The Internet and then social media has become the conduit for evil to flourish as it both causes a mass lack of life meaning and purpose by replacing the evolutionary needs for material struggle with digitized convenience, while also providing an always-on, always-connected, platform for human mind manipulation. The message: "pick up the gun and go assassinate someone" is broadcast and repeated in repetitive subliminal memes and on-line rants, and with nothing better to do, the sleepwalking clones of Satan go forth and do his bidding.
So, what do we do?
We are getting closer to agreement on the root of the problem but have not yet begun to design any compelling solution. To use an analogy, there is a problem with auto fatalities and injuries on our nation's roads. We don't ban the roads in response, but we do require many safeguards to minimize harm while allowing travel. We have people like Jonathan Haidt making the point about how social media is frying the brains of young people and making them perform and behave badly... the inference is that we need to ban social media from youthful access (e.g., preventing them from driving on the roads until they reach some advanced age where they have better brain development and judgement).
I think we might need to do this. China bans crap content on social media in general. It is easy to see how destructive to a nation it is.
However, we have another source of the problem. That analogy is terrible, screw-up people in positions of power and influence that are using the "roads" to inspire youthful mobs of drivers and lone wolf drivers to seek out and destroy specific targets, and to generally inject chaos and disruption into an otherwise reasonably stable system. These terrible people are employees of the education industry. They need to be identified and removed from their positions.
Lastly, we need to recognize that de-industrialization for more corporate profits and shareholder returns... where we have had significant GDP growth that has mostly gone to the top 10% except for the cheap Chineses crap goods at Walmart... was a massive mistake. So was our immigration policies that flooded the nation with many poor and uneducated people competing for the remaining jobs. Along with that was the mistake and lie that all kids needed a college degree to get some impressive in title bullshit job pushing paper.
I was working so hard when I was young that I had no time to be programmed by social media if it had existed then. I had life meaning and purpose. How long in human evolution has the human animal had to struggle just to survive, let alone struggle in a job that provides the money to purchase so many life conveniences? This is the other source of the problem that must be fixed. We need a MAWA movement that eliminates so much leisure time spent in the attention economy where the terrible people brainwash other people to do evil.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I would suggest two readings; Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" and, especially, "The Possessed" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "The Possessed" depicts a Russia unmoored from her traditions and her religion. Rationalist values and materialism are increasingly prevalent. As is, inevitably, nihilism; Russians are grasping for a sense of groundedness and meaning in their lives. A group of educated, mostly young people who are nominally devoted to vague socialist ideas commit a series of crimes. No external morality constrains their actions, which makes them susceptible to banal ideas and the influence of powerful personalities. Of course, Dostoevsky was a very reactionary thinker.
Lastly, this is Joseph Schumpeter from his prophetic 1942 masterpiece "Capitalism, Democracy and Socialism:" (CSD)
“Democracy will work only if all interests are united not only in their allegiance to their country, but also in their allegiance to the structural principles of the existing society. But if these principles are called into question and the nation becomes divided into two hostile camps, democracy is at a disadvantage and may cease to work at all.”
The Internet and then social media has become the conduit for evil to flourish as it both causes a mass lack of life meaning and purpose by replacing the evolutionary needs for material struggle with digitized convenience, while also providing an always-on, always-connected, platform for human mind manipulation. The message: "pick up the gun and go assassinate someone" is broadcast and repeated in repetitive subliminal memes and on-line rants, and with nothing better to do, the sleepwalking clones of Satan go forth and do his bidding.
So, what do we do?
We are getting closer to agreement on the root of the problem but have not yet begun to design any compelling solution. To use an analogy, there is a problem with auto fatalities and injuries on our nation's roads. We don't ban the roads in response, but we do require many safeguards to minimize harm while allowing travel. We have people like Jonathan Haidt making the point about how social media is frying the brains of young people and making them perform and behave badly... the inference is that we need to ban social media from youthful access (e.g., preventing them from driving on the roads until they reach some advanced age where they have better brain development and judgement).
I think we might need to do this. China bans crap content on social media in general. It is easy to see how destructive to a nation it is.
However, we have another source of the problem. That analogy is terrible, screw-up people in positions of power and influence that are using the "roads" to inspire youthful mobs of drivers and lone wolf drivers to seek out and destroy specific targets, and to generally inject chaos and disruption into an otherwise reasonably stable system. These terrible people are employees of the education industry. They need to be identified and removed from their positions.
Lastly, we need to recognize that de-industrialization for more corporate profits and shareholder returns... where we have had significant GDP growth that has mostly gone to the top 10% except for the cheap Chineses crap goods at Walmart... was a massive mistake. So was our immigration policies that flooded the nation with many poor and uneducated people competing for the remaining jobs. Along with that was the mistake and lie that all kids needed a college degree to get some impressive in title bullshit job pushing paper.
I was working so hard when I was young that I had no time to be programmed by social media if it had existed then. I had life meaning and purpose. How long in human evolution has the human animal had to struggle just to survive, let alone struggle in a job that provides the money to purchase so many life conveniences? This is the other source of the problem that must be fixed. We need a MAWA movement that eliminates so much leisure time spent in the attention economy where the terrible people brainwash other people to do evil.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I would suggest two readings; Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" and, especially, "The Possessed" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "The Possessed" depicts a Russia unmoored from her traditions and her religion. Rationalist values and materialism are increasingly prevalent. As is, inevitably, nihilism; Russians are grasping for a sense of groundedness and meaning in their lives. A group of educated, mostly young people who are nominally devoted to vague socialist ideas commit a series of crimes. No external morality constrains their actions, which makes them susceptible to banal ideas and the influence of powerful personalities. Of course, Dostoevsky was a very reactionary thinker.
Lastly, this is Joseph Schumpeter from his prophetic 1942 masterpiece "Capitalism, Democracy and Socialism:" (CSD)
“Democracy will work only if all interests are united not only in their allegiance to their country, but also in their allegiance to the structural principles of the existing society. But if these principles are called into question and the nation becomes divided into two hostile camps, democracy is at a disadvantage and may cease to work at all.”
This post is an annotated outline of CSD:
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/schumpeter-in-a-nutshell