“It’s the end of the world as we know it”

This R.E.M. song has been on my mind since the day Russia invaded Ukraine. The song was apparently referring to college policy debate tournaments, in which the debaters claim that any course of action will lead to nuclear war or some other catastrophe. And that seems rather fitting to our current situation. Everything in the way this military assault has been presented by the media foretells the end of an era for us all.

Vladimir Putin’s threats and the daily escalation, of attacks on the one hand, of sanctions on the other, do convey the feeling that we are witnessing an imminent Clash of the Titans. Russia vs the United States. East vs West. Autocracy vs (for the sake of comparison) Democracy.

But for anyone who is critical of American hegemony, things are not as clear-cut. I have even been hearing discussions about how this war might be the kick we all need for our society to “reboot”, so to speak. For decades, the US’s complacency has been disturbing, and there have been telling signs of the steady downfall of American dominance. Even though Europe and other parts if the world have been following in the United States’ heavy footsteps, a growing number of us are hoping for a change towards a more diverse future, both in terms of culture and economic model. After all, having a single system or person at the helm for too long is never healthy, whether it is Putin as head of state, or American-style Capitalism as an economic system. Unfortunately, the war does not leave much room for hope that it might bring about any positive change at all. Few wars ever have.

Meanwhile, we are trying to come to grips with the reality of a new war on the European continent, with the unimaginable possibility of a nuclear attack, and with yet another impending disastrous impact on our purchasing power. In the midst of it all, the deafening voices all around are paralysing. Since that fateful February 24^th, I’ve been going through every media channel I could find to get a sense of what is actually going on. Finding objective and reliable sources of information among the hubbub of opinions, news updates and outrage on all sides has not been easy.

Most American media have, once again, turned a complex situation into an easily digestible battle of Good vs Evil. Even satirists, who should question the mainstream, portray Zelenskyy as a flawless hero figure standing up to Putin’s Evil Empire. Europe, too, generally seems to be falling into the trap of oversimplifying the situation. Fortunately, some well-respected media do paint a more nuanced picture, which in no way make the apology of the invasion of a sovereign state by its far more powerful neighbour. Rather, they expose the broader geo-political context and the role of Western powers in Putin’s current position of might.

It has been hard to remain objective in the midst of polarising discourses, whether anti-Russian or anti-US-NATO-EU – all three of which are conveniently thrown together by conspiracy theorists and anyone using this momentum to voice their own frustrations. In a recent opinion piece entitled “Pick a side – How to take a stand in polarised times“, Mehran Khalili of DiEM25, managed to highlight the difficulty in maintaining some form of objectivity without being incompassionate or unjust in this terrible situation.

Meanwhile, I am moved by the show of genuine support by ordinary people on social media, with people sharing crucial information and offering to help Ukrainian refugees arriving in neighbouring countries. By contrast, I am all the more baffled by how quickly other individuals and news organisations have absorbed everything about this conflict, and used it to make their point about any topic, completely losing sight of the actuality of war. And though I embrace the idea that, in a true democracy, everyone should have the right to be heard, I’m no longer certain how this can possibly work in reality. Social media are the closest thing to hearing everyone’s voices, and what they reveal is an unmanageable and frightening cacophony.

A few years ago, I interviewed a brilliant French scientist, François Taddei, who explained that one of the major challenges in the practice of science today is data overload. There is so much data being produced on any given subject, however inconsequential, that the absence of a broader vision and contextual interpretation of the data renders it useless. It is data for the sake of data. To illustrate his point, he mentioned the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant, which tells us that humans tend to only see their own truth, based on their limited views and experience, thereby losing sight of the bigger picture (hear Taddei recounting the parable in French here). The same can be said about our constant flow of information, whether by news sources or by every individual voicing their own truth via social media. The infoxication we are experiencing leaves next to no headspace to focus on what is essential. And as with any intoxication, the information overload increasingly impacts our emotional health and our sense of perspective.

In this war, for instance, flagging the racism experienced by foreigners and Roma fleeing Ukraine is important. However, jumping to the conclusion that the Western World only cares about this conflict because it is targeting a largely white population is erroneous and misleading. The victims of the wars in the Balkans, in Chechnya and in Georgia were also white, but no one in the West cared much about them for years. The issue here is not race, but power. Whether economic or geo-political. Leaders of the Western world did not feel threatened in any of the above-mentioned previous bloodsheds, whereas in this instance, they do. I believe that interpreting the attention this war is getting as a racial issue, is another direct consequence of our overly fast-paced output-creating society, in which we speak up faster than we can think. When emotional reactions dictate our actions, our minds take the back seat.

What we are seeing is this tendency extending to mainstream media. With the pressure to provide round-the-clock news updates, they become increasingly distasteful and voyeuristic. It is as though the interviewers are aiming to get an emotional reaction from the people under attack, simply to feed our curiosity. Seeing how we are being spoon-fed raw emotions, I think of Alain Souchon’s song “Foule sentimentale”, in which he criticised our consumer society, singing: “Sentimental crowd that we are, we yearn for ideals. We seek the stars, we wish to set sail, in search of things that can’t be bought.“

The way we now glorify Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people for their bravery, is at the edge between genuine admiration and a consumerist craving for something authentic. And the media are using this sentiment and feeding into it. Here again, the content loses value and war is turned into a show.

CNN already perfected this technique decades ago when, just minutes after the Twin Towers were hit on September 11, 2001, they were showing the edited images in slow motion to the sound of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (which had been popularised by the war film “Platoon”). At the time, my brother and I watched in shock, from Paris, as they were playing and replaying the images of the planes crashing into the towers we had visited just a few years before. But we quickly became wary of this manipulation, which was turning an actual tragedy into a movie on the spot. And today, European media have also taken to transforming real events into tear-jerkers or sensationalism.

Meanwhile, we, the audience and consumers, are caught between crying over Ukrainian casualties and looking for modern-day heroes. Despite the fact that, against all expectations, Europe is more united than it has been in decades, we are dissatisfied with our leaders’ reactions to this invasion. We want the WWII sentiment we’ve seen in films, of being united and brave against an objective evil. But as European and American heads of state know, our populations want that feeling without having to sacrifice their own safety, health or comfort. We want to go to war with Russia without suffering the consequences. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and their acolytes are, as always, quick to qualify any nuanced approach as a “wussification [sic] of our nation”, while none of them would give up an inch of their own privileges for anything.

How, in this atmosphere, can we hope to achieve anything constructive? I am growing increasingly disappointed with what we, as a species, do with our freedom of speech – where it still exists. On one end of the spectrum, emotion has substituted rationality, while on the other, rational speech has been deprived of emotion. But both our minds and our hearts are necessary compasses to make right decisions. I believe that, given a little bit more headspace to breathe and think, by teaching ourselves to listen a little more and talk a little less, we could filter (rather than censor) what we express and find more middle ground.

Until this materialises, I am reverting to carefully chosen sources of information, reducing the time spent consuming news, and trying to let the information sink in before expressing an opinion.

I wish to end this text by expressing my deep sadness at the catastrophe that is this war. Or any war. The suffering it is causing will linger on for decades to come. My heart aches for all the victims and their families.

(Title: Song by John Michael Stipe, R.E.M.)