Recently, I wrote in the ODT on the rise of bullying and lying in every day life. Both concern power over others.
However, we do not live in a vacuum. We live within society.
Consent and indifference fuels toxicity. Catholic priest Fr David Ardagh Walter, (a founder of CND) once explained bad occurred not due to a surplus of evil, but an absence of good.
We are all naturally good but the decision to not standing leads to great wrongdoing and injustice. We normalise bad behaviour.
Normalisation is mostly an innocuous process. It is the adoption of something new: technology, the acceptance of activities once considered wrong. Society evolves and we move on.
However, another aspect of normalisation that academics, historians, psychologists and sociologists have studied since the 20th century is how can advanced societies normalise the very worse conduct towards one another? Examples include the French Revolution, the Holocaust or the Soviet purges.
More recently, we are now witnessing significant acceptance of aggressive and confrontational attitudes online by individuals such as the deeply unpleasant Andrew Tate.
The once strange and unacceptable becomes familiar and tolerated.
This is not necessarily a bad thing: I wrote this article on an Emirates flight on an Apple laptop. My boarding pass was on my phone. The same phone Mum uses to nag me from London.
That is good normalisation, the acceptance by society of new technology. Society evolves and moves on. That's a good thing.
But there is a darker side. In an age of extremes where vocal minorities at either end of the political spectrum dominate, we have become a ground down silent majority. The endless confrontational hoo-ha on the internet is a curse.
The dam broke in 1994 with the election to the US congress of an angry, radical, right-wing and evangelical Republican Party led by the confrontational firebrand Newt Gingrich.
They focused their ire on the permissive attitudes of the Clinton administration, the president’s family, friends and associates.
Little did they know their actions would influence political parties abroad, in Australia and New Zealand, the British Brexit movement, the European far right and the internet conspiracy fuelled Maga movement supporting Donald Trump.
While we have normalised many positive aspects of the internet, few predicted the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. One who did was academic and science fiction author David Brin.
In his 1990 book Earth Brin predicted exactly how the internet would become toxic.
He saw in the giddy rush to make fortunes from the implementation of this new technology, we would brush over the necessary process of thoughtful reflection as merely the rumblings of habitual party poopers.
The best explanation comes from the work of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. He divided society into three elements; the rulers, the ruled and the bourgeoisie in between.
He stated the following: the bourgeoisie will always do what the rulers want because a) they aspired to joining, even had pretensions of being, part of the ruling class, and b) they saw themselves as superior to the ruled, even though they are effectively part of the same cohort.
Therefore, their support of the decisional class will always be forthcoming due to their self-interest and aspirations.
All totalitarian regimes in history had substantial civil services comprised of the above, as well as the support of business and civil interest groups that benefit from the new regime.
However, even in regular, democratic, developed nations, particularly in the politics of the workplace, the same cohort will support the ascendent and those in control.
This can be innocuous but due to the factors outlined above, in recent years increasingly this had led to toxic and passive aggressive behaviour, if that is what is now considered acceptable.
The consequence is stagnation as the creative people businesses and society need to generate new ideas and productivity tend to be singled out and marginalised. They walk away and we are all the poorer because of it.
The solution? Simple: tolerance and understanding the view and lives of the other. How can this happen? I have no idea. It's down to society to change itself.
This requires a collective process across all social boundaries and beliefs. I can only pray, hope, even plead and beg we can all look within ourselves and challenge our ways in an age of division born of toxicity and confrontation.
— Duncan Connors is an Otago business academic.
