The more I watch things go, the more I see us alarming ourselves at the rise of censorship in our lives and decrying the hypersensitivity of those who want to impose it everywhere and at all costs, the more I question myself to know what cultivates so cleverly this phenomenon.
Allow me a hypothesis here: I notice that, for a little over twenty years, our society has gradually been caught in the heart of an alienating dichotomy between ultrasensitization and morbid entertainment. Indeed, in this world that has become that of the screens which today envelop us, dominate us and torment us, we can only observe to what extent our empathy, our compassion as well as the memory of our own traumatic experiences are constantly solicited. .
We are always urged to be more open, to scandalize ourselves and to revolt against the misfortune of others. To storm any platform allowing us to share our own, perpetually in search of justice and reparation that we are. In principle, I am not without understanding what motivates the thing: this legitimate need, now epidermal, to no longer suffer in silence in one’s corner and to finally feel safe, understood and respected.
Either way, but what I find very curious is that the more we open up, thus exposing our own sensibilities to the wind, the more we are paradoxically subjected to an invasive culture of morbid entertainment, which makes an ever more raw spectacle of the worst. tragedies, horrors and injustices capable of being performed by the human race. A creepy spectacle, too often free, where we romance murderers and deranged of all kinds against a backdrop of the end of the world and chic insanity.
I am no stranger to the particular form of pleasure and excitement that one can experience in front of this kind of entertainment, nor to its cathartic effects, which can prove to be beneficial for some. I am also aware of the virtues of shock and surprise, when used intelligently, to advance mentalities.
But when I am told that we should take the heavy trend as a necessary evil, “educator” and “progressive”, where I tick, it is in the face of the underlying phenomenon that no one seems to pay attention. The one demonstrating a little more every day than the exaggeration, the frenzied outbidding and the orgy of explicit violence, because it has become banal and too common, are desensitizing us and plunging us into a state of emotional lethargy.
Necessarily, this can only cultivate a filigree chronic cynicism and a loathing of people and of existence, which confines us to a terrible feeling of anguish and helplessness. Inevitably, the latter, by dint of being crushed raw, can only mutate into hysterical and defensive rage which no longer has the means to think and which, at the end of its nerves, only wishes to eradicate it, in particular by censorship, anything which, from near or far, arouses, nourishes and cultivates its discomfort.
In addition, it is increasingly evident that this actively leads to provoking nihilistic behavior coupled with a loss of faith in the future, leaving only an impression of latent despair which, in this Covidian situation which overwhelms us and forces us to spend the double, if not the triple of time riveted to our screens, completes blackening our ideas and the look that we then have on ourselves and on others.
Of course, far from me the idea of defending the ostrich which puts its head in the sand so as not to see what is around it. I do not call for more censorship and even less for building a world populated exclusively by unicorns and butterflies. On the other hand, what this popular hypersensitivity strongly suggests to me is that it arises from an acute nauseating that is ignored and a state of extreme saturation which intends to cure intolerance.
As I said at the outset, all this is obviously only a hypothesis. Except that I tell myself that, if we really care about the current state of things and if we are committed to finding a way to collectively appease the spirits, we would have great interest in taking a closer look at the Obvious correlations to be made between ultrasensitization and morbid entertainment. History, perhaps, that we stop planting tomatoes and then surprise ourselves to see them grow.
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