What Time Is This?

The Absence of Nuance Is the Beginning of War and the End of Peace

Hermann Hesse; Der Steppenwolf (1927) 1st Ed.

The easy answer to this question would be to say that we are in a time of transition. After all, all eras are times of transition between one reality and a different one. But there are transitions and transitions. There are transitions in which the realities between which society transitions are so different or the change is so rapid that chaos, disorientation and the inability to understand set in, not only in institutions but also in public opinion and subjectivities. In these situations, some raise the white flag, others the black flag, still others (perhaps the majority) submerge themselves in the clandestinity of anonymous privacy.

Are we in one of these transitions? And who is the “we” asking the question? Is all this turmoil just the effect of those who have become accustomed to the relative stability and “irreversibility of democratic conquests”? And what will the classes and social groups, who have never known such stability or benefited from such achievements, say beyond a shrug of silence, revolt or resignation? However, no matter how different the realities that different classes, groups or even nations have experienced, the truth is that, at certain times, a feeling of confusion, of collapse, takes hold in society, amid many misunderstandings. We don’t even know if it’s a transition or a duplicity. Transition points to something new (or old) replacing what was there before: it’s a rupture with movement. Duplicity is the existential condition of a simultaneity of opposites, a condition that enables ruptures or static fractures. Transition and duplicity is the spirit of our time.

Between the two World Wars of the last century, the spirit of the time—which at the time was exclusively European time—had some similarities to the spirit of “our” time. The relative peace that the First World War had brought was short-lived and, amidst the euphoria of new scientific and technical achievements, there was the fear of new times, of violence, of resistance from the exploited, of a next war to settle the scores badly made in the peace process of the previous war. As always, in such times, artists are more astute than philosophers or social scientists at capturing the spirit of the times. In 1927, Hermann Hesse published the novel Der Steppenwolf (The Steppe Wolf). In this novel, a man named Harry Haller finds it extremely difficult to adapt to the society in which he lives and therefore feels like he is half person and half wolf. On the one hand, he feels like a normal human being, comfortable in bourgeois life and interested in literature and music. On the other, he feels like a wild animal who only obeys his instincts and impulses, an outsider who hates bourgeois society and behaves like one. At one point, he comes across a book entitled “Treatise on the Steppe Wolf” and his life changes. He meets new friends, such as the prostitute Herminia and the saxophonist Pablo, who owns the “Magic Theater”, where he learns that every human being has many other characteristics besides being a person and a wolf. The novel begins with a preface by Harry’s landlady’s nephew, who finds the manuscript long after Harry has disappeared without a trace.

I think that many of us today live in this duplicity, which has nothing to do with the legend of the werewolf from classical antiquity and medieval European folklore. Let’s take a look at some of the symptoms of ruptures, which, being epochal, are also existential and are experienced with particular intensity by young people, even if on the surface they are the ones who live with them best.

Truth was something that existed before post-truth

The main asymmetry between truth and lies is that truth only exists as a search for truth. The search that seems most fruitful, convincing and coherent at a given moment is the one that is taken as truth, but it only lasts for that moment. Scientific progress lies in this. A lie, on the other hand, is always the certainty of the opposite of what you take to be true at a given moment, as if that moment were an eternal present. That’s why lies always hold more certainty than the truth they oppose. Post-truth is the artifice which, dispensing with the search for truth, assumes something to be true, as long as it is ratified by convincing rhetoric or an intensely collectivized personal belief. This is the field of fake news, of disinformation, and of propaganda different from traditional propaganda. While transition, post-truth is post-factual and post-rational truth. While duplicity, it is being and not being as alternatives, two forms of existence with equal validity. Alternatives that generate many other alternatives home delivered to emotions by uberized social networks. There are no ethical criteria for choosing between being a wolf and being human. There are options that don’t allow for variation.

