A serious curiosity derived from something I’ve noticed more and more often lately:

What the hell has happened to nuanced thought? It seems every day- more and more, it’s either this or that, with us or against us, black or white. What happened to the complexity of thought? Why have we come to be so polarized about every single thing that exists? And it seems it doesn’t matter the subject! The moment a topic is brought up. Sides are immediately taken in the War of Being Right.

It used to be that we considered things. We were rational. Logical. Contemplative.

Now? Everyone seems so quick to arrive at hastily constructed arguments that have to be either for or against- where no argument was necessary or even called for to being with!

It seems to me, that we need to relearn what was once so easily understood, and it’s that life exists between the boundaries of one and the other.

  • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    3 hours ago

    Some amount of that is literal psyops. Every major country is intentionally trying to cause at least some division in their geopolitical rivals. There’s also internal psyops where governments will try to fracture any movements that might cause political change. At a smaller level, there’s echo chambers built by people that are already sucked into an ideology, hoping to propagate that ideology. This recent thread that had simple biological truth downvoted to hell is an example:

    https://sh.itjust.works/post/50387688/22307005

    All in all it’s not new though, it’s just gotten more efficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism is one example of how it’s always been this way. Isaac Asimov also had a pithy quote:

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

    When you have your basic needs met and aren’t starving to death, you can afford to be irrational and embrace comforting lies. It’s just the human condition.