New Documentary: "The Poisoning of the American Mind"

Right-wing and left-wing ideological silos are damaging America

Documentary

NEW DOCUMENTARY: THE POISONING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

Right-wing and left-wing ideological silos are damaging America

From the Connors Institute at Shippensburg University

Editors’ note: A new book on the ways that right-wing and left-wing information (misinformation, disinformation) silos are deranging our politics, titled The Poisoning of the American Mind, will be published by George Mason University Press in June of this year. It is edited / authored by Lawrence M. Eppard (Shippensburg University / Connors Institute), Jake Mackey (co-founder of Free Black Thought), and Lee Jussim (Rutgers University). A documentary film of the same title from the Connors Institute explores its themes.

Watch it here:

Read an excerpt from the book here.

In a nutshell, the book and documentary argue that human beings are hard-wired to look for information that we agree with (regardless of the information’s veracity), to avoid information that makes us uncomfortable (even if that information is true), and to interpret information in a manner that is most favorable to our sense of self.

We all have these tendencies—Republican or Democrat, young or old, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, it doesn’t matter.

The damage these cognitive tendencies can cause to one’s perception of reality depends in part upon the information ecosystem that one inhabits. Unfortunately, in the U.S. today, most liberals and conservatives alike have sequestered themselves in sealed information ecosystems where people and sources they believe to be trustworthy and authoritative regularly bombard them with misleading information and even outright lies.

While there are several factors one could plausibly blame for this predicament, the decline in the quality of the sources of information that the right and left rely on over the last few decades plays a primary role. These sources include academia and the mainstream media for the left and outlets like Fox for the right. As a result of this decline in the quality of information coming from trusted sources, we are faced with an epistemic crisis that is poisoning the American mind and threatening our democracy.

The film, based on the forthcoming book The Poisoning of the American Mind (George Mason University Press), was written and produced by Allyson Ritchey and Lawrence M. Eppard and presented by the Connors Institute at Shippensburg University.