|
|
Musings Report 2017:33 8-19-17 What's Behind the Erosion of Civil Society?
You are receiving this email because you are one of the 500+ subscribers/major contributors to www.oftwominds.com.
For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
What's Behind the Erosion of Civil Society?
That civil society in the U.S. and elsewhere is fraying is self-evident. It isn't just the rise of us-or-them confrontations and all-or-nothing ideological extremes; social bonds between people are weakening.
There are many probable causes: addictive technologies such as social media and smartphones; chronic economic stress, greater mobility and a host of more subtle factors.
One such factor is the erosion of community and its replacement with state (government) or corporate structures.
One of the most insightful essays I’ve found this year is a report from the Guardian (U.K.) on What Happened When Walmart Left a low-income rural community in America’s Coal Country.
One of the most tragic findings, in my view, was that Walmart was the social hub of the community: Walmart was the place to go to meet friends, people-watch, walk around to pass the time, etc.
This is a remarkable reversal of a traditional community, which is centered around communal public spaces such as churches, temples, etc., town squares, Main Street, the local marketplace/bazaar, etc. Now the center of social life is a corporate-owned private space dedicated to maximizing the profits of the corporation.
This dependency on corporate spaces is paralleled by a dependency on corporations and the state for income and the organization of social life.
This leads to the another tragedy: the near-complete lack of any non-state, non-corporate social structures; the general zeitgeist is near-total dependence on the state and corporations not just for income but for the structure of everyday life, to use historian Fernand Braudel’s phrase.
While the reporter found a few households had started gardens, the majority of people with what I term enforced leisure (i.e. little to no paid work available) did not use their leisure to create art (the fantasy of supporters of Universal Basic Income) or invest time and energy in non-state, non-corporate social structures; they spent their time watching TV, surfing the Web, scrolling through social media, etc.
This near-total dependence on state and corporate structures is so ubiquitous that it goes unnoticed and unmentioned. Not only have non-state, non-corporate social structures vanished, people have lost the values, skills and tools needed to assemble and maintain such structures.
We have lost much of the social connectedness that humans need, and we mourn this loss in ways that are not directly connected to our loss of social capital: addiction, loneliness, and early death.
How can we strengthen or repair our own connections and social fabric in such a disintegrative era?
There are two basic approaches: stop participating in destructive dynamics, and assemble the foundations of a connected social life.
If we use physical health as an analogy for social health, the first step towards improved health is stop consuming poison, i.e. stop destroying one’s health.
In the realm of decaying social relations, the poisons are readily apparent:
-- The mass media, with its dependence on hysteria, fear, group-think and obsession with virtue-signaling as publicly displayed proof of one’s fealty to righteousness.
The mass media and social media both substitute passive watching and clicking for doing things in the real world via active participation.
-- Smartphones, when they cease to be occasional means of communication and become addictive: those who take their phones to bed, interrupt sex to check their phones (yes, studies have found this to be disturbingly common), ignore live conversations to respond to texts, etc., have a monkey on their back.
-- An overly busy life that serves the needs of the workplace and household logistics but leaves no time, energy or awareness for actual intimacy, communication, friendship, sharing or belonging.
Why is it so difficult to make and maintain meaningful social bonds and belonging? While the long answer could easily fill several volumes, the short answer is something like this: the structure of modern-day life conspires against making and maintaining authentic social bonds.
By structure, I mean the large-scale financial /built structures of the economy and the large-scale structures of government—-the two hierarchies that dominate everyday life.
In effect, a vast experiment is taking place without any controls: an economic mode of production that focuses exclusively on maximizing profits is fostering 24/7 marketing and addictive technologies while a vast central state expands its reach into every aspect of daily life. Meanwhile, both dominant large-scale hierarchies have little reason to concern themselves with the erosion of the social order.
Rebuilding social capital and social connectedness is not something that can be done by governments or corporations; it requires a social revolution that is bottom-up, self-organizing--a do-it-yourself revolution without leaders or hierarchy or structure.
The good news is anyone can participate in this social revolution, by re-ordering their everyday life to nurture authentic social connectedness.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Are Profit and Healthcare Incompatible? 8/18/17
Why We're Doomed: Our Economy's Toxic Inequality 8/16/17
Are We Already in Recession? 8/14/17
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Swiss ice cream with fresh blueberries shared with my brother--and our discovery of what safely removes ballpoint pen ink from finished leather--kids' sunscreen spray, as the first ingredient is denatured alcohol.
Market Musings: Small Cap Stocks (RUT)
What with all the unsettling geopolitical tensions, the circus in the White House and the weakest seasonal months in play (August and September), it's little wonder the stock market is selling off.
This poses an interesting question: is this the start of a Bear Market decline of substance (10%-20%), or is it just a wobble to key support levels?
The Russell 2000 index (RUT) represents the small-cap stock universe. Unlike the Dow-30 Industrials, the RUT has been in sharp retreat for weeks.
It has now plummeted to the key support of the 50-week moving average. A quick glance at the weekly chart shows that bad things happen once the RUT breaks this key support level.
Likewise, when MACD falls below the neutral line, significant declines become much more likely.
The stochastics are approaching oversold levels where bounces occur. The question now is: will the bounce be weak, a pause before a larger decline into September, or will the bounce be powerful enough to raise the RUT above the critical danger zone of the 50-week MA?
We should know the answer in a week or two.
From Left Field
Jon Ronson on bespoke porn: ‘Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests’ (via G.F.B.)
Fast facts on Medicare and Medicaid -- 120 million beneficiaries--more than the total number of full-time workers...
The Top 10 Cryptocurrency Resources for Non-Technical People--useful
The Ultimate Guide to the OODA Loop -- John Boyd: observe, orient, decide, and act; this is a short book on the subject....
The Loneliness of the Female Nihilist (via G.F.B.) -- interesting and tragic story of a young Japanese anarchist who took her own life in prison before WW2...
How America Lost Its Mind -- scattershot overview of the decline of authority defining facts, truths and the core narratives...
A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness
Why the world has to study Chinese history, and how China views history
Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture-- decay of family structure negatively impacts kids, society...
Far-distant days: the past has a dizzying power to ground us -- history matters....
How Society Creates Ability-- there is a structure to nurturing ability...
Unlearning the myth of American innocence--living abroad offers a different POV...
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus
Thanks for reading--
charles |
|
|
|
|
|
