Weapons of Emotional Destruction

Over 5,000 years ago, humans domesticated the horse. It transformed mobility. It also transformed local affrays into distance projection of power: warfare. Such is the unintended power of enablers.

The enabling impact of the internet is on par with the horse – with one difference: the transformation of our civilisations has taken less than 20 years. There is no possible way back from the internet. We fervently applauded the overt benefits of the internet; the costs were hidden, ignored, or downplayed. An eager bureaucracy emerged to deal with the phenomenon. It commented, it argued categorically, it tweaked the internet towards ‘optimisation’.

Meanwhile, reality is catching up with good intentions. Born to exchange verbal (and rational) information, the internet has shown itself the perfect medium for spreading emotions. Political discourse can now be expressed in images – as gruesome as they are effective. Emotional excess – nay, destruction – has come online.

Emotional firestorms

On 9/11, the first Weapon of Mass Emotional Destruction (WMED) was brought to everyone’s screen. Its yield was enormous. For an investment of about USD 200,000, the WMED brought to New York caused a swerve in the Western world. As emotional targets were hardened, fear captured everyone’s mind. Fear is now pervasive, and enduring. Fear – and its avatar, distrust – has the potential to destroy a society.

Around 2014, ISIS introduced the Improvised Emotional Device (IED): the gruesome killing of a person on the internet. The impact is instant and worldwide. It can be fashioned anywhere, anytime – provided there is an internet connection.

This phenomenon has deep evolutionary roots. The Weber–Fechner law describes it: p = k ln(I)

In short: perception (P) of an event or stimulus (I) increases logarithmically, not exponentially. This law underlies ‘numerosity’ – the pre-verbal and pre-symbolic awareness of quantity – which has been observed in species both young and old (see Cervelli che contano by Giorgio Vallortigara).

Cultural pessimists, please abstain from kvetching: it is not human nature – it is life itself. Humans, in addition, are social animals; gossip – the exchange of news and emotions – is central to their nature (Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar).

IEDs have the potential to create an emotional firestorm: ‘During the formation of a firestorm many fires merge to form a single convective column of hot gases rising from the burning area and strong, fire-induced, radial (inwardly directed) winds are associated with the convective column. Thus the fire front is essentially stationary and the outward spread of fire is prevented by the in-rushing wind.’ If firestorms do not appreciably ignite material at a distance ahead of themselves, the conflagration of many small fires will yield wholesale destruction.

During WWII, phosphorus bombs were dropped over Hamburg and Dresden. Their contents broke open on impact and splattered on anything, burning it. As long as oxygen was available, there was no way to stop a phosphorus-induced fire. Curzio Malaparte tells of people jumping into water to douse the excruciating burn – only to realise that they could never escape the watery grave (La pelle by Curzio Malaparte).

IEDs may be the internet’s phosphorus bombs, spreading many fires. We may jump into the water of censure, but we might not ever be able to escape from it. In the long run, the only way is prevention: addressing the grievances that are setting the world afire – via the internet.

Of course, there is no solution here to this civilisational quandary. Full, unflinching awareness is a prerequisite, however. The stigmatising Western response to ISIS is fanning the flames, rather than addressing the causes of the conflict. Though unintended, this understandable reaction is counterproductive.

Will we succeed? I don’t not know. One is drawn here to old Indian wisdom: Shiva Nataraja dances in a circle of flame. With his right foot he stamps down a goblin, the embodiment of ignorance; his left foot is raised in dance. As Shiva Nataraja he possesses immeasurable energies, with which he determines the creation, being and end of all creation.

The post was first published on DeepDip.

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