A value-less society

There are several indicators that, at least in liberal democracies, political engagement is on a steady downwards trajectory:

• Voter turnout has gone down.
• Party affiliation has gone down.
• Trade union membership has gone down.

Why is so? I’ll try to offer a heartfelt explanation, based on how we reason as human beings. My explanation might not necessarily be scientific, but I’m not trying to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal.

As human beings, we value a lot our sense of cognitive consonance (the general sense that things are “ok” and that we don’t need to take any major action to defend ourselves; our internal world is at peace). We do it to an extreme extent. Political action tends to be messy, difficult, and unrewarding. I tried it in my life, and I haven’t always had the grit to carry on, due to the sheer wear and tear.

In the past, especially after World War II, there was a widespread consensus that active political action was needed to avoid totalitarian disasters, especially on the part of the educated class (which I’m part of). This created a “critical mass” of people reading the news, discussing politics and values - which are basically the same thing - and taking some form of action. If you were a university student/white collar worker and you didn’t care about politics, you most likely were the only one in your family/group of friends; hence, you felt cognitive dissonance, rather than consonance.

Over time, the memory of WWII naturally faded away. This might explain part of the decline in political engagement, but I believe that there is a second, more important factor. After the fall of communism, aspiring autocrats (both former totalitarian politicians in ex-communist countries and corporate executives in liberal democracies) understood that there is a very efficient way to run an autocratic society, without relying on complicated, obscure party ideology. An ideology-driven autocratic society is not sustainable… because inducing cognitive consonance in people in such an environment is quite difficult. It requires constant political education, stifling censorship, and above all, the ideology must work well enough to be accepted without major coercion. The whole cocktail might have worked in particular period of times, where consumerism was not widespread and it was easy to insulate citizens from the outside world, but we are in the internet era now.

Instead, these autocrat pivoted to a much more efficient form of social management: devaluization. They offered a Faustian pact to people: we’ll provide you with enough security (and dopamine, in the case of tech/industry leaders) and a modicum of wealth, and in exchange you’ll refrain from taking any meaningful political action. As Anne Applebaum elegantly summarizes, this is a way in which modern autocracies are run: Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela… They all share a “superficial” totalitarian ideology, but deep inside they run on apathy, nihilism, and political and moral abdication on the part of society. Taking the example of Russia, we can see that it is even possible to make superficial criticisms of the regime; as long as you don’t actively try to mobilize masses, the ruling autocrat will let you keep your cognitive consonance intact.

Looking to the US, this is exactly the model of society that Trumpism wants to implement: not necessarily a uniformly conservative society (something quite difficult when you have places like California and New York), but a profoundly depoliticized society, where people (especially of the intellectual class) just shallowly pursue their own self-interest, institutions are slowly emptied of meaning, and the ruling class is free to enrich themselves. Given how major news corporations are gleefully abiding to Trump censorship demands just to be allowed to carry out their mega, stock pumping mergers, this seems to be working.

Of course, in order to reverse these changes, more political engagement is necessary. But how? I believe three are the things that a layman should do, without necessarily asking that everyone becomes a revolutionary from one day to the other:

• Reject moral relativism. Not all societies and ideas are the same. A society that runs on freedom, mutually respectful debate, ordered and uncorrupted management of power is and will always be better than some fake lavish middle eastern theocracy where homosexuals are executed.
• Get informed. No meaningful change can happen if you don’t know what is wrong with your society. There’s no excuse for not reading the news. Saying “I don’t read the news to maintain my peace of mind” is understandable, but it’s ultimately a selfish act that plays in the hands of autocrats. Don’t condone it.
• Reflect on your political values. As Gabor Maté puts it in his enlightening book, we live in a biopsychosocial unity. This means that it’s impossible to have personal values (as I hope you all do) without having political ones; in the end, political values are views on how society should be organized. Nurture, curate and extend your view of the world.

So, if you are reading this, especially if you are part of the educated class of your society, I beg you do your best to reverse the course of devaluization and re-create the critical mass of informed and active citizenry, the only real obstacle to a silent autocratic takeover, be it dictatorial or corporate.