+1
Oh dear.
How to put it in a neutral way. I believe that there's two kinds of people, those who love to like, those who love to hate. We do all have reasons to love and reasons to hate (legitimate ones, I mean), but we're different in terms of which ones we treat as good news or bad news. Some people are way too eager to jump right to the conclusions or interpretations or simplifications that justify oh-so-righteous wrath and hatred. Way too disappointed if there's a reason to reduce it a bit. And the thing is... this is independent from the underlying values. It's a thing where either good causes or bad causes can be instrumentalized as excuses all the same. It's an attitude that you can see both on the "good side" and on the "bad side" (however you define them). And that's terrible.
It's antagonistic, it's polarizing, and deliberately so. Because of the glee of charging heroically at a defined monster. And the internet -twitter summaries, social network bubbles, emotional clickbaits- has made us terrible junkies in that respect. And wherever I am, whatever the ideology that surrounds me, whether I agree with it or oppose it, I always, always end up a monstrous baddie for showing too lukewarm, too cautious about our perceptions of life complexities, about our limited knowledge of actual situations, about the multiplicity of the layers that get collapsed into ready-made narratives. For taking new cases as their own complex life mysteries instead of going "hah, I knew it I knew it, it's always like that !" half-through the headline. And so, I always become a suspicious accomplice of The Other Side. No matter my actual values.
And, this makes me very, very pessimistic about us, about the future of our societies.
And, in particular, I expected "my side" to show the way, when it comes to a healthy relationship with truth, fairness and complexity. And... nope, all sides are the same in that respect. And that's heartbreaking to me. Because it deprives the best values of their best tools : objectivity, curiosity, exhaustivity, and proximity to reality. And the humility of judgement suspension when data is lacking or too contradictory. Because, no matter what the internet tells us : we are not supposed to be able to pass fair judgement on everything we remotely hear about. It's not our sum of big opinions that makes us better.
But oh the emotional delight of "the impression of having understood", at the minimal cognitive cost. It will kill us. It will make us kill each others.
So. There's my viewpoint. Probably sounding very noble to everyone, at that level. But when it comes to practical applications... *shudder*