unified
#Czeslaw Milosz, from Unattainable Earth (1987):
I don't like the Western way of thinking. I could say: the way Western intellectuals think, but then I would pass over the transformation that has occurred during the last few decades. And the transformation (not a sudden one, though suddenly present, like pubescence or senility) consists in the disappearance of a distinction between the enlightened — the knowledgeable, the progressive, the mentally liberated — and the so-called masses. That great schism has ended and we are returned to a unified world view, as was the case in the Middle Ages when a theologian, a cooper and a field hand believed the same things. Schools, television and newspapers have allied themselves to turn minds in the direction desired by the liberal intelligentsia, and so the victory came: an image of the world which is in force for all of us, under a penalty equivalent to the ancient penalties of pillory and stake: that is, ridicule.Indeed, this project of unification, and ridicule for dissent, continued and, thanks to the panopticon of social media, intensified. But the attempt to impose Left Purity Culture seems finally to have generated a significant resistance, on several fronts.
Still, for “the knowledgeable, the progressive, the mentally liberated,” is this really such a bad thing? As long as they control the levers of cultural and economic power, isn’t it kind of nice to have the canaille to despise? Especially since, as I have often noted, the primary point of any purity culture is not to achieve specific social or political or moral goals, but to enforce ritual gestures that clearly distinguish those Inside from those Outside. Distinctions for the sake of tribalism simpliciter, not in service to any perceived good.
Thus Freddie deBoer’s recent post on definitional collapse:
Our moment is one in which anything is possible because nothing means anything. Every last set of orienting principles in politics is being dissolved in the acid bath of culture war, before our very eyes. I am telling you: never in my lifetime have political terms meant less. You can easily imagine a world where vaccine skepticism was left-coded — indeed, in the Trump years it was! — but in this particular reality your thoughts on vaccines overrule your feelings about the means of production. That condition is the product of pure contingency, chance; there is no a priori reason the left-of-center would treat vaccination status as a definitional landmark. But right now that is what yelling people yell about, and there is no ideology anymore, no ideas, only Yooks and Zooks.What will happen if we get a genuine strongman, of the Right or the Left — that is, a politician shrewd and competent enough to stimulate and direct the forces of tribalism, and to put the government in service to those forces? (Trump sort of wanted to do this but wasn’t smart or focused enough.) We may ultimately be grateful for social media as an outlet for both ressentiment and bullying — people absorbed by fighting online may not have the time or energy for meaningful political action — but if a strongman ever takes over this country, I, like Freddie, doubt that more than a tiny minority of people will be capable of meaningful (as opposed to merely symbolic) resistance.In other words there is a vacuum of meaning, in our politics, and the really scary question is what will fill it.