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News and opinions—be they medical, scientific, or political—have spread and shifted with manic speed since the novel coronavirus took over our lives and attention. The wave of protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has accelerated this trend. As an already fragile world faces another divisive issue, I write to propose a pause and a truce. First, allow me to share a counterintuitive observation from the perspective of a cognitive anthropologist who studies cultural evolution in the digital age: The biggest, most immediate threat to our health, peace, and integrity is not COVID-19 or systemic racism. Climate change (at least immediately) is not it either. The gravest, most urgent menace ever to loom on our species is the internet.
The truce I wish to propose must be initiated at the most intimate level—the level at which the crisis affects us most: our intuitions, emotional reactions, and social relations. Since the Trump election and the resulting tribalization of everyday life, many relational units of families, couples, friends, neighbours, colleagues, citizens, and fellow humans have come undone. Friends and loved ones stopped speaking to each other over political differences; that is, over different ways of interpreting and envisioning the fundamental dynamics of human relations. Different ways of interpreting the threats posed by COVID and racism have significantly accentuated this problem. This issue has become so perverse that prominent media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum are now advocating cutting ties with family and friends over political disagreements.
The Trump election, the COVID crisis, the tragic murder of George Floyd, and the global wave of protests that ensued have provided a steroid-fuelled acceleration of these trends, but the conditions for so much divisiveness had been seeding for close to a decade. The culprit is mobile, high-speed internet, and social media in particular. More to the point, the nature of this unprecedented threat lies in the damage inflicted on human psychology by hyperconnectivity and instant information.
Before throwing the towel at the current state of peak atomization, consider alternative ways of interpreting current events. People are sorely divided on interpreting the COVID lockdowns as a disastrous overreaction, or a belated and imperfect effort that was not taken seriously enough. Few pause to celebrate the unprecedented opportunity given to all of us to shift our awareness toward the fragile but essential ties that unite us all. Reactions on both sides of the debate are fundamentally motivated by altruism and a concern for the most vulnerable. As hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of people took to the streets worldwide to express indignation at the injustices of racism and police brutality, the themes of solidarity and mutual accountability resonated louder than ever. Others felt excluded, demonized, and silenced by the protests, which they associated with increasingly voguish efforts to paint the entirety of Western history and literature as a simple linear progression of colonialism and violence against non-whites.
The way out of such divisiveness lies in pausing to remember the complexities and contradictions of our interdependent histories. The history of Western colonialism is also the history of anti-colonialism and expanding circles of empathy, curiosity, hospitality, hybridity, and dialogues. Domination and exploitation have predictably occurred when civilizations met and clashed, but so have new friendships, love stories, novel modes of trade and exchange, new cultural and artistic ways, technological innovation, and unprecedented forms of pacifism and cosmopolitanism.
Democracy can only be a work in progress—one in which, in 2020, most Western countries have already come a long way. Racism and police brutality continue to endure and cause terrible harm, but if the million outcries of solidarity in the world’s streets and Twitter feeds tell us anything, it is precisely that public tolerance for such atrocities has never been so low, and that the democratic conditions to tackle this problem are already in place. It is precisely from the ever-stronger histories of abolitionism, human rights, and civil liberties that sprung from the errors of colonialism that the voice of our youth arise today.
Depicting the world and our complex, shared past as exclusively one thing or another (a ‘right or wrong’ side of history in particular) is a dangerous simplification, which, like social media, appeals to the most fragile aspects of our psychology. Denouncing all forms of discrimination based on gender, sex, or skin colour is undeniably good. Proposing instead that "all policemen are pigs" or that ‘whiteness’ is intrinsically violent is another form of dangerous groupism. Continuing to paint the world—past and present—as more hostile than it is will also continue to inflict terrible damage on our mental health and unfinished democratic projects.
Much has been written already on the human mind’s dangerous tendency to latch on to negative, low-quality information online, and on the risks of entrapment in a limited worldview that only confirms our worst fears, reinforces narcissistic righteousness, and triggers divisive moral outrage. Turning to science fiction may offer a better window into the darkest corners of our nature.
In the 2014 spy comedy Kingsman, Samuel L. Jackson plays an eco-terrorist tech billionaire who vows to "save" the planet by purging it of much of the human species. Under the guise of philanthropy and free access to information, the villain distributes internet-equipped smartphone SIM-cards to everyone on the planet. Unbeknownst to the happy recipients of free, unlimited mobile internet, the SIM cards are equipped with a toxic frequency that can be remotely activated to incite unrest and murderous rage. Like the ominously close-to-home series Black Mirror, the visionary plot of Kingsman should be interpreted as a fable that only slightly exaggerates the terrifying effects of technological conditions that already solicit the darkest side of our nature.
The mass wave of protests that took over the world as we emerged from lockdowns is both a testament to human resilience against, and a tragic surrender to the toxic effect of screens on our psychology and sociality.
The young and disenfranchised people who massively took to the streets following George Floyd’s assassination had already succumbed to a growing sense of despair after months of lockdown. They were already weakened by a pre-existing sense of impending climate doom, uncertain economic prospects, social entropy, and an epidemic of loneliness and anxiety. This mass movement should be read as a global cry for help from our youth, and a long-overdue search for meaning, purpose, and belonging to a project greater than oneself.
Time and again, history has shown that it is much more intuitive for people to unite against a perceived common enemy than to rally for a peaceful cause. Social media does not offer the time and nuance to carry out such a counterintuitive project.
Parks, streets, restaurants, bars, classrooms, hallways, and libraries are much better sites than Facebook and Twitter feeds for this important project. The project of re-unification must begin with fighting our own tribalistic urges, refusing our own intuitions, and seeking face-to-face dialogues with friends and foes alike.
If you must use social media, limit yourself to the messenger function, think of the lost friend and relative you most disagree with, and write to propose a walking or park date.
