Manipulative, toxic people don’t belong in my life, shouldn’t have access to my decision-making process, and are best strictly social distanced from.
The question is, how do I avoid creating an unhealthy echo chamber? If I remove every voice that I deem toxic, haven’t I created a space that simply reflects my own views and biases?
The global coronavirus pandemic has acted like a gigantic threshing floor, winnowing the healthy from the unhealthy. Those with underlying disease are orders of magnitude more susceptible to CV. And those who have an underlying affinity for untruth, are being shown up quite clearly.
Now that I know, ever more clearly, who has made agreements with untruth and manipulation, how do I eliminate them without creating an unhealthy echo chamber?
I have kept a few draining people in my social media feed solely for the sake of having dissenting voices. The downright toxic I have eliminated, mostly because I can’t handle the interactions.
All this begs the question:
How do I eliminate toxic (manipulative, controlling) influences in my life without creating an unhealthy echo chamber?
Which begs a second question:
Is an echo chamber always a bad thing?
An echo chamber is a space in which all voices echo each other. Only a defined set of values is permitted to be expressed.
This is generally considered to be A Very Bad Thing. Humans are fallible, liable to errors in logic and limitations in understanding. Diversity of perspective and viewpoint, even argument, is needed to counteract this fallibility. Through peer pressure and fear, echo chambers tend to become ever more limited and narrow-minded, and argument is banned. Therefore, echo chambers are not to be desired, so the logic goes.
But. Toxicity is also not to be desired. Deliberately permitting manipulation toward a toxic thought process and belief system, in the name of diversity of thought, is a horrible thing.
It becomes a classic Catch 22. Permit some toxicity or have an echo chamber.
But as I thought and prayed about this and engaged in a number of lively conversations with good friends, I began to see that it is a false dichotomy, created by a flawed perspective.
Echo chambers, you see, are not human inventions. The original echo chamber is heaven, where a cacophony of angels and humans weep, and shout, and sing, and yell, in worship of the King. Their theme is “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come.” This is an echo chamber that is filled with one thought, one set of values, one focus and purpose.
And it is holy, good, beautiful, and right.
Our flawed, very human, echo chambers are not holy. There is little that is good, beautiful, or right in them.
Human echo chambers are human focused, fear driven, and dominated by control and insecurity. The center, the theme, of this kind is one person or a small cadre of persons, whose views dare not be crossed, whether they are in alignment with truth or (as is often the case) with evil. I do well to be extremely cautious of that kind of echo chamber.
However, accepting toxicity in my life is NOT the only alternative. Instead, as I listen closely, there is a gentle, whispered invitation from beyond the bounds of time. The whisper invites me to a different kind of echo chamber, one in which I am not the center, in which I do not make the decisions about which voices do or don’t belong.
“Come.” “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.”
Come to the heavenly echo chamber. Join the chorus of worship. Come into alignment with Truth.
Hear the voice of the King and allow Him to direct who goes and who stays, within my circle. There is an infinitesimally small part of the heavenly echo chamber that is under my authority. I am responsible for taking orders from the King and following His directive about who gets to be in that circle and who doesn’t.
Turns out, my circle SHOULD be an echo chamber. It should echo Truth.
What that looks like is up to the King. I am only responsible for obeying orders. And for joining in the chorus that echoes Truth throughout time and eternity.