The phrase “cultural battle” anticipates the tone of this exchange. It proposes combat rather than dialogue, where the dominant logic is that of enemy and conquest. Those who call for a fight do not seek to understand, but to win. In this framework, truth ceases to be a shared horizon and becomes plunder.
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote: “If you put troops in dangerous places, they can survive (…) When humans are exposed to extreme danger, there is nothing they won’t do to save themselves.” Extreme situations awaken powerful energies that calm us and guide us to sleep. A similar thing happens in politics. Fear and anger disable reflection but mobilize action.
Cultural struggles are no longer fought in the realm of ideas, where differences of opinion are put into words, as they were in classical Athens and the Roman Senate. Today, this issue is being discussed in the field of love, with public debates aimed at emotionally defeating the other person rather than convincing them. The debate became a spectacle of passion. The greater the outrage, the more attention it gets.
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is a fundamental pillar of democracy. That is why it bothers those who believe that they are the owners of the truth.
One of the clearest examples is found in the concept of “merit.” What was supposed to be a conversation about social models became a moral battleground. On the other hand, there are those who argue that everything we have is earned through hard work and should not be shared with those who “didn’t work hard enough.” On the other hand are those who remember that no one lives alone and that talking about merit without considering the starting point is an elegant way to justify privilege.
On the surface it’s a rational argument, but deep down it’s an emotional one. What is at stake is not a theory of justice, but the need to maintain some kind of emotional order, pride on the one hand and resentment on the other. In both cases, thoughts of benefit can help ease anxiety. For this reason, psychoanalysis does not discuss whether an achievement is true or false, but rather asks what needs are behind the words, and what desires come into play when someone says, “I got it,” “I deserve something else,” or “They didn’t give it to me.”
Social networks amplify this logic. Algorithms reward intensity, not reflection. The stronger the emotion, the further the message will travel. In this way, a machine that likes to react to thoughts and shout to arguments is cultivated. Dissent becomes intolerable, nuance disappears, and doubt, the space in which something new can arise, becomes empty.
Freud said that civilization began when humans responded to arrows with words. Today we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. In other words, we are replacing words with emotional releases.
I believe that the real battle is neither cultural nor political, but internal, between the desire to understand and the desire to be right. Either maintain the lack or fill it with enough certainty to confirm what you already believe. Sun Tzu wrote, “The greatest victory is to win without fighting.” Perhaps the real achievement is that even in such a noisy age, we still have the possibility to discuss things without destroying them.
*Psychoanalyst, co-founder of RedPsi.
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