagram ('Rinstagram') posts, targeted at parent’s and friends, while their
   'Finstagram' (fake Instagram) accounts contain unflattering photos.
   
   
4. Perhaps it's time to get real or log off.

[Adapted from The Star]