There was a time when neutrality was a luxury of peace, an insensitivity rooted in bourgeois comfort. What Orwell wrote about weapons and warfare now echoes and takes place through various social media platforms and online forums.  On this day, to stay in the middle is often perceived as a sign of indifference, complicity, or being uninformed.  Every matter demands allegiance, every silence equates to one’s incompetence in critical evaluation, and every ambiguity carries within it a fear of an antisocial absence of belonging.  It is fair to say that there are signs indicating restrictions on the space for thought, complexity, and compromise. Thereby, increasingly edging society towards polarization. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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To exemplify the said phenomenon: voting is often viewed as an act of fulfilling one’s core civic duty, as citizens are labelled and categorized into the boxes of Liberal or Conservative.  People are, by nature, gregarious animals and require social connections for their survival and well-being.  This social nature has deep evolutionary roots, arising since the earliest days, and fast-forwarding to nowadays, with community and social connections being essential for human survival and success.  

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We crave acceptance.  Hence, look for acknowledgement and approval, which often comes from the groups we choose to align with.  For many, choosing a side becomes the easiest route to seek social validation.  We crave belonging.  According to the Social Identity Theory, developed by Henri Tajfel, “individuals define themselves based on their group memberships… that people seek to enhance their self-esteem by identifying with in-groups and differentiating from out-groups” (McLeod), which quite accurately depicts the observed patterns of people’s behaviour under political exchanges and their attitudes towards opposite viewpoints.  Once people settle on a side, there is a tendency to cling to the familiar identity as individuals are motivated to preserve their sense of belonging.  Explaining how some align with their ‘in-group’ by offering unwavering support to protect instinctively their settled identity that feels comfortable, which directs to “group favouritism, prejudice, and stereotyping as people favour those who belong to their own group because perceiving their in-group in a positive light, while vice versa for out-groups enhances their self-image” (McLeod). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Social media algorithms further limit the information we organically receive, curating our feeds into narrow, biased channels that reflect on what we have previously clicked on, liked, or agreed with.  Algorithms are incentive machines as they are engineered to reward engagement, not accuracy; emotional reaction, not reflection.  In a society already prone to extremes, the enormous influence social media holds over our daily lives tightens the space in which the middle ground can survive. Staying in the middle requires cognitive tension as one’s mind has to hold two truths at once, and this is something that is not naturally cognitively efficient to us.  As opposed to choosing the extremes, ie. say picking that one side, are cognitively easier as they reduce dissonance and offer the “mental shortcut that Herbert Simon describes as bounded rationality where one would select an option that meets a minimum threshold of acceptability rather than identifying an optimal solution” – in short, choosing what is easiest still with a baseline, even if it is not the truest. ​