Don't kill your neighbour (yet)

Analysis of an antagonistic phenomenon

(By "media" in this article, I mean any structured project that consciously and voluntarily carries information: TV channels, radio stations, news websites, social networks, videos, etc.).

Although this article has, once again, a philosophical dimension, I would nevertheless like to publish it in a design context, as the way we think about the world obviously has an immediate impact on the design we produce and the way we use it.

The binary mindset

It will not have escaped anyone that today's society, particularly in the West, is extremely fragmented. The number of divisive issues and their more or less fanatical supporters has grown exponentially. So much so, in fact, that we avoid more and more subjects at the family dinner table, as they are likely to spark off altercations with sometimes disastrous outcomes.

Vegans vs. carnivores, climato-alarmists vs. climato-skeptics, right vs. left, young vs. old, Americans vs. Europeans, Americans and Europeans vs. Russians, pro-Ukraine vs. pro-Putin, ecologists vs. eco-carefree, atheists vs. religious, men vs. women, rich vs. poor, LGBT vs. traditionalists, and so on. The list goes on and on. In fact, it's endless. It's the struggle of all against all, and it's a way of dissecting human realities ad infinitum to bring out differences that can be instrumentalized through mass manipulation.

This systematic dialectic of binary cleavages doesn't come from nowhere. It's an old political technique, perfected by the Bolshevik movements, which enables popular discontent (generally legitimate) to be diverted towards predictable antagonists whose words, positions, numbers and malevolence are constantly exaggerated. In this game, the media are obviously among those primarily responsible, and their eternal quest for buzz, for marketing purposes, is no stranger to this.

In the past, we had occasional disagreements with each other - it happened, and it's perfectly normal. What has emerged through long-term binary propaganda is intolerance. We no longer tolerate anything, simply because the lobbies and the media have persuaded us that those who take a position contrary to ours are a direct threat to our safety and intimacy.

The most obvious example at the moment is the way in which the unhealthy attraction of certain transgender people to children is highlighted by journalists (who often pretend not to notice). While thousands of other transgender people, who don't seem to show any questionable attraction to children, originally expressed no such claims, the media chose to highlight the information they knew to be the most shocking possible in order to create reaction and emotion among the public, the main fuel of the media economy and of any social engineering.

The consequence of this attitude, directly linked to the colossal power that the media have over our lives, has been to create, almost ex nihilo, two camps which are now opposed to each other, and in which the vast majority of people who didn't ask for anything in the first place, and who had much better things to do, are lumped together.

Divide and rule

In this respect, the role of the lobbies, of which the media are almost all obsequious relays, is simply to finance here and there a few groups of not very stable people whom they encourage to become fanatics by legitimizing them, whose actions are then relayed by journalists, and voilà!

In addition to this, a common technique is also to accuse at the same time people who are asking in the middle of the storm for a minimum of respect to "play a politics of division". Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black!

The aim of this simple yet effective social engineering mechanism can be twofold:

• create chaos in a country over which one wishes to gain power

• create chaos in a country over which one wishes to retain power

This method is so effective, in fact, that the occasional mention of the identity and actions of some of those truly responsible for the suffering of the people (the people themselves having their share of responsibility, of course), changes absolutely nothing. Societies are so lacking in cohesion that even the raw truth doesn't lead to anything relevant, our fragmentation is so deep that it is in fact too far gone to develop concrete, promising projects out of it.

In such a context, you can have the best design ideas in the world, but it will be impossible to really disseminate them. If you put forward an ecological project, those who are tired of environmentalist propaganda will immediately distrust it, while the ecologists will defend it so fiercely that they could become dishonest at some point. If we propose a project for children, we'll be suspected of paedophilia or some attempts to enlist them. If we want to help industry produce better, we become murderous polluters. Etc. People will spend all of their energy arguing instead of accomplishing anything, even in the tiniest groups.

Unplugging manicheism

In fact, the crystallization of antagonisms produces a frustrated and hysterical immobility that can only lead to bloodshed if no calming but determined force comes to balance the game with actions to perform. This force can be of many kinds, as we mustn't think that the answer to division has to be a universal communion, as this would reinforce the division between universalists and identity advocates.

The best move, in my opinion, is simply to start considering that not agreeing on everything is not necessarily a reason for anger, hatred and violence.

Here are some ideas to help getting out of this noxious morass:

• learn to keep our autonomy of decision when we feel an emotion (when we are "triggered"), and get away from knee-jerk reactions when it is not necessary (meaning, almost all the time)

• stop consuming media that play the divide game, which means first of all not reacting to their publications but simply ignoring them, which is what they fear the most

• re-learning how to communicate without trying to be right at all costs and join one camp or another to fight some imaginary enemy

• create our own media where appeasement and discussion are a priority, and help those who are already doing so (this includes stopping all forms of clickbait) - and I am not talking exclusively about online projects

• discuss our frustrations constructively and try to work out projects for society

Given that such ideas, which are fortunately already being put into practice by many low-profile people, are easily "cleavable" by journalists, and that it's easy to paint a vision of them as "Care Bear", "immature", "personal development gibberish", "non-violent concepts", or whatever, it goes without saying that only constant and patient effort can bear fruit.

Among the success stories I'd cite in recent years, the fediverse remains for me the most interesting, because it's an ecosystem that allows everyone to get involved in their own way, choosing the contacts they wish to develop, and there are many forums where benevolence is never absent from exchanges, even if they are sometimes stormy. Of course, the fediverse is not spared from the zeitgeist, but there are reasons to rejoice in there, because its own design accepts the idea that not everyone will fit in the same place and that it is ok to not care about a topic or another.

Other constructive media outlets should emerge soon and if they can make a healthy connection with concrete applications, we have every reason to believe that things can gradually get better in some places. Don’t hesitate to comment if you want to share some of the ones you already know.

This would enable us to gradually recover or discover a "synergetic" mindset, capable of considering many needs without ceasing to be effective and impervious to the wills of malicious dissension. This could certainly lead to original solutions impossible to conceive with a binary mindset.

In this respect, it is also extremely predictable that the real antagonists who will then reveal themselves will be exactly those who wished to set up this propaganda, which I sometimes call "bloody demagogy", in the first place. We're not there yet, but let's prepare ourselves carefully, because if journalists are the watchdogs, there are some very dark and powerful people behind them with whom it’s almost certain that we will not be able to communicate peacefully.

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