Left Danger in Polarized Societies
Populist powers have surrounded many countries and societies in the world in recent years. Day by day their unsolicited to-do lists deeply impact the way of managing the countries, quality of lives, and cultural heritages. These powers in the countries are in contact somehow, bound tightly and their first aim is to divide countries into two parts. There are always two sides, two representatives, and two discourses on everything. This separation purposely causes polarization more than anything and this creates only two ways of seeing, two ways of evaluating and staying inside of the limitations of the sides. Since the two sides are far from each other, this raises an important question which is how we communicate with each other today and tomorrow.
How You Find Yourself in The Side
Preconceiving is induced to stay in a limited perspective in a way. You find yourself on one side and start to position yourself to be opposite to the other side in such cases. This is interesting progress as you barely notice that there are sides when it comes to politics. First extremists shape the circles and it creates the side and proximity of your thoughts (if any) specify your side. As they shape their cycle, you either be in that circle or be opposite and you do not have any other option. Even though you may live your life quietly, you feel urged to be part of the side. Surely, perception and these political powers (or populist power) push societies to take sides at the same time. Politicians start saying like ‘abortion should be illegal from now on’ or ‘we should start discussing adultery and its impacts in our land’ and this is where new national ‘urgency’ born. These are mostly basic/superficial red herrings and people suddenly find themselves discussing the conflict, implications, or which direction the society moves towards. Even though countries have standards or rules set, you may start explaining yourself, your background and unnecessarily commenting on the topic. No one can define themselves as outsiders, each of us finds ourselves as insiders at that point.
Furthermore, since there have been political and (unfortunately) cultural sides, politicians create a controversial environment to feed confusion for the crowd and we find ourselves protesting over basic and essential human rights in the streets. This complicates dynamics and forms challenging living conditions. Inevitably they use a very sensitive feeling for people which is fear. Fear is like the main word for this decade, from health crisis to refugee moves or in this case losing own rights and values.
How You Become Voiceless
At this point, it is important to mention populist powers. They have been in power in many countries. They easily create topics and in many countries, they stay long in their offices with this controlled topic design ability. Their manipulative political strategy has been worked out very well. They have received power in India, Brazil, UK, the USA, Turkey, Poland, Belarus, and many others. Together they created global populism and the way how they manage is similar and manipulative. They put forward weaponized violence in public and pick victims to direct anger on specific groups mostly minorities. They are masters of designing disservices.
Polarization prominently creates its environment. With the environment, there are forced leaders or let’s say, representatives. These representatives are usually feeding sides with tensions and are expected to be hot blood. This situation impacts topics covered in a daily routine and the quality of discussions within the society. It is easy and effortless to create superficial discussions and include two sides around the conversations. Once the topic gets hit in communication channels and/or pushed through by the media, it becomes the only thing to talk about and put other (most important) issues aside. This gives extra control to the power about how to manage the country and the society within their rules. Apart from populists, all of us become a supporting cast in this play. If you don’t become the side, you may be accused of being fearful or reckless. Since the topic itself becomes important, individuals’ characteristics become invisible. As populist perspectives manage people as black and white, they ignore the value of a person and do not esteem differences in visions. Voices of variations start to be silenced. Hence, this way of living inherently ignores the colors of life, the diversity of humanity, and the abundance of varieties. And yet, day by day majoritarian democracy is pushed instead of pluralistic one.
How This Impacts the Culture
Taking sides also requires uniting but while uniting people talk, comment on basic topics with no need of intellectuality, with no need of appreciation of diversity, and no need of respecting the other. Once the polarization is in place, communities worrisomely start to part. They cannot communicate with each other, they cannot become a society in such cases like they lose the personal touch, social consciousness, being happy together or reacting to social problems together. Starting from families and friendships, relations get impacted. Family members who have different opinions start to be impatient with each other and lose the warmth of relationships. This does not happen overnight but it gradually destroys the moral legacy of the culture in the society. Step by step cultural and structural change takes root in society and it complicates communication behaviors.
As it could be defined as a communication problem or to be able to communicate with the other, two sides do not prefer to convey ideas while foreseeing the discussion. When they start to talk, they contact over simple, sometimes shallow, and in some cases superficial topics. Or each side requires to explain themselves rather than listening to the ‘opposite’. And this deepens the communication gap, weakens society’s bond, and decreases the quality of lives day by day. People individually hold grudges in this cold environment. Society loses the main dynamics of empathy, the joy of living in the same land, and runs out of patience for the other.
Communication Is A Problem More Than Ever
From many perspectives, we face separation within the community and lose personal touch with each other. We should think about how we do build tomorrow together. Is there any picture including all of us? Also, questions naturally arise: How will people forget what they accumulate for each other over discussions? How will people overcome the distance they create for the other ones? How will people stop feeling collective loneliness created by populist discourses? After the populism period, what is going to happen, how do we connect without our sensitivities and how will individuals start to feel like they are heard again?
(2020&2021, Datça & Istanbul/Turkey)
