Sometimes things are best viewed simplistically, and so it will be with this strange phenomenon - the death of dialogue in the 21st century.
But before we get down to simplification, let's say a word or two about the complexity of this topic: shortly after the transition between two centuries, the world gradually began to close in "bubbles" of individual, isolated and not excessively verifiable truths. One by one, communities were created based on their own standards of value and their own world of true and false claims. And they, of course, don't talk to each other. Consequently, there are more and more of them.
We welcome the end of this long and painful process surrounded by a kind of historical paradoxes: there are people who are ready to go to the stake, like Giordano Bruno once, but unlike the previous one - with the claim that the earth is a flat plate. Parallel to them exist, organized into a community, people who are suspicious about what kind of blood flows in the veins of which powerful person, because they are convinced that the world is ruled by cold-blooded lizard people. In 2005, the American physicist Bobby Henderson founded, purely for fun, the Pastafarian Church, which is based on the belief that the world was created by a large flying spaghetti-like monster. It would not be worth betting that, at this moment, there are no people who are serious believers of this religion. The writer of these lines, by the way, belongs to the autocephalous Parmesan branch of our church.
This big bang of mini-galaxies that revolve around their own truths has spawned in recent times a large community of neo-medical political scientists, who (I guess) claim that there is a chip in vaccines that serves some great villainy of the deep state, and it consists in blah , blah... That "bubble" is now even more difficult to follow, because it turned out that the best medicine for corona is not ivermectin, but gunpowder. War, the healer of all ills. And it also arose as a result of the existence of two worlds, which rest on two common truths - that they will be conquered and destroyed by those others. The dialogue between these two worlds also seems to have died, like all the other dialogues before. It carries the danger that, together with the dialogue, we all die.
And now let's return to the above-promised simplification of the answer to the question - why did dialogue die? Simply, then: because the two remaining forms of verbal and every other form of communication - monologue and silence - have strengthened and prevailed. The new communication technology, created by the Internet, has enabled us to enjoy the benefits of social networks, but they have not only served to network the existing society, but also to create completely new social communities. And the establishment of these new digital tribes requires the monologues of prophets and leaders, the parroting of "apostles" and followers, as well as the silence and submission of the present flock. All this is helped by the conviction of today's civilization that every community has the right to exist, and that on the basis of the equality of different communities - and the people in them - equality of human claims and truths can be created at the same time. The dialogue thus turned into a "coexistence" of equal "theories". In the next step, presenting evidence becomes an insult to the unproven, a violation of their right to believe in what they claim, even if it is wrong. Yes, the earth is round, but let's be tolerant, change the subject, our interlocutor is a flat earther.
The death of dialogue, therefore, resulted from the resurrection of numerous monologues. With consequences like those of the dark ages of the Middle Ages, the all-bright age of this new century was born: nothing can be seen from the forceful sowing of equal truths. Democracy has been replaced by the equality of autocracy, knowledge gives way to tolerance for ignorance, boring science lives in the shadow of glittering colorful superstitions. What's there to talk about, when we're so nice and fun to chatter next to each other. Of course, this text that you have just read is also part of that uproar, and it is quite possible that another explanation must be sought for the death of dialogue. Because everything is relative, as Einstein would say.
And what does he know.
Bonus video:
