“By that I don’t just mean that I see social media, and the internet broadly, sustaining a trend we’ve seen at earlier technological thresholds, such as the print revolution—a trend toward more tribes, often narrower tribes, and sometimes more intensely combative tribes. I also mean that the prime mover of the antagonism now emanating from some of the tribal boundaries is the same as it ever was: the psychology of tribalism. Martin Luther pushed the buttons that are being pushed now.”
It’s a whole lot faster now. So much faster than the print revolution that it’s not comparable to it.
This is what I dislike when people use the “History repeats itself, we’ll be fine” framing about things. That’s a false sense of control, and the worst part? It completely OMITS the compounding effects of societies fuck ups. We still pay for mistakes done decades, hundreds of years ago. It adds up to the price we’re paying.
Everything is intertwined and interlinked. Far more than before. We see it with Russian gas, pension funds, real estate, supply chain. In the west about 30 companies provide everything we do eat drink! Twitter was this toy for nerds and dorks ten years ago and now it seems inescapable yet more useless than ever?
Today’s far different. Today is intense like a mf.
Today’s narrower tribes are very combative BECAUSE they’re online. Because they can spy on each other in real time, from wherever they are. Because social media has incentives engineered left and right to maintain engagement, that fog of war.
This is not a slow ass print revolution, with time for society to absorb it. This is fragmentation on steroids, while we have the biggest wealth gap ever —which keeps growing and the most damaged Earth has ever been I mean, hello?? Talking about building a global community in this context, is weird. We need to solve a bunch of shit, first. And that means facing things without looking away.
The current “situation” or hellscape of a Western world being new or newish doesn’t matter. It should be tackled appropriately, which is not by saying “meh, been there done that”. Because we have not.
Now, I totally know what to do and how to unfuck ourselves. Will we ever be able to depoliticize ourselves and simply get to work? I don’t know about that though.