Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
I’m willing to bet one of the largest factors is the isolation we now live in. We used to have third places on every corner, we interacted with our neighbors, and public transport made us connect during commutes. We also relied on talking to people for most of our news and information and generally just were forced to be part of a community, or multiple.
Now we drive alone in a car to work, drive alone back to our house that’s isolated from others and don’t speak to neighbors, we have no third places left, and we get all our information from the internet or TV. Most people don’t have a community larger than a handful of close friends. We can’t organize and we don’t see the struggles other people are going through or help each other out. There’s no social bonds, and everyone only looks out for themselves.
I order to progress, we need to figure out how to form communities again. We need to be able to organize. This is all constructed to keep us thinking about ourselves as an individual rather than the collective us. We think about what I can do, which is pretty minor, not what we can do, which is almost anything we want.
I was raised in a rural area. The amount of friends I made in life after forty years is…zero. Aside from a sibling, I don’t have anyone to count on. I am also too poor to afford visiting bars or other social things, so I can’t learn how to be around people, let alone establish ties. It is my belief that America’s shitty economy is the source of these issues, because a person can’t blossom if they don’t have the fiscal agency to escape a tiny bubble.
The internet let me develop as a person, but that can only go so far. I can’t afford risks, such as trying beer, an escort to lose my virginity, or travel. Poverty is a prison without walls.
That sucks. If I were you I’d try to move to somewhere more dense and it could help you out. I know, easier said than done. You can try applying for jobs online and maybe get lucky though.
Good luck out there!