Looking through
the content of various posts that spring out on social media, I came to a conclusion
that I tried as much as possible to keep it to myself, but I think that, after
all, it’s a healthy thing to share our opinions, and to confront our critics.
For all of us, 2016 was a rough year, maybe not so much due to the fact that
terrorism was more present in our newsfeed, but more due to the fact that we
came to the conclusion that the world has changed dramatically and we know now
some of the defining social trends that will dominate the years to come.
For many years,
I must admit, that if somebody asked me “Which are the defining elements of our
decade?” I would surely needed a lot of time to give even the most basic
answer. Now I can see things in a different light, and I think that
radicalization will be the heaviest label of this decade. Stop! I’m referring
here only to the radicalization of Islam, as some of you might think, but more
about the radicalization of opinions in general. Even though the world evolved remarkably
from a technological point of view, we seem to get more and more infantile when
it comes to expression our opinions, and especially those that regard hot
topics for the whole world.
We are becoming
more and more literate when it comes to using gadgets, but it seems that our
critical thought framework is become extremely frail. The general trend is that
of going back to a bipolar world model. For those of your that were born in the
late 80s and early 90s, or even sooner, you grew up with the imagine of a world
that is divided among two opposing ideological camps – US, representing
capitalism, an ambassador of free speech, and the USSR, representing communism,
and all that came with it – limited rights when it came to free speech and a
economy fully dominated by the state.
Even thought
this world order is long dead by now, our era has some similarities with it.
The West is becoming more and more infiltrated by groups that have as goal the
spread of ideology at any cost, with a total disregard towards pragmatism in
general. The main tactics that left wing groups use nowadays is similar, to
some extent, to a phenomena know in geopolitics under the name of
Balkanization. This phenomena describes the fragmentation of a nation under the
direct force of internal forces, of groups that want to reject the common
identity at any cost, and ultimately to create their own identity on facts
and reasons that a truly doubt worthy.
In our era, we
seem to be fighting an evil that is nonexistent, or one that does not makes its
presence known through suffering and misery, as it did its ascendants just a
few decades back. We don’t fight poverty and malnutrition, we fight micro-aggressions
and man-spreading. The evil of the late 2000s is different in essence of
the one that we knew from the early and late 90s.
But even so,
modern evil is more perverted, has more complex fight tactics on its side. The
most toxic of all is the white-black/good-evil/partisan-nonpartizan view of the
world, with nothing in between. Even if our view of the world, in its
wholeness, is stronger now than it was in the past, our way of understanding
what happens around is becoming more and more rudimentary. We see things
through a very polarized perspective. In Sociology we know that a child in his
early years perceives things, people and actions as either being good or bad.
As a child grows, develops the capacity of seeing the nuances that change
drastically any story.
Ignoring the
nuances that make reality what is at the end of the day represents a huge
danger for our society, and perpetuating this trend that is fueled by toxic
identity politics and anti-scientism will have devastating effects on our
general wellbeing as a society,
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