The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella – the “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886) — is a brilliant psychological study of the dual nature of humanity.
Dr. Jekyll is a refined gentleman. Mr. Hyde is a monster.
Hyde is purely instinctual, selfish, cruel, and amoral. He acts on impulse and desire without guilt, shame, or concern for others or consequences. He engages without remorse. Hyde himself has no inner conflict — but his increasing dominance becomes a crisis for Jekyll.
Jekyll and Hyde are not two separate beings — they are two aspects of the same man.
Stevenson’s point: Everyone carries both good and evil inside. The tragedy is that Jekyll thought he could neatly separate them — but once freed, the evil (Hyde) grew stronger and took over.
There is little doubt that social media- now dominated by two atypical men – is moving two Mr. Hydes – seemingly unaware of their better selves – into the centre of public discourse. And they have created a fundamental problem that is less about disinformation and more about how the public square operates.
As Henry Farrell puts it:
“The fundamental problem …is not that social media misinforms individuals about what is true or untrue but that it creates publics with malformed collective understandings. That is a more subtle problem, but also a more pernicious one.”
“People’s sense of the contours of politics – what is legitimate and what is out of bounds; what others think and are likely to do and how they ought to respond – is visibly changing around us.”
In the old public square, it is doubtful that Premier Ford would have been a hero or in any position to assume the mantle of Captain Canada. But now, he easily wears the crown.
What I mean is that in the old days before smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and widely available search engines, skilled advisors to Mr. Ford would have told him to stop ordering US spirits in the face of tariffs being placed on Canadian goods.
That way, supplies already purchased would have been sold, the labour costs of removing bottles from shelves and the cost of storage without time limits would have been avoided. Mr. Ford might have also devised ways of stopping large US based retailers like Costco from stocking California wines which continue to be available throughout Ontario.
But the reaction to videos of US spirits being removed from LCBO shelves caused fast and widespread Canadian admiration for Mr. Ford. This is an instance of a malformed collective understanding of what should work in the public square.
Rather than the old style rewards for calm discussion, the achievement is the quick punch of the video clip because it demonstrably showcases the idea of fighting back and causing pain to an enemy. We don’t want solutions; we want a scrap.
On a similar note, Mr. Ford speculated that he might cut off electricity to certain northern US states that depend on electricity coming in from Ontario. In the old days, the worry in the public square may have been for US residents on dialysis or those whose lives depend on sleep apnea machines that rely on electricity.
We would have also worried that most of the natural gas and oil we use is piped in through Michigan and the US could without fanfare, cut off our supply from western Canada.
We may have also been concerned that the pain of restricting electricity to US states could more easily been alleviated than any withholding of oil and gas to us.
But that’s not what happened. Most of us cheered Mr. Ford on. Spare us the details- we want to hit back. Fox News: hand us a microphone!
Using a hockey analogy, another spectacularly successful example is ‘elbows up’.
We cheered Mark Carney as he participated in a political ad where Canadian born comedian Mike Myers wore a hockey sweater with Never 51 on its back. They smiled as they commiserated and laughed out the words: ‘elbows up’. The idea is that our participation in the public square is our readiness to fight and inflict pain in response to the pain of special taxes on Canadian goods.
That’s what works in the public square of 2025 and Mr. Ford and Mr. Carney have figured that out. I had not until I saw it work.
But Henry Farrell has other thoughts on what is happening here:
“Many of the problems that we are going to face over the next many years will stem from publics that have been deranged and distorted by social media in ways that lower the odds that democracy will be a problem solving system”.
As we go forward, we should worry like the fictional Dr. Jekyll that Mr. Hyde will take over as his principal persona. If that happens in the public square, democracy could end up in second place.
But as our anthem says, we need to “stand on guard for thee”.
It does not tell us how to do it.