You are either a wolf or a person; there is no middle ground

The “magic theater” of which Hesse spoke has disappeared and, with it, the nuance. Today, you’re either an enemy or a friend, an aggressor or a victim, in short, you’re either a wolf or a person. Open diversity, identifications discovered in new or old experiences, the sfumato of Renaissance painting, the gradients and shades of the Mona Lisa, like the cangiante (fusion of colors) or the chiaroscuro, have disappeared in our time and thus the possibility of softening human relationships, whenever possible. The absence of nuance is the beginning of war and the end of peace. It is this beginning and this end that we are witnessing. All wars begin long before they are declared. If we reflect carefully on the dominant pattern of human relations and the most prominent statements of political leaders, we will conclude that we are already at war. Disorientation and confusion set in when we sense that the war against “them” is actually a war against “us”. Perpetual war becomes the only guarantor of perpetual peace—the peace that has never existed and never will.

Fascism is as democratic as democracy

The discourse and practice of the most powerful leaders goes beyond all limits that were previously considered insurmountable. Suddenly, those who were previously citizens are declared internal enemies and therefore deported, silenced, neutralized; in a single day, Israel kills 400 Palestinians and proposes to starve the rest to death if they don’t “voluntarily” leave their homeland in the meantime; national security agents exchange messages on social media about the forthcoming bombings of a distant country as if they were arranging a get-together of university alumni; a sinister chief commissioner of the European (dis)Union gives a speech in her combat uniform and steel helmet (protecting what she doesn’t have) so that there is no doubt about the imminent danger; the housing crisis is solved by building bunkers.

All this takes place in the most peaceful normality because, after all, real politics is anti-politics.

I think what others think, therefore I am

There is no time to think for oneself, and even if there were, there would be no need to think. Everyday life is a whirlwind of much more pressing concerns than thinking, and, after all, there is so much thought so easily available that wasting time thinking about something different is an unforgivable waste. Besides, it could actually be dangerous. The most rational thing to do is to follow the thinking of those you trust, and those are your friends. By coincidence, what friends think is what the “ego” has always thought, even without realizing it. They’re friends because you trust them, or you trust them because they’re friends. It doesn’t matter. The coincidence of opinions is what matters because it’s proof that you’re not alone, and to be alone is to not exist as a thinking being. It’s never been easier to think without having to think. The morning prayers of yesteryear have been replaced by starting the day by finding out what your friends are thinking. Any responsible citizen should go out into the street well informed and inform others, as is their civic duty. Anyone who disagrees is not a friend and ultimately has no right to exist, because friendship is the most precious commodity. If you suspect that the disagreement is internal because there are doubts, this is a sign that the internal enemy may be within the ego. The most effective thing is to nip the problem in the bud: forget or eliminate the doubt, if possible with professional help or medication.

Everyone is disposable except me

As you can see from the above, not everyone is a friend. There are enemies, aggressors, competitors, envious people, privileged people, intriguers, bootlickers, concubines, prostitutes, sponsored people, protected people, preferred people, favored people. The evil that happens to the ego is never its own fault because the ego is an impregnable and immaculate fortress-territory. Anyone who dares to attack it must be ruthlessly eliminated. Anything that calls into question the solidity of the fortress—for example, by pointing out cracks, flaws, gaps, fissures, holes—is disposable, because it is false, which is attested to indisputably by friends.

Being a dissident today

This diagnosis is not intended to be exhaustive, but it is enough to show that at the bottom of this epochal malaise, very different from the malaise of the fin de siècle at the end of the 19th century, there is the belief that progress is the beginning and the end of everything, even if the latter is the apocalypse. Hesse experienced this belief and the signs of the disasters it could lead to with anguish. Overcome by anguish, he couldn’t see the alternative: utopia. To be a dissident today is to abandon the idea of progress and replace it with the idea of utopia. Not totalitarian utopia, the bastard child of progress. Rather, a concrete utopia, here and now, which begins with the courage to take the risk of being a dissident in today’s time, the time of normalized dystopia.