Is the human being doomed to repeat the same mistakes throughout history? How long do we have to keep on reading signs posted in memory of what happened in Nazi concentration camps, “Nie wieder, jamais plus, never again”, when we are  still using over and over again the same destructive discourse against many minority groups?

It is always “the others”, those who are “animals, degenerated, all worthy of cancellation, destruction and extermination” that end up at the receiving end of this discourse.

Otherness often appears on social media as a very polarised subject. In the digital world it seems that one must pick a side and only one out of two. We are easily tempted to become keyboard warriors, “educators”, some sort of “US & THEM”, entitled to dominate with our so-called intellect, or prioritising our feelings over the different emotions felt by others as if we, and only we, had the TRUTH and the only truth. 

To me, this lack of nuances in our “conversations” whether discussing emotions or presenting points of view, ideas and thoughts seems very much part of the digital discourse. The polarisation of our debates takes us away from that notion of “agora”, the public place in ancien Greece where folks used to meet, interact, gossip and discuss the world. Away from human interaction, we are becoming “virtue signalling heroes” locked in echo chambers, isolated and strangely enough disconnected.