Are modern uncertainties fragmenting our shared sense of reality ?

Science is under increa­sing attack. Howe­ver, radi­cal groups atta­cking uni­ver­sal­ly accep­ted truths would have no audience if they were not in tune with a major trend in contem­po­ra­ry socie­ty : deman­ding that rea­li­ty conform to our desires or fee­lings. Gérald Bron­ner, a socio­lo­gist spe­cia­li­sing in beliefs and social repre­sen­ta­tions, helps us to unders­tand this trend.

Gérald Bron­ner. First, our indi­vi­dual pers­pec­tives – and the­re­fore, col­lec­ti­ve­ly, the aggre­ga­tion of these pers­pec­tives – have tur­ned inward. In doing so, they have tur­ned away from the dis­tant hori­zon of a sha­red hope for the future. One of the signs of this shift is the decline in the use of the term “pro­gress”, a decline that can be obser­ved in all forms of lite­ra­ture and in many lan­guages. Google’s lin­guis­tic appli­ca­tion, Ngram Vie­wer, shows a decline star­ting in the 1960s, fol­lo­wed by an irre­ver­sible drop. Some­thing invi­sible to the people of the time was hap­pe­ning : a depar­ture from the myth of pro­gress, the modern ideo­lo­gy that the future would be bet­ter than the present. Gra­dual­ly, our per­so­nal com­pass refo­cu­sed on the present and on obser­ving ourselves.

Great col­lec­tive adven­tures have been repla­ced by ano­ther adven­ture, just as exci­ting, but with its own pit­falls. Self-dis­co­ve­ry, with the haun­ting ques­tion “who am I?” And above all, “who could I have become?” This second ques­tion responds to a vague fee­ling of frus­tra­tion : I could have become some­thing bet­ter, but I didn’t real­ly opti­mise my poten­tial. In this sense, why ? What pre­ven­ted me from doing so ? Thus, along­side the decline of the myth of pro­gress, we are seeing an obses­sion with per­so­nal deve­lop­ment and the pur­suit of indi­vi­dual hap­pi­ness. This can be seen in sur­veys conduc­ted by socio­lo­gists and poll­sters, but also in adver­ti­sing slo­gans and fic­tion. This quest is beco­ming increa­sin­gly impor­tant to us, and as it takes hold, the tem­po­ral dimen­sion of our out­look seems to be shrinking.

With the excep­tion of a past that is very close to us, when people are asked when they would like to live, they tend to ans­wer the present

Almost no one wants to live in the future, bare­ly 4% of our fel­low citi­zens. And when people in 50 dif­ferent coun­tries were sur­veyed, as Ipsos did, 62% agreed with the idea that “the future can take care of itself, only the present mat­ters”. There are cer­tain­ly varia­tions from one coun­try to ano­ther, but almost eve­ryw­here, the idea that the future can take care of itself is held by the majo­ri­ty. Even in films and fic­tion, the encou­ra­ge­ment to enjoy the present is pre­sen­ted as a form of wis­dom. It affects our abi­li­ty to be citi­zens who think about public inter­est and the com­mon good. The present has devi­ta­li­sed the future. And can­cel culture, this moral­ly indi­gnant view of our his­to­ry, shows that it also deva­lues the past. With the excep­tion of a past that is very close to us : when people are asked when they would like to live, they tend to ans­wer the present and, curious­ly, the 1980s. The domi­nant fee­ling is what I call nows­tal­gia – a kind of nos­tal­gia for the present.

Cer­tain­ly, with hind­sight, yesterday’s world see­med more control­lable, more intel­lec­tual­ly mana­geable. It was not mul­ti­fa­ce­ted : two blocks were pit­ted against each other, which allo­wed for a sim­pler moral inter­pre­ta­tion. The camp of free­dom could be pla­ced either on the side of NATO or on the side of the War­saw Pact, depen­ding on one’s sen­si­bi­li­ties. The notion of natio­nal sove­rei­gn­ty was also much stron­ger, of course. Indi­vi­duals felt that poli­ti­cal deci­sions were unders­tan­dable and within their reach, which led to much grea­ter confi­dence. There were far fewer media out­lets and much less infor­ma­tion floo­ding our world. There were far fewer tele­vi­sion and radio chan­nels, not to men­tion the mas­sive dere­gu­la­tion asso­cia­ted with the rise of the Inter­net. Even though eve­ry­day tech­no­lo­gies are much safer today, we can no lon­ger direct­ly inter­vene in this tech­no­lo­gi­cal world : if my phone mal­func­tions, I have to replace it ; I can­not repair it as I would change a light bulb or, if I were some­thing of a han­dy­man, the engine of my car.

