-- ConnorHudson - 27 Apr 2022

Hope Pervades Domestically Apolitical Violence

When you have nothing to fight for politically, you begin to think. Domestically apolitical violence demonstrates that our seizure of behavioralism to drive agendas amidst a mundane world has not completely eviscerated the presence of a social conscience capable of free thought.

The End of History in Skinner’s World

Following the “End of History,” the United States wrestled with the implications of a world devoid of a universal justification for action in the form of an existential ideological conflict. In the fourth decade of globalized liberalism as the default social order, this lack of justification feeds a bureaucratic malaise. As it turns out, the fight to survive is a more animating prospect than the maintenance of a status quo hard won. In the absence of a higher alignment, industry has found ways to weaponize our obsession with conflict and need for stimuli towards a profit motive to an extent which would make Skinner blush. With behaviorism undermining individual rationality, the polity has become susceptible to a life unobserved.

In tandem, this sovereign malaise and mechanization of agency has led institutional actors to catastrophize contextually minor differences and current events to achieve political and financial objectives. This intersection is most evident in the polarization and depersonalization of modern media. When the economics of media are driven largely by the intermediation of our attention, those purporting to engage in the free exchange of ideas are incentivized to shift discourse towards sensationalism. Simultaneously, the eroticization of conformist “individualism” by social media causes a heightened awareness of where the tainted spotlight of society is focused. The implications of this shift are a change in social cognition, imposing an intellectual inertia which mollifies individual inquiry by conditioning individuals towards being told what to think and inducing a misplaced detrimental reliance, framing knowing the script of the moment as the proper grounds for social judgment.

This status quo imposes a moral imperative for the future of free thought. We must seek to ascertain how to shake a decisive plurality from our collective stupor and return us to an earnest search for domains and manners of incremental progress. Beginning this search for a pragmatic theory, it is necessary to reflect on two moments of violence in the past year that have spurred independent thought. In doing so, we must move past their relative extremity and mundanity and explore what they reveal about how we can habitually foment inquiry.

Contemplating the Sovereigns

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bellwether of uncertainty, challenging the thought that the tendrils of globalized economics created deterrent interdependencies of mutually assured economic destruction. While the conflict triggered heady colloquoys, the subtler effects on the collective conscience indicate a glimmer of hope for freedom of thought.

The invasion drew us out of ourselves. The gravity of the actions served a healthy dose of contextualization to the catastrophization of minor differences concerning the direction and velocity of a relatively stable liberal democracy. This absolute threat to sovereign autonomy, in a people who we perceive as closer to “us,” served as a stark reminder that the status quo we take for granted is not preordained.

Additionally, the inefficacy of fringe opinions aimed at polarizing the discourse allowed for discussion to proceed toward nuance, requiring higher information and contemplation than the false dichotomy of right and wrong. The denial of this binary, fueled by general moral alignment, led to more individualistic considerations of how normative theories and potential higher order consequences contributed to the justifiability of US involvement, novelly bringing discussions of international relations and economic sanctions into the zeitgeist. The contemplation by the average American of an issue beyond a chyron is a consequence of this global tragedy that must be studied with care and acted on accordingly.

Contemplating Individual Action

As Americans were forced to consider the global actions of sovereigns, they were also presented with the fundamental humanity of those adorned in cultural reverence and the justifiability of violence on a more intimate scale.

Seconds before Will Smith struck Chris Rock on national television for a joke relating to his wife’s alopecia, the woman sitting next to me at the Oscars asked what the most exciting thing that had happened to me at past Oscars was. The unfortunate truth, I told her, was that the pageantry, pomp, and circumstance tend to mitigate any genuine excitement. In the moment, the punch was so out of place as to be interpreted as satire until the circumstances proved otherwise. Intrapersonal violence which was at once so mundane in the world, yet alien to its environment, discombobulated the audience, requiring later contemplation rather than immediate reactivity.

Upon recoherence, the event demonstrated itself as a unique cultural moment. Due to the isolated and self-congratulatory extent of the Oscars and the lack of interracial violence, the event proved so politically unimportant that it was reported as mere fact. As this did not satisfy the public desire to envelop themselves in the moment, individuals began to independently seek information in pursuit of forming an opinion. The public proceeded to engage in the investigation of the particulars, a discussion on the justifiable extent of humor to intrude on privacy, the propriety of the response, the resultant culpability, and the proper remediation.

In comparison to more pressing issues, the depth of this reaction may be viewed as disconcerting. Yet, the reaction of the collective conscience demonstrated that our innate predisposition towards inquiry is still there to be saved.

Conclusion

While it may not be ideal to have to look towards violence, both extreme and mundane, to find occasions of a society spurred towards individual inquiry, Ukraine and the Oscars have demonstrated that the fundamental reservoir of our humanity, our propensity for freedom of thought, persists. Accordingly, we must take notice and engage in further investigation as to what these moments can teach us about the current status of our collective psychology and operationalize those findings.