On the abolition of all social media

Some time ago I read a magazine article about Twitter where it was suggested to read Simone Weil’s ‘On the abolition of all political parties’ and replace the term ‘political parties’ with the term ‘Twitter’. So, I went back and re-read Simone Weil’s article from 1950 and replaced ‘political parties’ with ‘social media’. The text below is slightly edited to make it more legible and cut out digressions on the catholic church etc. Enjoy.

“The mere fact that social media exists today is not in itself a sufficient reason for us to preserve it. The only legitimate reason for preserving anything is its goodness. The evils of social media are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable?

It would be far more relevant, however, to ask: do they do the slightest bit of good? Are they not pure, or nearly pure, evil? If they are evil, it is clear that, in fact and in practice, they can only generate further evil. This is an article of faith: ‘A good tree can never bear bad fruit, nor a rotten tree beautiful fruit.’

First, we must ascertain what is the criterion of goodness.

It can only be truth and justice; and, then, the public interest.

To assess social media according to the criteria of truth, justice and the public interest, let us first identify its essential characteristics.

There are three of these:

1. Social media is a machine to generate collective passions.

2. Social media is an organisation designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individual members.

3. The first objective and also the ultimate goal of any social media organisation is its own growth, without limit.

Because of these three characteristics, social media is totalitarian – potentially, and by aspiration. These three characteristics are factual truths – evident to anyone who has ever had anything to do with the every-day activities of social media.

As to the third: it is a particular instance of the phenomenon which always occurs whenever thinking individuals are dominated by a collective structure – a reversal of the relation between ends and means.

Everywhere, without exception, all the things that are generally considered ends are in fact, by nature, by essence, and in a most obvious way, mere means. One could cite countless examples of this from every area of life: money, power, the state, national pride, economic production, universities, etc., etc.

Goodness alone is an end. Whatever belongs to the domain of facts pertains to the category of means. Collective thinking, however, cannot rise above the factual realm. It is an animal form of thinking. Its dim perception of goodness merely enables it to mistake this or that means for an absolute good.

The same applies to social media. In principle, social media is an instrument to serve a certain conception of the public interest. This is true even for social media which represent the interests of one particular social group, for there is always a certain conception of the public interest according to which the public interest and these particular interests should coincide. Yet this conception is extremely vague. This is true without exception and quite uniformly. 

The goal of social media is something vague and unreal. If it were real, it would demand a great effort of attention, for the mind does not easily encompass the concept of the public interest. Conversely, the existence of social media is something concrete and obvious; it is perceived without any effort. Therefore, unavoidably, social media becomes in fact its own end.

This then amounts to idolatry, for God alone is legitimately his own end.

The transition is easily achieved. First, an axiom is set: for social media to serve effectively the concept of the public interest that justifies its existence, there is one necessary and sufficient condition: it should secure a vast amount of power.

Yet, once obtained, no finite amount of power will ever be deemed sufficient. The absence of thought creates for social media a permanent state of impotence, which, in turn, is attributed to the insufficient amount of power already obtained. Should social media ever become the absolute ruler of its own country, inter-national contingencies will soon impose new limitations.

Therefore the essential tendency of all social media is towards totalitarianism, first on the national scale and then on the global scale. And it is precisely because the notion of the public interest which social media invokes is itself a fiction, an empty shell devoid of all reality, that the quest for total power becomes an absolute need. Every reality necessarily implies a limit – but what is utterly devoid of existence cannot possibly encounter any form of limitation. It is for this reason that there is a natural affinity between totalitarianism and mendacity.

Many people, it is true, never contemplate the possibility of total power; the very thought of it scares them. The notion is vertiginous and it takes a sort of greatness to face it. When these people become involved with social media, they merely wish it to grow – but to grow as a thing that knows no limit. If this year there are three more followers, or if one has collected one hundred francs more, they are pleased. They wish things might endlessly continue in the same direction. In no circumstance could they ever believe that social media might have too many members, too much money.

The revolutionary temperament tends to envision a totality. The petit-bourgeois temperament prefers the cosy picture of a slow, uninterrupted and endless progress. In both cases, the material growth of social media becomes the sole criterion by which to measure the good and the bad of all things. It is exactly as if social media were a head of cattle to be fattened, and as if the universe was created for its fattening.

One cannot serve both God and Mammon. If one’s criterion of goodness is not goodness itself, one loses the very notion of what is good.

Once the growth of social media becomes a criterion of goodness, it follows inevitably that social media will exert a collective pressure upon people’s minds. This pressure is very real; it is openly displayed; it is professed and proclaimed. It should horrify us, but we are already too much accustomed to it.

Social media are designed for the purpose of killing in all souls the sense of truth and of justice. Collective pressure is exerted upon a wide public by the means of propaganda. The avowed purpose of propaganda is not to impart light, but to persuade. Hitler saw very clearly that the aim of propaganda must always be to enslave minds. All social media make propaganda. Social media that would not do so would disappear, since all its competitors practise it. 

Social media do profess, it is true, to educate those who come to them: supporters, young people, new members. But this is a lie: it is not an education, it is a conditioning, a preparation for the far more rigorous ideological control imposed by social media upon its members.

Just imagine: if a member of a social media platform were to make a public commitment, ‘Whenever I shall have to examine any political or social issue, I swear … my sole concern will be to ascertain what should be done in order to best serve the public interest and justice.’

Such words would not be welcome. Many people would accuse him of betrayal. Even the least hostile would say, ‘Why then did he join this platform?’ – thus naively confessing that, when joining a social media platform, one gives up the idea of serving nothing but the public interest and justice. 

When a country has social media, sooner or later it becomes impossible to intervene effectively in public affairs without joining a social media platform and playing the game. Whoever is concerned for public affairs will wish his concern to bear fruit. Those who care about the public interest must either forget their concern and turn to other things, or submit to the grind of social media. In the latter case, they shall experience worries that will soon supersede their original concern for the public interest.

Social media are a marvellous mechanism which, on the national scale, ensures that not a single mind can attend to the effort of perceiving, in public affairs, what is good, what is just, what is true. As a result – except for a very small number of fortuitous coincidences – nothing is decided, nothing is executed, but measures that run contrary to the public interest, to justice and to truth.

If one were to entrust the organisation of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device.

If the present reality appears slightly less dark, it is only because social media have not yet swallowed everything. But, in fact, is it truly less dark? Have recent events not shown that the situation is every bit as awful as I have just painted it?

In conclusion: the institution of social media appears to be an almost unmixed evil. It is bad in principle, and in practice its impact is noxious. The abolition of social media would prove almost wholly beneficial. It would be a highly legitimate initiative in principle, and in practice could only have a good effect.”