In Sarah Schulman’s book The Gentrification of the Mind, she laments, “Will everything (books, music, pornography, education, movies, friendship, camaraderie, love, and television) all be free if they’re consumed online and prohibitively expensive to experience in person?” She wrote this in 2012 and may not have anticipated how much further that process could go in the following decade.
If it is just us, what would happen if we all just stopped? What would happen if all said, "I'm going to turn off the screen, visit with my next-door neighbors, take up a hobby instead of watching netflix or youtube, and eat grocery store food"? I imagine the result would be very psychologically cleansing, but the short-term effects might be similar to what happens at the end of "Atlas Shrugged" - widespread social chaos as the old yet broken system is ushered out.
Yeah - it feels like there's no easy way out. The infrastructure is too entrenched at this point. Not to say it won't happen, just might be a painful transition.
Thanks for the SSC link! That's been recommended to me before but I've never actually read it.
This reminds me of Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
If it is just us, what would happen if we all just stopped? What would happen if all said, "I'm going to turn off the screen, visit with my next-door neighbors, take up a hobby instead of watching netflix or youtube, and eat grocery store food"? I imagine the result would be very psychologically cleansing, but the short-term effects might be similar to what happens at the end of "Atlas Shrugged" - widespread social chaos as the old yet broken system is ushered out.
Yeah - it feels like there's no easy way out. The infrastructure is too entrenched at this point. Not to say it won't happen, just might be a painful transition.
Thanks for the SSC link! That's been recommended to me before but I've never actually read it.