A lonely nation: Has the notion of the ‘American way’ promoted isolation across history?

[jbg]

My story of loneliness. Where do I start?

I never had many friends for my early years. Academic 1972-3 was really my first experience having more than one friend at a time. I had had a friend through Eighth Grade, and through me our parents became friends but I digress. We are still in touch with each other but out relationship is at best on the borders of neutral and hostile.

I departed high school in 1975 with a few more friends, one of whom remains. I have lost touch with the remainder, or we have parted company over, believe it or not, politics. And this includes one former friend who sought me out for dinner on the eve of his wife's death, to ask advice on how to break it to his children. Just because our friendship included "deeper, intellectual discussions revealing our true selves" was not enough to survive my 2020 Presidential vote.

Other friendships are dissolving based upon his divorce and changes in employment. He simply isn't around much.
So that brings me back to my remaining close friend from high school. We have had many "deeper, intellectual discussions revealing our true selves." Midway through those, however, strange things happen. I am a moderately successful lawyer, he a high-powered executive of a financial company. I often get the feeling that he wonders "what am I doing here" when there are more worthwhile or lucrative connections he could be making. For example, at our last lunch, in NYC, I arranged to take the day off so I wouldn't be pressed for time, and so advised him. He emailed back that he wouldn't be under pressure. Midway through the meal I noticed that he had basically inhaled his food. I apologized and he said "maybe if you weren't talking so much...." Mind you, this was January 13, and we hadn't spoken or exchanged more than brief emails since late June, when he threw himself a lavish birthday party. Granted, a third of the invited guests didn't show, citing either positive Covid tests or fear of Covid. I think a few were tired of his Gatsbyesque parties.

Either this guy is not a friend, or he has become impossibly arrogant in high-middle age. Suffice to say we haven't talked or exchanged more than brief emails as to what we're reading.

As far as other venues for making friends, our synagogue has decreased in value for that, not really recovering from Covid. A recent event was canceled for no apparent reason, and the Men's Club head didn't even bother to tell me. I asked by email if this was a game of "ding-dong-ditch."

 

[Zwing]

The fetishisation, in the West, of personal freedom over all other virtues and values, has alienated the individual from his community. When my right to do what I want trumps any obligation I may have towards those I share my environment with, imbalance is inevitable.

100%

 

[PureX]

The culture of material consumption is a culture of selfishness. And selfishness is isolating by both act and definition. So yes, modern consumer culture is very isolating. And the capitalism that fosters it pits us all against each other for our economic survival. Which hugely exacerbates that isolation.

We justify it all by calling it 'freedom' and 'individuality' but in the and all it is, is selfishness. Selfishness that leads to antagonism and isolation.

 

[Zwing]

The culture of material consumption is a culture of selfishness. And selfishness is isolating by both act and definition. So yes, modern consumer culture is very isolating. And the capitalism that fosters it pits us all against each other for our economic survival. Which hugely exacerbates that isolation.

We justify it all by calling it 'freedom' and 'individuality' but in the and all it is, is selfishness. Selfishness that leads to antagonism and isolation.

F~<£in’ ey!!! 110%. This is extremely well said.

 

[Zwing]

The culture of material consumption is a culture of selfishness. And selfishness is isolating by both act and definition. […] We justify it all by calling it 'freedom' and 'individuality' but in the and all it is, is selfishness…that leads to antagonism and isolation.

The only thing that I can add to this is to note that the culture of material consumption is not the sole cause of our social ills; it is coupled with something even more basic both as an axiom of “Enlightenment” thinking and as a ideological premise of the “American Experiment”, and that is the presumption of the individual and its “rights”. Those “rights” in the modern liberally democratic republic are asserted at the expense of any presumption of responsibility, which in more traditional settings was taken for granted. People today are told, and take for granted, that they and all citizens are responsible for and to only themselves, with a few notable exceptions such as when minor children are involved. This individualism is the ultimate reason why elder parents end up in nursing homes rather than home with those who are supposed to love them, and why the children of parents are supposed to evacuate their home and become “independent” (which means living alone and lonely in an apartment all by themselves) soon after they reach the age of majority. The peculiar type of individualism which is a basis of American democracy can only be viewed as a type of social sickness, and has been responsible for the glorification of the state and concomitant diminution of the family as the locus of peoples affections, which I constantly decry as representative of cultural decay.

 

[Zwing]

I see some drift away from the from what was supposed to be about individualism and loneliness, and for some the pull of talking politics overcame them. So, in my opinion, this thread has strayed from its original concept to discuss, which doesn't surprise me.

Perhaps we should create a special “MAGA shoutout thread” where people can…um…”discuss” MAGA. That way, we can say “take it to the MAGA thread!”

