THE COMFORT OF DIVISION

There is a popular joke that Alanis Morissette’s Ironic doesn’t actually contain any irony. People often point to its famous examples as mere bad luck or unfortunate coincidence rather than genuine irony, arguing that a song called Ironic is itself ironic because it misunderstands its own subject.

Yet that criticism may itself be ironic. Many of the situations described in the song can reasonably be interpreted as forms of situational irony, where outcomes conflict with reasonable expectations. The debate therefore becomes circular: one side argues the song demonstrates a misunderstanding of irony, while the other argues that the critics misunderstand irony just as much.

The real irony, ironically, is that a song accused of misunderstanding irony became a decades-long demonstration that no one can quite agree on what irony is.

I’m beginning to think that the extreme left and extreme right aren’t as different as they believe themselves to be. Their ideologies and proposed solutions may stand in direct opposition to one another, but perhaps they both grow from the same roots. They are two branches of the same plant, reaching toward different horizons while drawing nourishment from the same soil.

Both seem to flourish during periods of economic hardship, when people feel increasingly desperate, powerless and frustrated, but they are the same, not because they share conclusions, but because they share needs. When life becomes difficult, people naturally search for explanations and, perhaps more importantly, something or someone to blame.

The economy is an incredibly complex system, and the problems people face rarely have simple causes or simple solutions. But when you’re struggling to stay afloat, complexity offers little comfort. – A simple explanation, a clear enemy and the promise of change can be far more appealing than complexity.

Why spend years learning science and ancient history when you can watch a ten-minute documentary on Sitchin’s theories and feel you’ve found an answer? The lie’s greatest advantage is not that it is more convincing than the truth, but that it is usually shorter. Truth needs to be understood, but a lie needs only to be believed, which is far less demanding, and requires only popularity.

Which, for human beings that need a sense of belonging, particularly during uncertain times, popular belief can become the only certainty they have.

Historically, religion packaged a similar certainty as hope, but political ideology can serve a remarkably similar function, for it offers a shared struggle, a common cause and the reassurance that suffering is not being endured alone. And that’s where the extremes begin to resemble one another. Both can become so convinced of their own righteousness that they develop the very tunnel vision they accuse their opponents of possessing. Each sees itself as fighting the source of society’s problems while increasingly viewing the other side not simply as mistaken, but as the enemy.

Truth is seldom monopolised by one side. Reality has an inconvenient habit of scattering truths and falsehoods across every camp, regardless of whose banner they march under. But the more attention paid to the falsehoods of one side, the easier it becomes to overlook the falsehoods of the other, resulting in one extreme, being matched by the other, often reproducing the very behaviour they condemn.

And if much of today’s polarisation is not driven by ideology itself, but the relief it offers in division, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as each side’s hostility reinforces the other’s beliefs, until each side comes to depend upon the existence of the other.

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?