All this gives a fee­ling of alie­na­tion from the world. And this excites a part of the demo­cra­tic soul. Toc­que­ville alrea­dy noted the ten­den­cy of demo­cra­tic sys­tems to pro­duce frus­tra­ted indi­vi­duals. This demo­cra­tic melan­cho­ly is exa­cer­ba­ted today by two phe­no­me­na. The first is the tech­no­lo­gi­cal revo­lu­tion in the infor­ma­tion mar­ket and in the mar­ket of cog­ni­tive objects, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which pro­found­ly dis­rupts who we are as human beings and how we view the world. The second phe­no­me­non is the rise of these major nar­ra­tive trends, which allow us to look obses­si­ve­ly within our­selves and constant­ly ques­tion our feelings.

Why is this dan­ge­rous ? Quite sim­ply because the next step is to demand that my fee­lings bend rea­li­ty. In other words, to make others accept that the expres­sion of my fee­lings is a stan­dard of truth and rea­li­ty. This affects the boun­da­ries bet­ween our ima­gi­na­tion and the world as it is. This is how our era attacks reality.

There is the face of the era, and there is its gri­mace. But my point is not to warn about the mad­ness of today’s world by choo­sing to see only its gri­mace. I don’t think we’re all going to become fic­to­sexuals (i.e., only feel desire for fic­tio­nal cha­rac­ters) or the­rians (people who iden­ti­fy as non-human or not enti­re­ly human). Radi­cal examples allow us to refine our explo­ra­tion ; they allow us to trace the per­ime­ter of this ter­ri­to­ry, which often expresses itself in much more inno­cuous forms, even if they are dra­ma­tic for indi­vi­duals, such as the ebb of desire.

Some of these groups, moreo­ver, num­ber in the mil­lions : they are social phe­no­me­na that require our atten­tion, or at least mine, since I am a socio­lo­gist. Take the shif­ters, or rather the shif­te­rettes, as they tend to be girls : they prac­tise “rea­li­ty shif­ting”, a men­tal prac­tice simi­lar to lucid drea­ming, through which some indi­vi­duals claim to be able to pro­ject them­selves men­tal­ly into ima­gi­ned, alter­na­tive uni­verses. The explo­sion of this prac­tice since the ear­ly 2020s is a social phe­no­me­non, which some experts link to the expe­rience of lock­down during the Covid pan­de­mic, but which is more gene­ral­ly part of the “assault on rea­li­ty” that I des­cribe in my book.

Howe­ver, this assault takes many forms, which did not start with the pan­de­mic. But these forms have one thing in com­mon : a gro­wing dif­fi­cul­ty with other­ness. Whe­ther we pro­ject our ego eve­ryw­here in the uni­verse, in the hyper­bo­lic man­ner of the most radi­cal trans­hu­ma­nists, or whe­ther we want to absorb the entire uni­verse into our own ego through the fee­lings we impose on others, what disap­pears ? It is the other.

Desire seeks to impose itself on rea­li­ty ; this is the com­mon thread run­ning through all these phe­no­me­na. But this desire can ebb away. This is what Alain Ehren­berg poin­ted out in his book La Fatigue d’être soi (The Wea­ri­ness of the Self, 1998). He sho­wed that, in our socie­ties, which have remo­ved many of the pro­hi­bi­tions of the past, depres­sion has repla­ced neu­ro­sis as the new mala­dy of the cen­tu­ry. Many psy­chia­trists agree that we are cur­rent­ly expe­rien­cing an epi­de­mic of depres­sion. Howe­ver, depres­sion is not so much about being unhap­py as it is about the absence of desire and, inci­den­tal­ly, plea­sure : anhe­do­nia. This ebb in desire is at the heart of the expe­rience of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties men­tio­ned in my book, such as the hiki­ko­mo­ris, who appea­red in Japan in the 1980s, young people – most­ly boys in this case – who, faced with the pres­sure to suc­ceed in the school sys­tem and confron­ted with the first major eco­no­mic cri­sis Japan had expe­rien­ced since the Second World War, gra­dual­ly gave up lea­ving their bedrooms. These com­mu­ni­ties then spread under other names to other deve­lo­ped coun­tries. What do these hiki­ko­mo­ris have in com­mon ? Their desire recedes to the point where they want to avoid rea­li­ty and spend their entire lives in their own rooms.

This drift has an extra­or­di­na­ry advan­tage for those who aban­don them­selves to it : it allows them to control uncer­tain­ty. Hiki­ko­mo­ris have a way of ritua­li­sing their dai­ly lives that makes them lit­tle domes­tic tyrants : they must eat at a cer­tain time, etc. Their entire exis­tence can be inter­pre­ted as a reduc­tion of uncer­tain­ty. And what is uncer­tain­ty ? It is the clear awa­re­ness of the open­ness of pos­sible times. If you make tomor­row resemble today, which resembles yes­ter­day, time becomes a line without a range of uncer­tain­ty and pos­si­bi­li­ties. life becomes an eter­nal present.

Interview by Richard Robert