When being alternative becomes mainstream

Growing up as a Christian I was taught that "Faith is believing without seeing", and it was praised as a spiritual gift alongside Hope and Love. In a society where moral concepts are drawn from a religious tradition, having faith means that you accept the principle of authority, that the revelation from God's words are to be taken at face value and accepted without questioning. It might not be the most equal society (because God does not have to treat everyone equally) but it makes for a very robust social contract, because not only everyone follows it, but they also enforce it, supporting others to comply and denouncing deviations.

For centuries, the religious authorities have dictated the zeitgeist defining what was right and wrong, particularly with the help of an almighty God that could see you even when nobody else could, effectively policing your privacy as well. This made for very conservative societies, where injustice was perpetuated by the same institutions that caused it. It was, as John Nash would put it in the mid 20th century, an equilibrium situation because no actor can improve their outcomes by unilaterally changing their behavior. Any attempt at revolting would be faced with massive repression, which would be worse than the simple oppression of the dominant classes. However, when things for the oppressed got bad enough that they had nothing to lose by revolting, because dying from hunger was just as bad as dying from the repression, the Nash equilibrium is broken and things like the French Revolution or the Reformation happen.

Photo: PxHere

Each of these changes resulted in increased freedom in different realms, from the religious beliefs to the private life, but still the general tone of the society was orchestrated by the institutions. Indeed, the spread of mass media, like the radio first and later the television mad a great contribution to disseminating a uniform "standard of living". Prior to that, news traveled slowly and the description of life just a few days of travel away were faded at best. Just think of how the different gold rushes around the world were fed by the tells of endless riches, while many only found misery, disease and death. Mass media provided a more uniform vision of how life should be and with that created a line of aspirations that everybody tried to fulfill.

However, as time progressed and the official standards of living were achieved by more and more people, they proved to be superficial and insufficient to make the people feel accomplished, so some sectors in society started to look for alternatives. It is remarkable that, in spite of the great variety of goals and means, they were, for the most part, pooled together under the "alternative" label, opposed, as they were, to the mainstream. However, their absence from the mass media meant that the majority of the population was not exposed to them at all, and only those who were explicitly looking for an alternative did eventually manage to get involved. Furthermore, chances are that they only got involved with the alternative movements that they had heard of, even if other communities might be closer to their values, because they would never had heard of the others.

This situation changed completely with the coming of the internet, because it flung open the gates that control the access to the minds and the hearts of the people. Before internet any opinion that was aimed for publication had to go through the filter of a newspaper editor, a television producer or a printing press, who also had flesh in the game and where therefore cautious as to what got published. But with the internet anyone can publish at zero cost and have their opinions heard or read by millions without any filter. Even the most trivial obstacle, like the ones targeting racism, xenophobia, terrorism can be circumvented quite easily by selecting an adequate server, or a community with more lax standards.

The democratization of the communication channels has also meant an significant increase in polarization. In the times before internet, if you had some kind of fringe ideas you would have to choose between tuning them down to make them palatable for some of your peers or not sharing them at all. Nowadays nothing prevents your from writing and publishing your hallucinated rant, and the chances are that, in the huge variety of the almost 5 billion internet users, you will be able to find someone that shares your view or even has a position more extreme than yours, effectively pulling you further away from the mainstream ideas where 30 years ago you would have been pulled towards the mainstream.

The market has made an excellent job at identifying business opportunities in each and everyone of this factions, selling guns to the NRA and effigies of John Lennon to the pacifists. The market has no creed beyond itself and will provide any product that has selling potential, monetizing the difference in the same way that it once monetized the uniformity.

So next time you think yourself in terms of "alternative", "innovative", "original" or "unique" take a moment to reflect if you are indeed any of those things or you are just falling in a different prepackaged flavor of the mainstream. Have a nice evening.