Describe or narrate a scenario about a pill found a century into a future in which society as we know it has come apart. Your description should address issues related to the brain and elicit feelings of fervor.
The Flippancy Pill
It’s 2125. Our fractured society finally acknowledged what began with a conversation I had a century ago.
During a discussion about a media bias diagram—reliability on the vertical axis, political leaning on the horizontal—I decided to really go for it. Not in saying I preferred left-leaning news, but in laying out my theory of the fundamental difference between left and right.
“At risk of being reductive,” I said, “the difference is your ability to stomach social constructionism—whether you can bear the idea that reality is determined by social processes through and through. Every time you uncover something apparently ‘natural,’ you can dig deeper and find it’s dependent on social processes. Right-leaning people lack this tolerance; they believe in certainties and a natural order.”
My colleague responded, “You want to see the evidence, right? That’s what left-leaning people want.”
I thought: No, show me the critique.
I was sidestepping the traditional talking point about how the right is rigid and the left is open-minded. Instead, I was saying, “I don’t claim to be less rigid—I just firmly LIKE social constructionism. I find it more interesting, more dynamic, and possibly more humane, though I’m not even sure about that.”
This inspired the “Flippancy Pill”—now neurologically rewiring millions with feverish intensity, making it impossible to retreat to the safety of ego-stroking frameworks. Under its influence, when my colleague said “you want to see the evidence, right,” she couldn’t use “evidence-seeking” as a way to create comforting ideological alignment.
The pill breaks down the arguments that lead to “safety” in your position—that sense of complacency my colleague was trying to goad me into where we both reassure ourselves we’re simply “evidence-based.” What if instead, on both left and right, you had to admit you’re just appealing to WHAT YOU LIKE? “That’s my perspective, and if you don’t like social constructionism, that’s unfortunate for you, because social constructionism is cool.”
Pierre Poilievre perfectly illustrated this divide, saying: “What binds us together is the Canadian promise: that anyone from anywhere can do anything, that hard work gets you a great life in a beautiful house on a safe street WRAPPED IN THE PROTECTIVE ARMS OF A SOLID BORDER.”
As a social constructionist, I can’t stomach this. It’s horribly generic—”anyone from anywhere can do anything”—it’s so generic as to be completely meaningless. Like saying, “Because the sky is blue, I can build rockets.”
I don’t believe hard work guarantees a great life—what you’re born into determines outcomes far more. What if social structures, not natural laws, determine outcomes? Hard work within an unjust system may yield little, while privilege within that same system can produce success with minimal effort.
Poilievre’s statement is an overwrought accumulation of American talking points to the point of absurdity. He’s laying out his view of what’s naturally good, while I’m saying “get with reality”—thereby ironically accusing him of pie-in-the-sky thinking from my socially constructed worldview.