As we observe our current world order becoming less cohesive, more volatile, socially fractured, politically polarized, and hence arguably less predictable, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand why.
Difference, prejudice, and group identification in opposition to alterity, as well as tolerance and cooperation based in mutual self-interest, have always existed among civilized collectives; but within today’s multicultural societies tolerance has given way to contempt, if not outright animosity, directed toward others without filters or restraint.
We may anticipate an increasing breakdown in civil liberties, inequality under the law, human rights abuses, and an unraveling of national unity where international alliances disintegrate.
It is not uncommon to witness verbal aggressiveness, uncouth swearing, and intimidation displayed toward strangers while having a morning coffee. Such unbridled disdain in public spaces has sometimes led to civil disobedience—even violence, where interpersonal courtesy, mutual respect, and common decency have given way to what some people feel are acceptable ways of expressing their acrimonious attitudes and opinions, what we may call the new abnormal.
If I may venture a hypothesis, I would say two main reasons that divide people in our contemporary societies are (1) basic differences in ways of perceiving social reality, and (2) a felt fundamental clash of values.
The Psychopathology of Popular Culture
We are witnessing an alarming degree of splitting among people and groups into bipolar camps of good versus bad where binary logic, either-or reasoning, and the eclipse of critical thinking is dominated by emotional hysterics and downright stupidity.
It may not be inappropriate to conclude that the masses simply don’t think: they emote under the unconscious spell of how their fantasies create their perceptions of society. Seldom do we observe conversations among people—whether in public institutions, the academy, or a bar—that are based in a rational analysis of factual, objective social conditions, but rather they are driven by subjective caprice and emotional polemics.
In some cases, faulty personal beliefs based in affectively laden fantasies of others is all that is required to justify one’s distorted interpretation of the world around them, which they often mistake for objective reality. This psychological process is what is largely responsible for the construction of ideologies sustained by unconscious prejudice that interpellate the attitudes and behavioral fantasies of social collectives.
This dynamic is at play behind the psychopathology of popular culture that feeds on antithetical differences between others that threaten the core of personal and group identity formation. These splits, binaries, or divisions based on opposing perceptions and value-judgments are driven by the negation of otherness, which is viewed as subalterns with fundamentally different worldviews that threaten or offend one’s own identity.
This is what I believe lies at the heart of the culture wars, namely, the rejection of those different from oneself. This can take many forms, from affirming one’s own group or clan identifications, whether they be cultural, political, or social class to identitarianism, such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and/or other identity politics based on the preferential self-expression of valuation through a psychology of blaming others. In other words, we need a whipping boy to pillory in order to discharge our pent-up frustrations and displace them onto the perceived cause of our suffering. This is a basic ingredient of being human.
On the Precursors of Our Growing Divide
Social divisions among peoples had been brewing for at least the past couple of decades but was catalyzed by the US presidential election of Donald Trump, hence engendering more progressivism on the Left and populism on the Right.
Trump’s second term as president has already proven to be even more polarizing and destabilizing with his autocratic attack on constitutional rights, wide dismantling of governmental agencies by subverting congress, turning on his bordering neighbors and allies, stopping international aid, instituting global tariffs, threatening to annex Canada, take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gaza Strip through military force if necessary, and generally turn a liberal democracy into a fascist state.
Most of the world masses remain unaware of the dangers fueling our looming catastrophe.
We may anticipate a global intensification of value-based clashes between nations, economic disparities, and more social divisiveness amplified by hegemonic rule, oligarchic control, and a political climate that targets difference while pitting people against each other based on dissimilar group identifications.
When enemies are kindled or manufactured, this encourages tribal mentality based on a simple economy of in-groups versus out-groups, hence fostering an “either with-us or against-us” sensibility where morphologic différence becomes the moral yardstick upon which others are to be judged.
Applied across the board, this can be generalized to anything, from the color of your skin to the clothes you wear, the way you talk, and the pronouns you go by. More discernible differences can arouse fear, disgust, or conjure up the paranoid position, such as the presence of migrants, refugees, ethnic, cultural, and religious heterogeneity, the criminal Other, and so on.
The pandemic only exacerbated society’s primal fears of anxiety, paranoia, threats to safety, helplessness, aggressive acting-out, and the need for so-called justice under the sway of illiberalism, entitlement, vulgarity, violence, and the need for revenge. Ressentiment, victimization mentality, rancor, animosity, and hate are thought to justify incivility toward others including attacks on social institutions, government, and abstract systems such as capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and structural racism—injustices intensified by the murder of George Floyd.
Our Looming Catastrophe
Perceived differences in identity, values, social class, inequalities, and animus for alterity further distorts a more sober, conscientious, and holistic appraisal of social reality. Heap on top of the more personal and domestic concerns that preoccupy peoples’ daily lives the larger existential risks that threaten the fate of civilization and human extinction, and we have a very grave problem indeed.
Most of the world masses remain unaware of the dangers fueling our looming catastrophe. The new horsemen of the apocalypse are the climate crisis, nuclear engagement or global war, future world overpopulation, unregulated technology, and the collapse of law and order.
The impact of globalization and geopolitics affects everyone whether they are aware of it or not. Trade, the economy, international relations, national and domestic security, military conflict and war, and the functionality of civil society are interdependent dynamic variables that impact on standards of living, health, safety, and our immediate daily lives.
Economic, class, and wealth disparities could conceivably lead to downward social mobility where basic needs go unmet due to inflation, household debt, and soaring costs of food, energy, and housing where people can’t afford to live. These hardships on families further lead to health-related illnesses, loss of income, familial stress and pathology, domestic abuse, addictions, mental illness, and transgenerational trauma that will lead to future deaths of despair.
Disintegrating Societies and the Rise of Disorder
These adversities trickle into the very fabric of mainstream society on concrete levels leading to increased poverty, homelessness, widespread crime, civil disobedience, and unpredictable violence. When social disruptiveness and criminality are orchestrated by bad actors seeking to wreak havoc on society through technology abuse, social media influence, and the spread of disinformation, we can no longer know what is true and no longer feel safe.
Cyberhacking, internet espionage, data theft, ransomware, techno-nihilism, and social media pathology have all but destabilized communication networks, banking, securities, health institutions, and private industry. As the principles of democracy continue to erode in developed countries, we may anticipate an increasing breakdown in civil liberties, inequality under the law, human rights abuses, and an unraveling of national unity where international alliances disintegrate.
With more civil and regional wars comes the threat of military devastation on a mass global scale where abject diasporas, mass migration, and societal collapse will predictably bring about the end of human civilization as we know it.
When all the compounded, overdetermined existential perils to civilization and their interaction effects are taken into account, we cannot help but remain anxious about the fate of humanity.
Climate denialism when the world is on fire, unregulated capitalistic exploitation by billionaires and corrupt politicians who commit kleptocracy through governmental control when masses live paycheck to paycheck, and the recent scourge of totalitarianism inflicted by the US president who rings all alarm bells of a dictator is enough to be worried about.
Will the free world make it through these crises? If the metaphysical order of human existence remains in such chaos and retrograde regression during these crucial moments in history, then we will predictably watch the continued deterioration and instability of the world come to pass.
