Social media is much the same, and it's difficult to see whether mean-spiritedness has found a medium to express its bile, or whether adversariality is in social media's DNA. Despite it's clear benefits, I'm sorely tempted to abandon social media, and leave it to its rancor.
It's not that I am "angry" or "outraged"—the major modes of discourse today—I'm just weary with the constant antagonisms that I observe.
"Us and them" is not new. Back in the day, the seer of the Revelation wrote:
And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.Perhaps the seer had tapped in to a more or less universal human condition, something like Hobbes' war of all against all. Some will be winners and some will be losers. And the losers find themselves displaced—cast out.
A different representation comes to us in the form of the Hegelian dialectic, of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis," though it didn't come from Hegel—don't ask, it's a long story. In brief, a thesis is always challenged by an antithesis and the challenge produces a synthesis. The synthesis is something new, neither the thesis nor the antithesis. In Hegel it was expressed rather as the "abstract, negative, concrete." The abstract (idea) has within itself its negation (testing, experience), and that produces the concrete. Elsewhere, the triad is "Being, Nothing, Becoming."
In whatever way expressed, the dialectic helps us see that nothing remains the same. All is change, all is movement, and such seems true. The ancient Chinese had it in the constant movement of yin and yang as complementary opposites. Nothing is fixed, nothing is final, and the great task of life is how to work with the changes.
How to handle the changes is culturally where we find ourselves. Does change require adversariality? Must the fight be brutal? Are there always winners and losers? Are anger and outrage the most productive vehicles for change?
A different approach would be collegiality—working together to solve common problems, refusing the intransigence of winning and losing, focusing on the well-being of all stakeholders, abandoning absolutes for compromises, and listening with care to the antitheses that challenge our theses.
I'm heartened by those I see who take a mediating stance, who embrace collegiality and who refuse to become adversaries. I decided long ago to endeavor to be such. Our current culture of adversity has strengthened my resolve.
Be kind to each other today.
+Ab. Andy