it's really not just that I don't like what I read on the internet. it's not just the shitposters and trolls getting to me. the community I live in is actually worse than it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago in tangible ways and I'm sitting on a pile of privilege. others feel it more
when I reference privilege I mean my relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Many of my generational peers are struggling a lot more than I am. when I reference Trump it is meant to eliminate the distraction of talking about Trump, since there's nothing to learn there.
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and when I talk about consumerism I'm honestly expressing my view of what has been the central animating project of American life. the thing we've built bigger, better, faster, more impressively scaled then any other people before us is our consumer driven economy.
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when people say "the U.S. is the wealthiest country in the history of the world" what they really mean is that we consume more than any other people ever have.
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there are many other things that America has tried to do. Have we been as successful at them? Whatever the case, we need something new to do now. I'm complaining because we're at each other's throats over petty bullshit and nobody seems to have a good idea about what comes next
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As an aside, I favor the discriminating use of political membership sign words. You used those words in a way that completely makes sense. Also good to throw in some red tribe words like responsibility. Demand ppl think about what we mean, don't abandon semantic territory.
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Okay, cool, my bad. IMO, consumerism is a problem, but one that is more deeply explained by the fact that technological advancement alienates from our basic (innate, w/e) imperatives. E.g. some of the arguments by Bakker here https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/enlightenment-how-pinkers-tutelary-natures/ … /1
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That's a big part, but the "advance" of knowledge and general interconnectedness of the world are another. The reveal a certain clear, undeniable *truth* to relativism, and the cold, scientific worldview, and these things destroy (primitive, unreflective) meaning in many ways /2
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Tribalism and meaning crises are almost certainly *not* new problems, but they are bigger problems in an interconnected, rational, scientific world. People would probably not be so tribal if they coudn't so easily and often see how tribal *everyone else* is, and etc. 3/4
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But anyway, the point is, if you want a unifying narrative and dialogue, you can't start with "consumerism bad, Trump bad, I am privileged". That closes off any potential for it to happen, even if you are genuinely open and non-ideological. /end
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