Polarization is the deep divisions within society. We see this in every opinion poll where the majority of the population is almost equally divided between those who agree to stay with the status quo and those who want to change it. In the between are the Tea Parties or the radical minority, whose views are much more extreme, but they help shape public opinion, which is both undecided and confused at the same time.
The deep divide is actually a generational split. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Henry Kissinger has touched on this generational gap in his book World Order. He sees this as the age of technology that has upturned the foundations of social order through its disrupting speed and scale of change.
The older generation naturally wants to change things incrementally by keeping power and order. The young who have little fear and much less to lose, have everything to gain from radical change and disorder. We see this demand for change from radicals fighting in the Middle East to students in Hong Kong’s Occupy Central. Polarization is happening in both rich and poor societies.
Polarization is not just due to income and wealth inequality. Narrowing these gaps will go a long way to swing the silent majority towards supporting the status quo, but it will not change completely those who feel strongly that their fundamentals are absolute and cannot be changed.
Kissinger sees very clearly the implications of cyber-technology on social order. Information and processing power is advancing at such a bewildering speed that no human being can comprehend fully that new information. IBM estimated that every day, 2.5 billion gigabytes of new information are generated, 90 percent of which was created in the last two years. No human being is capable of digesting that amount of information.
The older generation is still reading and processing information through paper, whereas the young are downloading information on their smartphones. The old think that history and memory is important, whereas the young is wired to instant info on Wiki or Twitter that show only part of the truth. Kissinger summed it up beautifully, “In the Internet age, world order has often been equated with the proposition that if people have the ability to freely know and exchange the world’s information, the natural human drive toward freedom will take root and fulfill itself, and history will run on autopilot, as it were.”
But the world is not run on autopilot. Order can be disrupted either by contests within a multi-polar world between new emerging powers or by seemingly random events and accidents that set the world in a new direction. As they say in chaos theory, a butterfly flutter can set off the next typhoon.
The youth think that they are the butterflies, small against the wind, but they will survive the dinosaurs. The Internet promises instant gratification ― we want it now! In an age of uncertainty, the young finds certainty through either religion or fundamentalism. Such beliefs become the anchor of their existence and identity.
Hong Kong society has become polarized because the young has seized the moment in Occupy Central, sending all the professional politicians to the sidelines. They are defiant through their desperation.
Thirty years ago, the young could hope for good jobs when they graduated. Or believing the spirit of the Lion Rock, they could be the next billionaire through their own hard work and enterprise. Today, unemployment stares them in the face as jobs go to the best and brightest, many of whom are educated abroad. With huge rents, even noodle-stalls and IT start-ups are out unless you have rich relatives willing to fund you. Few of the young can afford to buy an apartment on their current salaries. So the defense against such loaded odds is the absolute belief in Hong Kong’s real strengths ― democracy and the rule of law.
Protests in the Internet world take you instantly from zero to hero.
Kissinger has achieved Zen-insight on this, “Western history and psychology have therefore treated truth as independent of the personality and prior experience of the observer.” But Internet “truths” are computed through search engines designed to filter “likes” and “dislikes.” It has empowered small groups to process, monitor and shape “truth,” for better or worse, instant voice.
Governments are, by definition, slow to react to these monumental changes. Policy and action has to go through laborious processes, delayed in Hong Kong because of the inability of the polarized establishment to compromise and agree. Passing the next piece of legislation as a solution is almost meaningless, because law has become so complex that it contains “thousands of pages of text whose precise meaning is elusive even to those legislators who vote for them.”
Ultimately, the issue arises from the “complexity of defining an identity in the age of social media.” What does it mean to be a Hong Konger within Greater China? Is it an absolute identity with absolute rights or a minority within a majority with relative and collective rights and responsibilities?
The Internet Age cannot solve the social contradictions of our times. The refugees who are boarding boats to cross the Mediterranean and Adaman Seas in search of absolute freedom will find instead slavery or rejection. To welcome them would encourage an unstoppable flood of refugees to be fed and housed, or used as illegal labor. To push them back out to sea could mean death. There are no simple answers to modern moral dilemmas.
Hong Kong’s great strength is that it is an open crossroads of globalization between different cultures, but its weakness is that its own internal identity was never properly debated under colonialism and after its return to China. The silent majority cannot be silent anymore, because real choices have to be made. That choice is to have either instant democracy of one person, one vote, or a phase-in of learning by doing.
Hong Kong people have always survived by their practical realism. Hong Kong’s identity will be determined by its choice between idealism and realism.
By Andrew Sheng
Andrew Sheng comments on global issues with an Asian perspective. ― Ed.
(Asia News Network)
