Where we go from here is toward a gradual disconnection
“ . . . the share of Americans who are more socially disconnected from society is on the rise.”
Before about 1500 the focus and attention of the vast majority of people was local. Hovering “above” village life was some kind of locus of Authority (a state, an empire, a monarchy) which periodically made demands such as taxation or conscription. Other than being subjected to those interventions, most people: (a) were not literate; (b) did not know about or follow geopolitical events; (c) did not have a sense of living in History, with its “progress” and “development” (they lived in a reality informed by natural/seaonal cycles); (d) did not have a sense of social agency in the wider society. Statecraft, geopolitics, the affairs and culture of the wider society, etc. were the province of the First Estate (nobility) and Second Estate (clergy). Ninety percent of people were commoners (Third Estate).
Over the last 500 years or so there has been a gradual drawing in. Almost all are literate now, are encouraged to feel part of the democratic republic and the community of the nation (“we the people”).
It’s a faux community. The vast majority really have very little agency within that context. Resources tend to flow away from local communities to the cosmopolitan centers. Those living in the vast “fly-over zones” increasingly suffer from cultural impoverishment and spiritual malaise. Their alienation and resentment may, these days, get expressed in a Fuck You vote for Trump. But the longer trend is likely to be a gradual drawing back from that which provides so little in the way of satisfaction and meaning.
This makes sense. It’s healthy.
The History / Progress / Development / Technology / Finance / Statecraft complex primarily benefits power elites and cultural elites. To the extent that it sucks in common people it relegates them to life on a treadmill which leads nowhere in particular. The bribe is relatively cheap consumer goods and potential access to the Great Institutions of the Industrial State (businesses, schools, hospitals, universities, etc.).
Greens should convey the message: Don’t feed the machine. Get back to localized sanity.
[Real community is a function of scale and diversity. Modernist idealists, circa 1900, having delusions about History and Progress, envisioned a cohesive World Community where everyone would speak Esperanto.]
