"Public sphere" is an outdated term
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another.
We used to live in societies with public spheres of discourse, but the public sphere no longer exists. Over time, our media consumption evolved from being societally homogeneous to being bespoke for the individual. This individualisation of our content diets led to the fragmentation of the public sphere. It will continue to lead to radical changes in society.
Humans used to live in self-sufficient societies that received a homogeneous content diet in their public sphere. Think of a local tribe sharing stories around the campfire. We rarely interacted with others outside of the tribe. We never thought about a world with a different content diet, a public sphere situated around a different campfire. Over tens of thousands of years, that shifted to whole villages listening to the same homily at Mass. While we knew in theory that the village over had a different public sphere and thus were being fed a different content diet, what did that matter? You were going to marry someone sitting a pew or two over and both of you would be buried in the plot outside.
By the time we get to the printing press and then to radio, the public sphere had expanded far larger, to linguistic groups and to nations. Whole linguistic groups read that same canon of classic literature at school. Whole nations turned on the same national news broadcast. Even as our societies expanded far beyond our acquaintances, we continued to consume the same content diets. We continued to have one public sphere.
Now, our public spheres have drifted apart. It started with a sort of factional alignment (“Do you read The Guardian or The Times?”). Within the last ten years, it has grown more and more individual. We don’t have books “everyone has read” or news sources “everyone follows.” We do not consume a standard content diet provided by our countries, nor by our towns of origin. In fact, we don’t even consume the same media as our family or friends. In fact, the content diets we have consumed in our lives are probably unique. They are bespoke, tailored to the individual. As a result, each individual lives in a public sphere tailored to himself.
The closest proxy to a public sphere could be a shared subculture. You could define a subculture of others who share my interests - Catholicism, philosophical anthropology, and capitalist economics. That subculture (fuzzily defined as it is) has a content diet close enough to me that I am taking part in its discourse. But sharing in subcultural discourse is not the same as sharing in the public sphere of a society.
Till the advent of social media, it was still sensible to speak of a common public sphere. We could indeed identify a social discourse shared by a self-sufficient society. For example, read this quote from a book written in 2007:
The public sphere [is] a common space in which the members of society are deemed to meet through a variety of media: print, electronic, and also face-to-face encounter … I say “a common space”, because although the media are multiple, as well as the exchanges which take place in them, these are deemed to be in principle intercommunicating. … The same public discussion is deemed to pass through our debate today, and someone else’s earnest conversation tomorrow, and the newspaper interview Thursday, and so on. … Whenever we want to act in this sphere, we meet a number of structures already in place: there are certain newspapers, television networks, publishing houses, and the like. (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Chapter 4, section 4.)
But this quote feels anachronistic in a post-newsfeed-algorithm world. Which media structures are universal to our society? Where do we share common spaces? I pondered, but could think of no medium, no space I could safely say I shared even with my neighbour. As far as I can tell, the public sphere has disappeared. The only “society” with which we share “public spheres” are the fuzzily defined subcultures which I mentioned above. But calling this the “public sphere” of “society” would stretch the definitions of these words so far that they're unrecognisable.
This drift can separate us from others without whom we cannot continue to exist. Recently, for example, I read a series of articles commenting on the increasing divergence in opinion between men and women. In the Financial Times article inspiring the discussion, we read this revealing sentence: “the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.” It is true. But “men” and “women” are not self-sufficient societies. If men and women don’t inhabit at least one shared space, it would take exactly one generation before both groups cease to exist.
This same interdependence also exists in our current political entities. The right-wing and the left-wing of a democratic nation are not self-sufficient. Sure, as it stands right now, if the right-wing party keeps winning elections they can keep governing a society with left-wingers in it. But they cannot force the left wing to remain part of that society. Social justice warriors who tweeted #NotMyPresident didn’t quite take that into action. Trump supporters who denied his election loss in 2020 didn’t quite declare civil war. But it’s getting closer. It’s certainly conceivable that those things could happen in the future.
Democratic nations have stayed in existence for now because our public opinion in favour of democracy has not yet been part of our subcultural divergence. Over the past few centuries, we have come to this public opinion: “the government that won the most recent election in my nation has legitimate authority over me.” But the fact that this feels self-evident to those of us who have grown up in stable democracies does not mean that this is, in fact, self-evident. If a government tells you or your subculture to do something that you know is morally wrong, why would you obey? If your subculture has a chance to ignore elections to achieve some good, why not do it?
In our world without a public sphere, it’s getting easier to imagine a world where a polarised election splits a nation in two. After all, when we don’t share a public sphere, it’s not likely that our fundamental opinions will stay the same for very long. This is not only true for political societies. I’m sure you can conceive of a similar scenario in your town, your church, your local club, or even in your family.
We have moved from a race that shared stories around the campfire to a race that shares Stories on Snapchat. Our public sphere has moved from our own local group to a widely-dispersed subculture. I am not arguing against this trend. I disagree on many different issues with the mainstream opinion in my local area. I would hate to be the lone contrarian in a public discourse so different from my own. But our societies will not continue to exist in their current form if we don’t share a public sphere.
Subcultures have already replaced most of our more voluntary local societies. Fewer people are part of local sports leagues, churches, and clubs. Instead, we watch the same wellbeing influencers and read the same news websites. I suspect that, soon enough, our less voluntary societies will have to change as well.
This fragmentation of the public sphere is not necessarily bad. It is simply the next stage of our social imaginary. But we, dear readers, have decided to take the Dominic option. We may retreat to the safety of our own subcultures at times, but we must also engage with society and the public sphere in so far as it is good to do so.
So engage with people in real life, including those of the opposite sex. Go to that cringey work social and frequent the same local bakery every week. Read your local newspaper instead of keeping up with controversies that don’t concern you. Attend your local parish every week and listen to the announcements. Read your culture’s canon of classic literature and engage with its most influential philosophers. Pick up the fragmented pieces of the public sphere and build your society.
Further reading: If you’d like to read about the political divide between the sexes, I recommend ’s article “Men vs. Women: The Battle of Our Time.” As I’ve previously mentioned on this blog, credit for the concept of “bespoke” media diets goes to ’s wonderful article “From Common Sense to Bespoke Realities,”