Former President and Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev would be very pleased with Alex Garland’s new film Civil War. After the House approved funding for Ukraine, he said:
“[C]onsidering the russophobic decision that took place, I can't help but wish the USA with all sincerity to dive into a new civil war themselves as quickly as possible. Which, I hope, will be very different from the war between North and South in the 19th century and will be waged using aircraft, tanks, artillery, MLRS, all types of missiles and other weapons. And which will finally lead to the inglorious collapse of the vile evil empire of the 21st century—the United States of America.”
I saw Garland’s film on opening weekend, spurred by the plethora of positive reviews and the idea that we must imagine and name horrors before we can overcome them. (Minor spoiler alerts.) I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the plot myself, and my friend was stunned by the indiscriminate violence.
However, on reflection, I thought it was a meaningful portrayal of relationships gone wild or even the national psyche portrayed as a schizophrenic split. Garland has said he didn’t mean the film to be an exact portrayal of our ideological divide, but rather about extremism vs. centrism, and the morality of gonzo journalism and mindless observation versus wisdom and restraint. Indeed, his quixotic alliance of California and Texas seemed geared to boost ticket sales from both sides of the aisle.
In the end, the film displayed a mosaic of Americas, giving each tile a drive, presence, and following, but ultimately recognizing that aggression and violence will tear the mosaic apart. Here are some of the tiles I saw:
Looking around at my world, I’d like to think most of us are pretty squarely in the kindness camp, finding ways to feed and help those we can. But seen from the eyes of the disenfranchised, the homeless, anti-war protestors, and other marginalized groups, perhaps the psyche seems quite callous and aggressive, or at least not nearly as compassionate as it could be—because those self-centered, aggressive drives for wealth, status, and turf seem quite prominent still.
A civil war on the scale of Garland’s film or Medvedev’s dream seems unlikely, but political violence seems plausible unless leaders from all sides can find a way to shore up and deepen our democratic values, resolve conflicts amicably, and stop grandstanding and attention-seeking without regard for consequence.
Civil War is what might happen if a mind or a country comes apart. Disconnection is at the root of suffering; the opposite of suffering is belonging. Will our democracy support an “executive function” that can incline the entire population towards belonging? Or will we engage in factionalism and finally assert that America was not about liberty after all, but that “might makes right?” Will we build a collective conscience through dialogue, disagreement, refinement, and restraint? Or is that an impossible task?
Boston University’s Professor Yuri Corrigan writes of another Russian, Anton Chekhov:
“The most dangerous drugs of the age, for Chekhov, were the ideological ones. In the story ‘Lights,' a contemplative engineer reflects on the vulgar nihilisms of his day, the idea ‘that life is pointless and has no meaning, that everything is deceit, illusion… that no one is either right, or guilty, that everything is absurdity and nonsense.’ According to Chekhov’s engineer, such pessimism, the go-to intellectual posture of the era, is actually a form of self-soothing. ‘This way of thinking,’ he says, ‘contains in its essence something addictive… It becomes a habit, a need. You use every moment of solitude, every available opportunity to indulge in thoughts of the pointlessness of life… We need to imagine that life is meaningless so as to drown out all the arduous ethical demands that inform the meaningful life…’
Apart from nihilism, Chekhov’s works offer a whole inventory of the popular ideological drugs that can be used to stifle the moral imagination. In an age of culture war, political hatred was a powerful one.
What moral imagination are we stifling, suppressing, or denying by indulging in political hatred? Perhaps the inhumanity of status, caste, and domination, which devalue the lives of minoritized peoples, migrants, the poor, and the vulnerable.
Medvedev wishes us civil war. I wish him and us the empathy of Chekhov instead.
© 2024 Ravi Chandra, M.D., D.F.A.P.A.
References
Extremism playlist on YouTube, compiled by Dr. Ravi Chandra
Chandra R. "The New Film “Origin” Forces an Acknowledgement of Caste." Psychology Today, April 12, 2024
Chandra R. "Which of Six Power Types Will You Embody and Support?" Psychology Today, September 15, 2022
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