 

[Audie]

The culture of material consumption is a culture of selfishness. And selfishness is isolating by both act and definition. So yes, modern consumer culture is very isolating. And the capitalism that fosters it pits us all against each other for our economic survival. Which hugely exacerbates that isolation.

We justify it all by calling it 'freedom' and 'individuality' but in the and all it is, is selfishness. Selfishness that leads to antagonism and isolation.

Everything always about greed

 

[PureX]

Everything always about greed

Actually, with we humans, what it's really about is control. Our greed comes from our fear of not being in control. A fear that can never be fully appeased.

 

[Audie]

Actually, with we humans, what it's really about is control. Our greed comes from our fear of not being in control. A fear that can never be fully appeased.

So you have the misfortune to believe

 

[Zwing]

So you have the misfortune to believe

It’s true, but it goes deeper.

Actually, with we humans, what it's really about is control. Our greed comes from our fear of not being in control. A fear that can never be fully appeased.

Beyond control, what we are really witnessing is a common mammalian core characteristic which has outlasted its usefulness in our species, having become, rather, a liability: the instinct for dominance…the urge to dominate the other. It is very clearly seen in every species of social mammal, this insatiable drive to have the highest possible social status, preferably the so-called “alpha”, if one can. In modern society, wherein power and authority ultimately devolves to the group in common, there can be no “alphas”, and so this innate drive of the Freudian “id” is frustrated, and seeks other paths of expression, such as conspicuous consumption, extravagant expressions of privilege and other aspects of social ”class”, and the clever use of social heirarchies in the wanton exercise of authority. It is a mark of intellectual maturity that a person can discern this instinct for what it is, and it’s current contextual noisomeness, and actively oppose it in his day-to-day thinking.

 

[Heyo]

Perhaps we should create a special “MAGA shoutout thread” where people can…um…”discuss” MAGA. That way, we can say “take it to the MAGA thread!”

:useful:

 

[Zwing]

:useful:

Done! Everybody please post your further MAGA gripes in the MAGA Shoutbox found under Current Events in the General Discussion Forum.

It seems your message is being ignored, or they don't care. I haven't looked here for a while. i gave up on this thread that I started.

Please don’t. This is an important socio-cultural topic, and now the MAGA grumps can gripe in the MAGA thread. This discussion centers on something that has effected me personally, and many in society along with me.

 

[PureX]

It’s true, but it goes deeper.

Beyond control, what we are really witnessing is a common mammalian core characteristic which has outlasted its usefulness in our species, having become, rather, a liability: the instinct for dominance…the urge to dominate the other. It is very clearly seen in every species of social mammal, this insatiable drive to have the highest possible social status, preferably the so-called “alpha”, if one can. In modern society, wherein power and authority ultimately devolves to the group in common, there can be no “alphas”, and so this innate drive of the Freudian “id” is frustrated, and seeks other paths of expression, such as conspicuous consumption, extravagant expressions of privilege and other aspects of social ”class”, and the clever use of social heirarchies in the wanton exercise of authority. It is a mark of intellectual maturity that a person can discern this instinct for what it is, and it’s current contextual noisomeness, and actively oppose it in his day-to-day thinking.

I agree that we have to stop letting the 'monkey-men' be in charge. Technology has put too many weapons
in the monkey cage and the monkeys are going to have to stop behaving like monkeys or they'll destroy themselves. The humans among us have to start stepping up and taking control and making the important decisions.

But they don't have that monkey drive to be in control of everything, and everyone. To be the "alphas". So how do we get the humans to step up? And how do we get the alpha monkeys to step aside? Because they won't do it willingly. I don't know the answers. All I know is that we are at a crossroads as a species and it's time for us to ascend. To let go of our monkey mentality and start thinking and behaving like humans. Not all technology is good technology. Not all knowledge is good knowledge. And not all control is good for us. We have to start making decisions in advance of the catastrophes, instead of doing whatever our monkey brains desire until the catastrophe happens.

I'm not hopeful, but sometimes fate surprises me.

 

[Zwing]

Technology has put too many weapons
in the monkey cage and the monkeys are going to have to stop behaving like monkeys or they'll destroy themselves.

They might destroy society as we have always known and imagined it, first.

