Thoughts on Net Neutrality (Gatsby style)

Re-reading The Great Gatsby for the billionth time has flavored my view on the issue of net neutrality. There are reasons why this book has the critical acclaim that it does. It touches on many important, and often times subtle, horrors of humanity in complex ways that require interpretation. We, as humans, want to divide ourselves. We divide ourselves without thinking about it sometimes, as though it were an innate process like learning to speak. And who knows, perhaps this tendency to divide ourselves is rooted in language and misunderstanding, and multiple perspectives…

We love the “us verses them” mentality. We love the images of ourselves that we come up with in our minds, and the lies we cherish and believe to cover up the horror and cruelty of the seemingly beautiful, cinematic aspects of exclusivity to whatever it is we prefer.

Well, guess what? The world is already bigoted, hierarchical, and classist. The real world is, anyway. And while I’m not going to get into the philosophy on the internet’s belonging in “the real world,” I will say it affects real people in the real world, and it’s an integral part of most people’s lives in many places across the world. The United States already bases a child’s “equal opportunity” for an education on that child’s parents’ property taxes, and every middle schooler knows the gut wrenching fear of not sitting at the “right ” table at lunch. Hell, adults know this fear too. Do we want the INTERNET to be like a middle school cafeteria, or even worse, MORE LIKE THE REAL WORLD? I’m not arguing against reality here, I’m arguing for a open, safe, creative space for people to unite and not divide. A place where bigotry can shrink and community can grow. This isn’t a political party thing either, guys. It’s a chance to keep open one hell of an experiment with the power of unity, creativity, education, and communication. Think of what you wouldn’t know without the internet being as accessible as it is. Education and communication. Let me repeat that: education and communication.

My point to all of this being: the internet is uncharted turf. It’s like the green light in Gatsby or the sprawling green “new world” we now call the U.S., only not exactly. It has the potential to be better. It has the potential to halt our prototypical behavior when it comes to dividing ourselves and hurting each other. Like it or not, we are not best divided, but united. Individuality is important and individual freedoms are too. When I say divided, I’m not talking about personal preferences or individual liberty. I mean the “us verses them” mentality that we so easily fall into that separates us all from our true potential. I’m talking about the reason Myrtle gets run over and how Nick writes her out of the story and simultaneously puts Gatsby on a pedestal.

What is potentially happening with the internet is scary, because it takes an immeasurable opportunity for equal growth, learning, understanding, creating, personal and global development and kills it dead in the water.