 According to what seems like half the population of the US, the other half are evil monsters who need to be destroyed for the greater good, or at least cancelled and permanently removed from polite society. Now, they're not literal monsters, but they are, apparently, horrible bigots, racists, and morons who are directly responsible for everything from global warming to infectious disease. Meanwhile, many of the people who have been the subject of those accusations over the last several years are now convinced that everyone who seems to be even slightly aligned with their attackers is the worst kind of petty tyrant who also must be destroyed. We seem to be heading directly towards a clash between large groups of people who both see the other as their mortal enemies, and there's going to be a lot more collateral damage if that happens. This is also exactly what's happening in the latest season of The Witcher. The various cultures and people of the continent are increasingly divided, unable to see each other's value or humanity, and different factions are engaged in all-out war. For a show that is ostensibly about a monster hunter, what really struck me about season 2 is how it dealt with a concept that was only lightly explored until now, the nature of monstrosity. This is a perfect parallel to the way a lot of people in our world are starting to think, and regardless of how righteous your side might be, before you start seeing monsters around every corner, you should at least take a minute to think about what that really means. Now since I'm not a monster, I'll go ahead and warn you that there will be some mild spoilers for both seasons of The Witcher, so consider this your warning. If you've already finished it, or you don't mind that sort of thing, stick around and join me for a hard look at our fractured culture on this episode of Out of Frame. The preliminary numbers are in, and season 2 of The Witcher on Netflix is a certified hit, racking up more than 142 million viewing hours in its first week. Personally, I love this season. The production quality is much higher, and it avoided some of the issues that season 1 had that made it hard for new viewers to get into it, like the multiple timelines and non-linear storytelling. It even made fun of itself. Additionally, this season has a lot of heart, particularly in its handling of the relationships involving Ciri. All the main characters demonstrate growth and change. The stakes are clear, while still maintaining a certain amount of mystery, and it has some wonderful themes about feeling alone in a changing world that, at times, seems like it's ending. The plot picks up right where season 1 left off, invading Nilfgaard successfully conquered the nation of Cintra, only to be beaten at the Battle of Sodden, thanks largely to a blast of spectacular fire magic from the sorceress Yennefer, who subsequently disappears. After falling out with his friend Yaskir the Bard, Geralt has finally been united with his child's surprise, Ciri. Geralt is determined to keep his mysterious new charge safe, but he isn't exactly sure how to do it. His best idea is to take her to the witcher's stronghold, Cremoren. For her part, Ciri proves to be a difficult girl to protect. She feels out of place and alone, different, and considering no one really understands her magical abilities, she worries about what being different means. And while Geralt is busy trying to figure out how to take care of Ciri, other big things are happening on the continent. After their devastating loss at Sodden, Nilfgaard forges an alliance with the elves, hoping to replenish their ranks in exchange for a place to live. Humans and elves already distrust each other, but this new alliance sends the northern monarchs on a campaign to round up any remnant of their elvish populations, regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with Nilfgaard. Funny how civil liberties never seem to hold up when a population is afraid. After a few weeks, it's not only full elves who are targeted, but anyone with any elvish heritage. Why help? What's in it for you? I was at the great oak flail badass when it was raided, a seat of friendship the druids called it, where every free thinker was welcomed no matter their race, their creed. They come for the elves, Yennefer, they'll come for the dwarves, and sooner or later they will come for everyone. Anyone that they deem the other, eventually no artist is safe. If this all sounds eerily similar to 20th century history, it should. The books that The Witcher is based on were written by Andrzej Sapkowski, a Polish author. It's not difficult to see how the history of Poland and its subjugation first by the Nazis, and then by the Soviets influenced his storytelling. But more than that, it's also reminiscent of what's happening today. There might not be literal armies at the gates just yet, but in many ways our society is acting like there are. It's easy to see that we're currently embroiled in a large scale culture war, and according to some of its most zealous fighters, the stakes are nothing less than the very fabric of civilization. Personally, I don't particularly care for broad political labels like this, but for lack of a better way to describe it, the more extreme part of the left believes that a dizzying array of hateful bigots are everywhere, occupying positions of power, authority, and privilege, often as an unearned benefit of their gender or skin color. Their very existence, even if all they ever do is talk and express their ideas, is tantamount to violence that harms oppressed minorities. So they must be stopped at all costs. On the other hand, the more extreme end of the right believes that the entire government, media, social media, entertainment industry, and academia are all controlled by those kinds of extreme leftists, who they argue are deliberately trying to destroy significant aspects of Western society. In their eyes, the left is not operating in good faith. Instead, they falsely associate values like individual freedom, traditionalist social norms, market economies, and so on with bigotry, in order to deceptively persuade more people to support radical, social, and economic upheaval. I'll leave you to decide which of these two sets of beliefs is better supported by the evidence, but I would argue that at the extremes, both have led more and more people to divide their relationships with others along purely tribal lines. For those extremists, there are only allies and enemies. The news and social media are filled with dire warnings that they, the other, those monsters, are everything that's wrong with the world. They are terrible and different from us. They're coming for you and your children. They will devour and destroy. They aren't merely a threat to our way of life. They're a threat to life itself. And this is all reinforced by many people's tendency to wall themselves off from the contrary opinion, exclusively surrounding themselves with information sources that confirm their biases. The fundamental problem with this line of thinking on both the left and the right is that it paints in such broad strokes that lots of persuadable, reasonable people get brushed aside and pushed farther and farther into the extremes. And that brings us back to The Witcher. Season two takes the time to answer one question nobody seems to care to ask anymore. What actually makes a monster a monster? Is it superficial traits like pointy ears or height or anything else that just makes them different? A fluke of genetics or aptitude? Is it thinking thoughts or believing ideas that you don't understand or don't agree