There were a couple of posts by @anna. which I was planning on responding to, in one of which she mentioned that “It’s hard not to feel a bit of dystopia” in modern society, but they seem to have been lost to the ether as a result of the server migration mishap (actually thought I was going kooky for a while when I couldn’t find them). She is right, it’s becoming increasingly hard not to feel dystopic about the situation in which we live. Have you ever had the fleeting feeling that you might have become imprisoned without realizing it? With the ridiculous amount of security surveillance in our towns and cities and even the houses in our neighborhoods (I am treated daily to a new technology…a female-sounding voice telling me as I pass by a certain house in my neighborhood on my doggie walk that “you are currently being recorded”. I cannot describe the antisocial…sociopathic?…feelings that this seeming act of violence engenders in me; the social fabric between myself and the owners of said house has already been destroyed), when coupled with the utter loss of all “frontiers” in this world where the conceit of sovereignty by some nation-state has not been fully consolidated, I kind of feel that most of what I consider my natural freedoms have been abrogated, and that I’ve been left with a very narrowed scope of possible behavior. I feel a bit like there is a noose of social control, and it is tightening, fueled by governmental overreach and private paranoia. Do we really need all this security? Does it make us safer? Are the threats to us all real? I have a good friend who has not even locked the doors of his house for many years now, in an intentional exercise of trust…we live in a mid-sized city, and he has never been robbed; his response to my suggestion that he might be robbed has always been “it’s just a bunch of crap”, leaving me with the impression that he considers some things (perhaps the fabric of our society?, or his faith in divine Providence?) more important than the ‘crap’. It is worth noting that his position and behavior have been informed by his religious upbringing. He was raised in a fairly fundamentalist Xtian home. My point here is, are all of our social phobias and paranoias reasonable, and are our resulting ‘security’ efforts justifiable?

 

[Revoltingest]

Everything always about greed

But only capitalist greed, wherein the individual makes
choices loathed by the hive mind folk. Under socialism,
striving for power & wealth isn't called "greed". They're
just the perquisites of being a deserving party official.

Lefties see evil in individualism. (Individuals must be
tightly controlled, lest they make wrong choices.)
But there are pluses....

The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme) Individualism - Freakonomics

The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme) Individualism - Freakonomics

freakonomics.com

With travel being so easy these days, I urge people
to move to countries that suit them. Some want
to be a cog serving the machine. Others value their
lives more independently, serving (or not) by choice.
There are countries ready to provide either environment.

 

[Stevicus]

I agree that we have to stop letting the 'monkey-men' be in charge. Technology has put too many weapons
in the monkey cage and the monkeys are going to have to stop behaving like monkeys or they'll destroy themselves. The humans among us have to start stepping up and taking control and making the important decisions.

But they don't have that monkey drive to be in control of everything, and everyone. To be the "alphas". So how do we get the humans to step up? And how do we get the alpha monkeys to step aside? Because they won't do it willingly. I don't know the answers. All I know is that we are at a crossroads as a species and it's time for us to ascend. To let go of our monkey mentality and start thinking and behaving like humans. Not all technology is good technology. Not all knowledge is good knowledge. And not all control is good for us. We have to start making decisions in advance of the catastrophes, instead of doing whatever our monkey brains desire until the catastrophe happens.

I'm not hopeful, but sometimes fate surprises me.

I think this points up one of the major problems with the mentality of capitalism is that it largely gives validation to social Darwinist ideas. The mentality is very much a part of popular culture and the way many people look at things.

The movie Goodfellas has a line that illustrates the mentality at work;

• Henry Hill : [narrating] For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked ****ty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean, they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.

Or this line:

• Tony Montana : In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

A large part of the odium of capitalism is not just due to capitalism itself, but also due to attempts to paint it and present it as something other than what it is, which is where the political side of it comes in.

Our governments in the West have tried to present themselves as more devoted to freedom, human rights, compassion, charity (oftentimes claiming to be following religious and moral traditions). They'll put forth the false face of a smiling salesman putting out the glad hand, while the other hand is behind his back. The liberal capitalists in the West also try to pass off the notion that they've renounced and condemned their old ways of slavery, sweatshops, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and expansionism, as if they turned over a new leaf and became born again.

They'll point out the numerous reforms which have come about, such as the implementation of Social Security, the expansion of medical insurance coverage, welfare benefits for the disabled and destitute, food stamps, aid to foreign countries, etc. - all to present an image of Western capitalists and their governments being generous, compassionate benefactors who only want to do good in the world - and bring freedom and democracy to all nations.

But it's a fair question to ask: Are the capitalists really sincere in their proclamations of wanting to do good in the world? And, more importantly, are there enough resources to actually do it?

The more conservative, right-wing capitalists are less optimistic, as they don't think we can afford to be that generous anymore. We can't afford to allow liberals to give away "free stuff," and we can't afford foreign aid anymore. They also believe we don't have the capacity or the resources to allow any more immigration, so they want that curtailed and walls along the border. Many of them want to reverse and undo all the major reforms which have taken place for nearly a century, going all the way back to FDR's New Deal. Same for LBJ's Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, and many other liberal and progressive reforms. They've been slowly chipping away at those reforms since the Reagan era and even up to the present day - and even many Democrats have gone along with it.

