MASS EXPLOITATION

The current push-back against social media, like Facebook and Twitter, comes in part from those who see the process of deep interpersonal hypocrisy as a corrosive influence on human society. There are those who have or aspire to powerful positions who would squelch more open and honest social media for their own reasons. These people are currently more successful at exploiting today's social media for their nefarious purposes. Hence the use of social media for surveillance and for culling out free speech which is contrary to prevailing corporate-driven indoctrination.

I have always thought of exploitation and opportunism as different. Exploitation implies an intentional manipulation in order to benefit from someone else's work or resources. Opportunism implies a more contemporaneous grasping of a presented opening which could work for an observant individual's benefit. 

I have witnessed examples of each. I have grasped opportunity when it has been presented, thereby being an opportunist in some situations. However, I have an aversion to exploitation. 

An example may serve to clarify. In the late 1980's, as the HIV epidemic became somewhat more understood for what it was, due to some public education by those afflicted, access to disability insurance pay-outs was freed up by corporations and insurers for HIV-positive people with signs of terminal illness. In some cases, an HIV-positive person not yet suffering from AIDS, the end stage of an HIV infection, managed to convince a physician to exaggerate his condition in order to go off a job on permanent disability. Some of these people were high-earners. Their combined disability income, private and public through social security, was considerable. Some traveled extensively. Others invested their disability money in second or third home's mortgage. These people were not sick or disabled. They had exploited their physicians' compassion to exploit the insurance system. Some are still alive after 30+ years and quite well off. Others, of course, eventually died of AIDS. 

This earlier exploitation of the insurance system led to an eventual backlash later in the epidemic. People with AIDS gradually found the process of applying for disability when they were actually sick, or dying, to be onerous. I happened to be one of these AIDS patients in 1996 when I was given a 6-month terminal prognosis due to a completely collapsed immune system. The process of obtaining my disability insurance took months as my health deteriorated. I was forced to sell my home, my first piece of real estate which I had bought just two years earlier. My point is that exploitation of resources or people by some has repercussions for others.

As a man in nursing, I have been opportunistic. Twice in my professional nursing career I pursued a promotion when a senior staffer left a vacuum. Both times I was awarded the promotions, despite having less seniority than other staffers. I was hired in both cases because I had already volunteered to fulfill duties above my pay grade as an assistant to my supervisor. My proficiency at those administrative duties, while fulfilling my job's requirements fully, got me the promotions. However, seeing the opportunities and seizing them was a necessary process at securing those promotions. The same process applies to buying property that needs work and fixing it up for resale. This opportunism does not necessarily entail dishonesty or bad business practices in the market. It entails observation, knowledge and initiative. 

There is an aspect of exploitation that is particularly pernicious. Exploiters are often dishonest in their methods. Like those who fraudulently presented themselves as terminal when they were not, some exploiters have the sociopathic ability to present themselves as more skilled or more worthy than they are. Con men are the most felonious exploiters. People who dishonestly buy fracking rights from poor farmers are exploiters. Professionals who lie about their experience or academic credentials to secure lucrative jobs are exploiters. Pedophile priests are exploiters. 

There are many exploiters in today's social-political sphere: Those who exploit their identity as a member of a particular group or, worse by far, exploit the identity of someone else to gain attention and power without personal ability or substance. They exploit by intentionally adopting an ideological script which  garners them provenance in certain circles. A bourgeois talking head on a mainstream news channel, for example, who defends thuggery, gang violence or other illegal activity by others on the basis that the others are underprivileged or oppressed is an exploiter. The addict who claims his/her disease renders him/her devoid of any responsibility in order to garner sympathy or financial support is an exploiter. The feminist with neither developed skill nor socially acceptable demeanor who claims to deserve better due to her inability to gain social stature because of oppression by men is an exploiter. I could go on.

As I have said, exploitation by some has repercussions for others. The exploited often recognize that they have been misused. This entails a backlash. Such backlashes can be sweeping, indiscriminate. They can take the form of seismic political change. They can take the form of social punishment of groups who had nothing to do with exploitation by the few with whom they are unjustly identified by the vengeful exploited. 

The suppression of critical expression of thought and skepticism in the social-media sphere has been a bonanza for the exploiters in society. From Trump to Sarsour, extremist exploiters have learned to manipulate segments of the people to achieve fame, wealth and power. The rational and scientific have been marginalized by those who wish to exploit fear, ignorance, superstition and guilt.

The tar brushes of racism, sexism and homophobia are part of the exploiter's tool kit. This is most unfortunate, because the repercussions for those who are, and will actually be, oppressed will be serious when the backlash to the exploitative use of these real phenomena occurs. Those who have exploited fear of democratic socialism to gain power and financial dominance will also suffer in the backlash to their false claims, as the fabric of civilized society continues to unravel. And those hard-working and socially committed people who are honest and fair minded will also suffer, despite their distance from the exploitative extremists. That is perhaps the greatest damage that mass exploitation will bring upon society. Destruction of the social, political and financial ballast of a healthy working/middle class destabilizes society for everyone.