Meaning in meaningfulness, or the search for reason in a world of chaos
date
Apr 20, 2025
slug
2025-meaning-in-meaningfulness-or-the-search-for-reason-in-a-world-of-chaos
status
Published
tags
communication
authoritarianism
confusion
philosophy
type
Post
summary
The first casualty of a crumbling society is its capacity to debate and communicate properly. The current moment shows we lost that long ago.
What is the first casualty of a world that is going towards self-immolation? There are several spins between language, rationality, and speech, but the truth is that the three of them are intertwined. The enclosure of the potential narratives is anxiety-inducing, the refusal of rationality misaligns the references, and the restriction of speech creates an environment in which it is impossible to establish the structures necessary for communication. In short, the metaphor of the Tower of Babel goes far beyond a religious scripture meant to conquer through fear. It is the very DNA of chaos, the unbearable path we follow towards the greatest ruptures in history. Whoever described it there had a very good idea of she or he was talking about.
We are, without doubt, living such a moment. The uncanny feeling that everything is wrong, the discontentment with civilization that Freud synthesized a century ago, was something we presumed to have vanished with the catastrophe of WWII. That ordeal, we thought, was the rite of passage that society had to endure to understand that the need to negotiate, compromise, concede, and agree could not be left aside ever again.
Yet, after the end of communism, in what Francis Fukuyama called "the end of history," once again, the planet thought the quest had finished, and that the spoils of the planet no longer under dictators would be distributed to serve society better. And now, here we are, and these old assumptions sound like a joke. We are not on the brink of a global war again yet, but there is no way to leave this entanglement without breaking things.
With the biggest communication apparatuses ever assembled, we seem less capable of talking to each other than ever. Every sentence precludes any answer potentially necessary for understanding. Identity shaping is now breeding in every sewage, bringing together a kind of authoritarianism that is unseen by younger generations but has been witnessed by history countless times. What once a handshake represented now implies the agreement of impossible demands coming from groups that are so certain of their own matters that they leave no space for anything. It's as if we have reached the Hegelian totality, or the complete comprehension of the world, but contrary to Hegel, this simulation of totality sees itself as immutable, final, and indisputable. And there lies our doom. This is where the tragedy will start to flow.
Institutions do not fail in isolation. For example, when a government collapses completely, it necessarily involves the breakdown of other pillars like the media and judicial system—they cannot remain intact while the core crumbles. In a strikingly similar comparison, the deterioration of our capacity to communicate effectively at the highest levels of power mimics the failure of everyday conversations. In these anonymous, apparently unimportant interactions in which all of us are involved, the seed of incomprehension lies astonishingly clear. Think again: recall your attempts to debate or make yourself heard on a social media platform, on a dating app, or by recording a video. It does not matter much if you are a genius (that would be statistically unlikely) or a complete idiot. They are simply not going through. The fabric of society lies in our capacity to use signifiers—mostly, words—to be understood and reach our needs and desires. Yet, most of the time, incomprehension is all you get, as if you had unlearned how to speak any language.
That's exactly the case. We may know the words and grammar, but we can no longer agree about what each thing means. Two plus two is no longer necessarily four, as it goes. Suddenly, all the Lego bricks you have, just like everybody else, have become unusable. They don't fit each other anymore. The compass no longer points only to the North. These elements only work for those with whom you agree, and those only. The only thing we agree on is that we are falling into disarray. That’s amazingly short of enough to get us outside of the rabbit hole. Fasten your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye, bye.