The paradigm is shifting: The plastic public

Our lives have become plasticized. A material that takes on every shape was a necessity. However, plastic has transformed our lives and our environment. 

The most important feature of plastic is that it is durable and flexible. 

As the paradigm shifts, "all that is solid melts into air." Flexibility has increased to such an extent that the distinctions between concepts and objects have become meaningless. 

The world we know is stretching. Genders, rules, language, and characters are stretching. The lines are becoming rounded. 

The public is also getting its share of this. The public is also becoming plasticized. 

Masses characterized by a specific political view can approve of entirely different politics. With a logic that is completely obscure, the "us and them" discourse can replace all kinds of dualities. 

The same mass can embrace the most radical left-wing ideas and the most radical right-wing ideas to the same degree. 

The ability to be swept up in radical discourses, but also to abandon this infatuation in an instant, is baffling. 

Even today's racism is different from the past. Racist discourse dissipates like a flash in the pan before it can fully translate into action. There is a brilliant conceptualization for this: "Strategic Positioning."

People who use harsh rhetoric do not actually intend to carry out what they say. The reason for their harsh political rhetoric is to distance themselves from a perspective they react to at that moment and to declare this distance. Thus, they are positioning themselves strategically. 

This is even more common in our country. In fact, the purpose of most discourse is the effort of the individual to position themselves and declare their position. Now, all individuals find themselves making press statements via social media. Thus, they are making a moral, political, or intellectual declaration of positioning. 

The effort of strategic positioning is a floating effort. Because the moment the attitude of "them" changes, the strategic position can also change. After all, we and they can commit the same sin and take pride in the same good deed. 

Let's say it in Turkish: We are striking a pose. Thanks to striking a pose, we join political clusters and escape from loneliness and the burden of analyzing events and problems with composure. 

While the public is becoming plasticized, minds are being beaten moment by moment by what is happening. We are surfing in the turbulence of the agenda. Every time the wave hits, we stretch, position ourselves, declare, and then lose our uniqueness. Meanwhile, we judge the person we consider our opponent. 

We write and draw for an "imaginary" trial on the stage of history. Meanwhile, we are spectators. During the war of discourse on an imaginary plane, the horse has already bolted to Üsküdar. 

The public has become plasticized. Individuals have too. Almost everything is stretching. We have stretched so much that we have lost our fragility. We are almost becoming identity-less, personality-less. Nuances are disappearing, we are joining clusters and retreating to the stands. 

Politics has now turned into a school play where figures participate in role distribution and then fight in the arena for entertainment. 

The law has also stretched. Judgments stretch according to the perpetrator, the place, and the interests. 

Morality is the same. 

The only thing that does not stretch is our hostility. Regardless of the subject, positioning, or discourse, the sides of the polarization continue their hostility. The subject has been forgotten. We are positioning ourselves without a subject. 

Happy are those who, in defiance of plasticization, take ownership of their minds and their future.