So, this is the crossroads we're at: Either we have to move forward, or we're going to end up moving backward. If the ruling class and the masses continue to mindlessly adhere to the capitalist ideology, as if it were a religion in their eyes, then there will continue to be consequences and a general deterioration and regression in American society.

Trump, DeSantis, and many others in the America First crowd did not arise by accident. They merely want to compete with the rest of the world, as any good capitalist and social Darwinist would do. They just want America to win the competition, and that's where their appeal and powerbase are coming from. They want America to be back on top of the world, just like we were in the years following WW2.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

One of the rather interesting sentences to be found in Wikipedia: Marx's theory of alienation is:

"People are objectively alienated if the social world they inhabit is not a home."​

 

[Revoltingest]

One of the rather interesting sentences to be found in Wikipedia: Marx's theory of alienation is:

"People are objectively alienated if the social world they inhabit is not a home."​

Keen sense of the obvious, eh.

 

[anna.]

They might destroy society as we have always known and imagined it, first.

There were a couple of posts by @anna. which I was planning on responding to, in one of which she mentioned that “It’s hard not to feel a bit of dystopia” in modern society, but they seem to have been lost to the ether as a result of the server migration mishap (actually thought I was going kooky for a while when I couldn’t find them). She is right, it’s becoming increasingly hard not to feel dystopic about the situation in which we live. Have you ever had the fleeting feeling that you might have become imprisoned without realizing it? With the ridiculous amount of security surveillance in our towns and cities and even the houses in our neighborhoods (I am treated daily to a new technology…a female-sounding voice telling me as I pass by a certain house in my neighborhood on my doggie walk that “you are currently being recorded”. I cannot describe the antisocial…sociopathic?…feelings that this seeming act of violence engenders in me; the social fabric between myself and the owners of said house has already been destroyed), when coupled with the utter loss of all “frontiers” in this world where the conceit of sovereignty by some nation-state has not been fully consolidated, I kind of feel that most of what I consider my natural freedoms have been abrogated, and that I’ve been left with a very narrowed scope of possible behavior. I feel a bit like there is a noose of social control, and it is tightening, fueled by governmental overreach and private paranoia. Do we really need all this security? Does it make us safer? Are the threats to us all real? I have a good friend who has not even locked the doors of his house for many years now, in an intentional exercise of trust…we live in a mid-sized city, and he has never been robbed; his response to my suggestion that he might be robbed has always been “it’s just a bunch of crap”, leaving me with the impression that he considers some things (perhaps the fabric of our society?, or his faith in divine Providence?) more important than the ‘crap’. It is worth noting that his position and behavior have been informed by his religious upbringing. He was raised in a fairly fundamentalist Xtian home. My point here is, are all of our social phobias and paranoias reasonable, and are our resulting ‘security’ efforts justifiable?

Have you seen the series Rabbit Hole with Kiefer Sutherland? It's about dark power seeking to control the populace by controlling their data, and making people their unwilling accomplices by blackmailing them with what they know about them. It's a decent thriller, not perfect, but I was reminded of Technopoly, by Neil Postman. If you want to scale surveillance, though, look to China.

China's aggressive development and use of facial recognition offers a window into how a technology that can be both benign and beneficial -- think your iPhone's Face ID -- can also be twisted to enable a crackdown on actions that the average person may not even consider a crime. Chinese officials have used surveillance tools to publicly shame people wearing sleepwear in public, calling it "uncivilized behavior."​

​

The punishing of these minor offenses is by design, surveillance experts said. The threat of public humiliation through facial recognition helps Chinese officials direct over a billion people toward what it considers acceptable behavior, from what you wear to how you cross the street.​

​

 

[Zwing]

Keen sense of the obvious, eh.

It may be obvious, but is obviously very true, as well. If I were to have said this, I would have used the word “community” in stead of “home”, just to avoid appearing at all hyperbolic, but the sense is the same in both cases. The basic fact is, that capitalism, by its very nature, destroys community. If people begin to mentally prioritize the maximization of profit over the common welfare and the welfare of his friends and neighbors, then the seeds of destruction of communal solidarity have been sown. The fabric of society then begins to tear, and what Hobbes called “the war of all against all” is initiated. From there, the only recourse is for the so-called “social contract” to be tacitly initiated (the very antithesis of a “contract”), whereby the state is granted the sole rights to the use of violence in managing behavior as that “war” continues in perpetuity, and to enact “socialist” programmes in an attempt to restore the lost equity among men. This is the conceit of socialism, that by socialist initiatives society may be returned to a state of community, but this is a self-deception. Once the feeling of community and brotherhood is gone, it is gone and there is no reviving it. Such is the state of our democracy.