Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco

Even in its sounds, there is something light, childlike and comical about the word zizanie (meaning "discord") – not something that you would expect when considering the severity of the conflicts that are currently shaking our world, the crises, the violent confrontations, the deadly clan rivalries, the acts of barbarism, the terrorist attacks, the razing of cities, the bombings and trench warfare... Bisbille (quarrel), brouille (feud), querelle (dispute) – these are the words that more immediately spring to mind. Cereal farmers do not see it that way, since the name also applies to a plant – a type of grass from the genus lolium, "intoxicating" (Lolium temulentum) and invasive, like ryegrass – which can infest wheat fields and has been known to ruin harvests. It is essentially a devil, seeking to deprive good people of their bread. Farmers sow good seed in their fields, but during the night a devil, the farmer’s enemy, plants some zizanie. The seeds mature, but so does the weed: how do you uproot one without disturbing the other? There is no choice but to let them grow together: only at harvest time will it be possible to pull out the zizanie, bind it into sheaves, burn it and fill the granary with good wheat. It is this parable from the Gospel (Matthew 13, 24–30) that will make zizanie famous, so to speak, by making it the symbol of evil, so intertwined with good that it rends the latter difficult to understand and practice.Today, it is not in the wheat fields that zizanie is being sown, but – in the form of points of contention, axes to grind, tensions, conflicts, hateful rhetoric and more – within the fabric of society and in the minds of very many people. Consequently, it is not a question of analysing the causes and consequences of the armed conflicts that are bringing bloodshed to the world, and to Europe in particular, but rather of reflecting on this particular leprosy that has poisoned interpersonal relationships, made societies that were said to be "liquid" harder, more nervous, angrier, ready to explode, that has transformed social dialogue into non-stop noise, a cacophony where only the sharpest sounds can be heard, the clamour, the most radical and simplistic slogans, the most hateful appeals, the most absurd arguments, the strongest curses, expressions of the most implausible beliefs and opinions... Of course, we cannot name the "enemy" – of democratic societies – which has sown the roots of this weed, the fault lines of havoc, in the soil of society. And it would probably be too obvious to mention the role of social media, which appear to have undergone a terrifying (yet very profitable for the owners) involution: originally intended to promote free communication and "horizontal" dialogue in all directions, they have become steel ball factories, simply vertically assembling spheres in which all those who, depending on the type of bubble, share the same opinion, take comfort in their shared beliefs, however crazy they may be, without ever confronting the monads superimposed in a parallel column, and thus killing any opportunity for confrontation or the refining of conflicting ideas, which is the basis of all authentic dialogue. But the sowing of zizanie, or discord, must undoubtedly be sought upstream, in the dissemination of the idea that truth could be a simple "option" – like tinted windows in a car or a HEPA filter for a vacuum cleaner – that the "more or less true", the plausible, the "not entirely false" or the outright false have as much value and greater effectiveness. The wheat in the fields began to rot with the advent of the post-truth era, which opened up the floodgates of disinformation, fakes and conspiracy theories, and killed social dialogue itself. What is a dialogue, in fact, if not an attempt to push thought, by successive repetitions, to get as close as possible to reality, and thus to approach a truth through (dia) the reasoned, reasonable, rational confrontation of ideas or theories – and establish an agreement, a concord? Or, if truth is "optional", if sophistry is as good as truth, if error, fudge and blunder are the same thing, if false news is more effective and "impactful" than the actual news, then everything can be reduced to an "opinion", every science will be an opinion, every statistic a "set-up", every piece of reasoning a trick, every agreement a calculation, every consensus a trap. In short, it will not be possible to delegitimize anything, no propaganda, no pressure, no method of "influence", no sleight of hand, no mystification, no nonsense, no trickery - abuse of weakness, punches and baseball bats - no prevarication, no violence, no harassment. To the extent that no one knows "what to think" anymore, when no one dares to "intervene in the conversation", fearing the heaps of insults that will come their way no matter what is said, when they withdraw, silent, in a kind of disarray – the sickness that appears when we no longer know how to "be in society".Robert Maggiori © Monaco Philosophical Encounters.

Just like some bottles of chemicals, the word "Identity" has a sticker attached to it: "Danger: Handle with care". Never has there been another concept so likely to suddenly fan the flames and provoke not just arguments but full-on confrontations. And yet it does not, at first glance, appear toxic. Identity is everything that makes an entity definable and recognisable, in that it has a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from other entities. In other words, identity is what makes two things one single thing – "identical" – or, conversely, makes them different. In social and ethno-anthropological sciences, the concept of identity is associated, first, with the way in which an individual sees themselves and moulds themselves as a member of a particular social group, nation, class, religion, ethnic group, gender, profession and so on, and second, with the way in which the norms that govern these groups allow the individual to think about themselves, situate themselves and relate to others, to the groups to which they belong and, by means which are sometimes more tortuous, to "external" groups, perceived as others. So why is it so noxious? Well, because it is understood according to different political formulas, different ideologies or "world views". Through a right-wing, conservative, populist or sovereigntist lens, identity will be defined as a coherent and cohesive set of shared norms that can be "objectively" determined and are rooted in longstanding tradition. A left-wing, more progressive approach, on the other hand, will offer a pluralist, fragmented concept of objective references which are used to differentiate individuals or sub-groups, and which must be valued and respected in an inclusive way: here, identities stem from the recognition of the unique features claimed by each individual or the emergence of shifting characteristics that play a prevailing role at any given time – profession or gender, religion or axiology, sports or ethnic group. Far from being singular and cemented in tradition as in the first case, in the second case identity will be variable: sometimes I’m a teacher, sometimes a person of mixed race, sometimes a footballer, sometimes a protestant, sometimes a shy person, sometimes a film buff, and so on.That said, there are many other ways of defining identity, depending on the field in question. In algebra, for example, it will be the equality between two expressions that is valid regardless of the values of the variables therein, for example: (x+y)2=x2+y2+2xy. In psychology, identity is one of the formal characteristics of the self, which feels its own sameness and continuity over time as the centre of its field of consciousness, in other words, the sense and awareness of one’s self as a separate and continuous entity (something that may be lost with some psychiatric disorders). And so on and so forth... Identity became a hot topic when the social sciences started to talk about collective identity as a response to, among other things, the re-emergence of ethnic conflict in many Western societies in the 1960s and 1970s, and the development, in the social arena, of movements based less on social class, as advocated by Marxism, but rather on, for example, differences between the generations or between the sexes. These demanded different approaches both to rationale behind common action and to new senses of belonging. It was then that opposition first emerged: in one camp, collective identity was understood as something immutable, "natural", eternal, that could be solidified by constructing myths and shared symbols, celebratory rituals and commemorations; in the other, it was seen as a cultural development, something contingent, a historical construction subject to change and "reformulation". Yet if identity refers to a "completeness", an internal "purity", it will imply withdrawal, protection, mistrust, borders and walls, the dismissal and sidelining of any otherness, any difference, the celebration of the self and the vilification of all others, the "enemies", experienced as a fatal threat, whose integration would break up the community of identicals. But if identity is neither "natural" nor substantial, but relational, if it has a non-native matrix, if it is made up of contributions, integrations, inclusions, often unpredictable inputs and hybridisations, then it will leave the group, community and society always open and welcoming, energised by the presence of all sides, no matter how different they may be.Robert Maggiori © Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco (Monaco Philosophical Encounters)