with? You don't seem like a monster to me. I appreciate that, my dear. Monsters are more than just horrid looks and claws and teeth. Monsters are born of deeds done and forgivable ones. This is really insightful and it reminds me of something that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, battle not with monsters lest you become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. History is littered with people who have done horrible things to others under the justification that the enemies were just as bad as they are. From ancient despots to the French Revolution to the Bolsheviks, Hitler, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and countless others, they all presented themselves as heroes saving civilization. Every action, no matter how insane, could be justified because the monsters they battled were supposedly worse. For them, the ends always justified any means. But if you do horrible things to other people and support an ideology that cannot tolerate disagreement or differences of opinion, then you are no better than the people you're fighting against. You've become a monster when you should have led by example, becoming a model of better values and actions. That's what real heroes do. But I'm concerned that fewer and fewer people are trying to take that path. Spend a few minutes on social media and it's easy to find countless users who describe those they disagree with as not simply wrong, misguided, or misinformed, but actually evil. Instead of looking at disagreement as an opportunity to learn and grow, gain a new perspective, or even to persuade, they talk about fighting back against their enemies. They refer to cultural institutions as being under attack, as opposed to evolving and changing in a variety of nuanced ways that can be bad, but are also often very good. I'm frequently shocked at the sight of people who have so thoroughly defined their own identities as a reaction to their ideological opponents that they have no personality of their own. They just mindlessly reject everything even vaguely associated with the other tribe. We all claim to be concerned about political division, and yet polling indicates that America is more polarized than ever. Too many people cocoon themselves in echo chambers and refuse to even associate with people who don't think exactly like them. This kind of tribalism, which of course served an evolutionary purpose to early humans, now triggers a literal danger reflex in our modern brains when we're exposed to intellectual disagreement. The whole mentality creates an increasingly perverse and toxic kind of purity culture that harshly punishes any deviation from the established doctrine. Looking at the world exclusively through the lens of a fight isn't a healthy way to think about people and ideas. When you get angry, your levels of adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol spike. If that happens frequently, it can seriously affect your health, including neurological damage, high blood pressure and heart problems, and wreck your immune system. Worse, there's the issue of neuroplasticity. That's the brain's ability to reorganize and change over time, normally as a result of repeated patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. Habits, memories, and even our emotional baselines stick because our neural pathways get stronger the more frequently they're used. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the habits you're forming are good or bad. So if you keep practicing for a life of perpetual outrage, you are only strengthening synaptic connections in your brain in a way that will keep you angry more of the time, putting your overall health at higher risk. It's really bad for you, and the only way to avoid it is to start forming and reinforcing different habits. Instead of getting angry, slow down. Take a deep breath, go for a walk, and think before you react. Remember that the people on the other end of the disagreement are just as human as you are. Also, consider that most people watching what you say online probably aren't as extreme as the person you're arguing with. You have a chance to persuade, but that won't work if all they can see is anger. A few years ago, I would have said that this kind of outrage culture was almost entirely a problem of the woke left, the social justice warriors, as they used to be called. But now, a sizable faction of the right has adopted the same type of angry mob mentality, accelerating the animosity across our culture in a way that is clearly unsustainable. We need to be able to disagree and express a wide range of values and viewpoints in order to discover what is true and explore new ideas. And yet, in addition to the already major problems we have with state and corporate censorship and digital mobs wrecking people's lives for saying or thinking the wrong things, we now have more and more tribal extremists punishing moderates on their own side. Those who won't perfectly conform to a particular brand of orthodoxy get harassed and ostracized, driving ideological groups farther towards the extremes. Then the extremes of one side get used to justify the most hyperbolic claims of the other and the whole thing perpetuates a cycle of increasingly hysterical outrage that puts even more pressure on each faction to punish heretics. Eventually, we end up with a world that becomes completely binary. You are either a righteous hero upholding all that is good in the world or an evil enemy monster who must be destroyed. There's nothing in between. We have to break this cycle. Fees founder Leonard Reed was fond of the saying, the one who throws the second punch starts the fight. Rarely in my life have I felt that understanding that statement is more necessary to our society. I'm not saying you have to be a pushover or that you shouldn't stand your ground when you are actually attacked, but peaceful action and calm persuasion is not only more effective than resorting to anger and violence. The results are longer lasting. What makes a monster is monstrous actions and it's easy to become one if you lose sight of other people's humanity. It's difficult to keep your cool when someone is attacking your most important beliefs, but I promise you, you are capable of being the better person. And if you and your friends reject the kinds of ideas and actions that make you hate your enemies, the more you are genuinely contributing to making the whole world a better place. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. In the spirit of the point, try to have some serious conversations with people you disagree with in the comments. I'm going to be making a few changes to the format this year that I hope you'll like. For one thing, I'm going to shoot for two episodes about this length each month, instead of one really long feature and a short. I'm also planning to do more episodes on some classic older movies that are worth talking about. In a world where so many new movies and shows are disappointing, I think we'll all have a lot more fun that way. We're also moving to an audio only version of the behind the scenes podcast this year, so I can spend more time working on episodes and making YouTube shorts. But in the meantime, I want to thank our supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. We're working on plans to do more exclusive stuff for supporters, so if you love what we do here, please consider a monthly contribution. And if you enjoyed this episode, please give it a like, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel. And as always, check out Out of Frame on all the social media. I'll see you next time.