The Echo Chamber

I was out for a morning jog this week and I heard a couple of dogs barking across the valley at each other. 

I was deeply impressed with their ‘call and response’ regularity and the ability of one to copy the rhythm of the other, all in the interest of territorial awareness. 

Then of course I realised it was one dog with an echo from across the other hillside. The dog of course continued yapping away, unaware that their potential assailant was in fact their own voice bouncing back at them. 

My mind goes into a spidery web of analogies, lessons and comparisons from here. 

I had the (dis)pleasure of reading ‘Stalingrad’ (Anthony Beaver) over summer, a harrowing read of what happens when two megalomaniacal leaders make a symbol out of a city and will use all resources at hand in the pursuit to win it. The thing is, both of these leaders worked in an echo chamber of their own voices and the (quite rightly) terrified leadership around them. The resultant suffering from this one event is an extreme example of what can happen. 

In our own day to day experiences we need to take care of the reverberations from our own ideas as well. Clearly, as we are all aware, social media creates an echo chamber for us – but whereas the echo created by the border collie down the road fades out eventually, your personal feed is amplified. The funniest social media complaint that I have heard: ‘Why is every video on my feed some girl in a bikini?’ 

Lastly, the people that we surround ourselves with can create the same effect. There is real comfort in being able to sit and complain with a Negative Nellie and think that a problem shared is a problem halved. I think that a problem shared can also be a problem amplified. 

Don’t just surround yourself with people who are going to nod and smile and hand-wring with you. If you do want to make an impact and ensure that you are not just listening to your own ideas bouncing back at you, the best thing that you can do is find someone who gives you feedback that makes you feel uncomfortable, making sure that you are not chasing ideas that are as futile as barking at your own echo.