That there are fifty shades of gray between white and black could be called democratic popular wisdom. Although this is traditionally put aside at the time of elections. A mediagenic political game apparently involves directly opposed opponents. The arena and the audience demand that. And that audience can best be served with a fight in which self-proclaimed truths in the form of clear positions are the weapon to wipe the other person off the electoral map.
The fact that clarity rarely relates to the messy complexity of existence could just as well be called a democratic popular wisdom. For some, climate madness is the policy to combat climate change, for others it is the loss of nature and biodiversity. And against those who promise mountains full of gold and happiness, there are those who see it as a dystopian economic perspective. Problems may be relatively easy to summarize in sparkling one-liners, but political solutions are almost never the same. But: if everyone is right, no one is.
The fact that we are made to believe otherwise during elections logically leads to widespread social disappointment. White and black are the ying and yang of our community existence: both are necessary to keep the country and thus society running to some extent. Without the democratic recognition of many shades of gray, and therefore the refutation of the self-proclaimed truths, stagnation and hardening are the inevitable consequences.
It only becomes truly disturbing when this unstable balance between clear election promises and complex social problems is undermined. An era we are in the middle of. Due to social media and the dismal tendency of traditional media to connect with it, those who are able to proclaim their self-proclaimed truth the loudest and clearest are the ones who attract the most attention. Winners versus losers, deniers versus scientists, utopians versus dystopians and the undercurrent versus down-to-earth. In this way, nuance also disappears from the public arena. Gut feeling over complex reason.
Where nuance is dead, the rise of bullshit cannot be stopped. The idea that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle is replaced by the belief that the truth is irrelevant. Philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt elaborated on this nicely in his essay in 1986 On Bullshit. Anyone who sells bullshit is someone who doesn’t care whether his or her statement contains any sense of reality. As long as the purpose is served, the factual content of the claim is completely secondary. And if the bullshit statement finds its way to mainstream media channels via X, that is pure profit.
Watch some videos on Instagram of climate deniers, anti-vaxers, self-proclaimed vitamin gurus, body fit boys, population thinkers or other types of conspiracy fringes and you immediately understand the disastrous impact of bullshit in overdrive. Since social media does not excel in context, it is a lucrative bullshit pit without a bottom. The revenue model does not lie in political votes, but in euros, cryptos or at least a staggering number of likes. It does not matter one bit that democracy, society and even our health can be extensively damaged as a result.
The way out of bullshit seems much more complicated to me than the way towards it. In fact, if you are a true bullshit excellency who has made bullshitting a trademark, you could easily become president of the United States again. And how do you refute self-proclaimed truths in the form of clear positions in a media reality that barely allows for nuance and therefore requires clear positions? Honestly: I wouldn’t know straight away either.
What I do know is that politics, media and society are held in an untenable stranglehold by bullshit. Admittedly, this statement may also require some nuance. However, it cannot be disputed that this stranglehold is a democratic danger. Because a politics and society without nuance constitute a politics and society without the hooks to connect with each other. Then one’s own right becomes not only dominant but also a belief. And that separation between church and state is there for a reason, right?
