The past decade has seen political polarisation – accelerated by social media’s filter bubbles and echo chambers – deepen and mutate across the globe. An ominous era of a polycrisis has shattered any remaining societal consensus. Meanwhile, powerful anti-establishment voices have stepped into the void left by the collapse of institutional trust, moving everyday people closer to fringe beliefs on either side of the spectrum.
Distressed and disenchanted, people are burying themselves deeper into silos where content and camaraderie offer apparent comfort by reaffirming worldviews. As dark socials and incel groups have gravely illustrated, closed spaces not only upholster fractured beliefs; they become accelerators for unyielding, asocial mindsets. In an essay on dangerous binaries, novelist Mohsin Hamid indicates how “we have learned to apply those zeroes and ones to our thinking, intensifying our impulse to sort one another into like-me and not-like-me”, creating a “disastrous confluence of polarisation, militarism, democratic dysfunction, and environmental disregard.”
What’s more, the shocks of failed leadership and lacklustre allyship continue to inflame the public. Hot-button issues spanning the gender wars in South Korea and China to the class divide in the UK are only deepening and cementing fault lines. Caught in disarray, people have become short-tempered and hyper-reactionary. It’s clear why society has not only bifurcated, but drastically atomised. As belief systems haphazardly diverge, it’s a struggle for people to realise the echo chambers that confine them, let alone see eye-to-eye with anyone else.
As cult collectivism becomes a norm rather than an anomaly, it’s gotten frustratingly difficult to swallow hostile feelings towards a contra-Tweet or an infuriating article. But this isn’t just doom and gloom. ‘Calling in’ initiatives are mediating across factions – third parties such as YouTube channels and human libraries are hoping to mend ideological rifts by facilitating conversations. Such is a glimmer of hope that could be emulated and amplified, even if it steers us only ever so slightly away from the crash.
