A Free Mind Versus a Functioning Society
Focus is these years on individuality rather than the collective – with what effects?
David Brooks wrote in The Atlantic yesterday about “Why Do So Many People Believe Trump Is Good?”1
A very short resume would say that people of today are less interested in adhering to a common moral codex and value the personal freedom more, leading to the fall of many previously mandatory standards and politeness patterns. This then explains why people accept the grotesque behavior of Donald Trump – he is simply just an extreme version of themselves, and as there’s no moral, no standards, no conception of the common good, a self-staging performer of extreme individualism is seen by many as a good representative of their way of thinking. He doesn’t need to fit into anything in society, doesn’t need to pay attention to others.
In other words (mine), the personal freedom has evolved into a factor that overshadows any previous conception of what all of us together needed to be aware of when interacting with others.
Brooks may be right or not, but he has in any case added an interesting evaluation to the stack, where most others focus on the promises Trump as a “people seducer” is giving, and the naive trust in that to come true.
There is definitely also this other side of the coin.
And it is not necessarily positive. A coin with two negative sides could be the main challenge we face today.
The individualism trend is evident everywhere in the shape of both what people do for themselves and what they advise others. For themselves, there is a tendency to stop caring about the world – not reading the news, for instance, and not engaging in movements to save the planet, for instance, or other environmental movements and organizations.
There is less empathy in the society, all around, leading to such as the demand for tougher punishments by the court systems, and this together with the decline in moral, also leads to the court systems being considered political and possible to manipulate – there is no trust that the right people are punished, and no care about it either.
Refugees and other victims of turmoil in the world don’t see much empathy either, and most countries are shutting down, more or less, all assistance to people in need, including those who have nod fled their miserable situations but previously could hope for some emergency aid or other assistance to make life possible to live.
The businesses may always have behaved cynically and destructive, but even they are now openly fighting their customers at times, enshittifying their way to huge bank accounts.
And there’s very little active help among ordinary people. If someone is being mocked by the boss at work, the colleagues will passively wait for the one to break down and quit, or to be fired, whatever happens first. Nobody will step in and help. If someone attempts setting up a small business of their own, their surroundings will ignore them, never buy anything from them or mention them to anyone, and just enjoy watching the initiative die.
We can do all such things because we are free to do them. We are free to harm others, you can say, by being actively passive. To grab this opportunity to see others fail, and perhaps by that see that society has no meaning, only the individualist and self-preserving idea we, ourselves, stick to. We could have helped, thereby countering the theory of a declining society, but we don’t, and thereby we construct out of the idea a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Maybe Hollywood’s extreme focus on death and violence, the brutal revenger who kills off all of his or her enemies, has dressed us up for this kind of thinking? Computer games supplement and set in their focus on the youngest of us, killing off any natural empathy a child may have when it is being rewarded, in the game, for killing as many people as possible.
When the news mention war activities, it does so in the same shape as the computer games, and some Hollywood movies, by counting all the different kinds of misery and presenting beautiful infographics that show how many of each kind of bombs have been dropped, and how many of each kind of military equipment has been destroyed. You can almost expect them to give some bonus points and extra lives as well, like the computer games, so that we can keep the adrenalin pumping for another day. You are in this with them, you are together, allies, friends. Together you’ll win the war, infographics by infographics.
Personal freedom to think what you want, have the opinions you want, and express those opinions, basically in the way you want, are fundamental for the idea of human rights.
But it can be manipulated. And your thoughts are probably not fully yours, but rather borrowed or copied from other people. Even if you believe that you are an individual, making up your own mind about things, most of what you know about this world come from others. And it’s not just a small hint about something to think about, every now and then, it’s a massive inflow of other people’s and organization’s requests for you to think something particular.
Whenever anyone’s speaking publicly, it’s with the purpose to win you over on their side. To get your vote, for instance, or to make you think like them. They want to save the pandas, so you must also want to save the pandas, is the logic. And they want to use Teflon on top of everything, so you must want that too. And aspartame in the soft drink, and leadfree fuel in the car.
The world is one big marketing machine.
Your free mind isn’t yours, in such an environment.
Switching off the news is a popular thing to do now, and it makes sense, because we instinctively feel how we are being manipulated. Switching them off is an act of self-defense.
Some of those who write the news see that, and they believe that they are doing the world a favor by telling what is happening so that it can contribute to a well-informed population that is ready to participate in the development of a moral foundation for the common good.
They believe that they are doing you and the society are favor, and they want to do that so much, that they tend to focus on the most exciting things in their stories, making them catch your attention with tricks like clickbait and the before mentioned infographics, all to make you want to read it.
On the other hand, they want to be open and give room to all opinions, in a true democratic spirit, so they try to be neutral in their coverage of what extremists and brutal leaders say about the terror and crimes they conduct.
And there we have it – a normalization of the destruction of moral and common good, for the purpose of building up knowledge and moral for the common good.
It doesn’t work.
The end result is more confusion and that you’ll distance yourself from feeling like that friend or allied, instead thinking that it’s all too much and that they are breaking all laws, norms, and standards, obviously without anyone caring.
You’ll become emotionally numb, legally numb, and mentally numb in every respect there is. Every human way to engage and associate with others will be killed off inside of you, and you’ll turn to become a spectator to it all – but an uninterested one, since nobody seems to play according to known rules, so the game is too difficult to follow.
And then, at that time, where there still might be a tiny spark of sense of society in you, you’ll notice that many people seem to group around someone who reacts against some of all this. He’s against the news coverage, against the open and free speech, because it is all damaging to him, he says. And you tend to agree, because you want to agree with something, want to feel that sense of society that you lost with all the displays of individualism and all the requirements to stay informed you met, and to have an opinion of your own.
So that you can regain what was lost: a society with some standards. They may be based on all the worst elements of the human mind, on hatred, exclusion of the weakest, destruction, selfish grabbing of money and power, disrespect for the law, dismantling of science, and the complete loss of care for the planet.
And then you are home where you belong, as an individualist who found a society of similar individualists with all the same ideas as you. Easy ideas, without complicated empathizing or care for others. Based on what you know, not requiring you to learn more or follow the news.
Survival of the strongest – and you are one of those, so you enjoy it.
All the prevalent moral standards can even be squeezed into this concept – with some skills, but it can be done. The religion you used to believe in, wasn’t that also about focusing on the strong? Weren’t the weak people punished and pushed out of the society, since they couldn’t contribute with anything useful? Wasn’t it all about we against them?
You think so, when giving it a second thought. And your worldview finally seems complete, making all the sense you need. From here on, all you have to do is cheer on the demagog in the lead of that new-found society of yours, and your common individuality will be nurtured and get the best chances to survive – against all of those who are not included.
Finally, you understand it – but without thinking about that you do, because your mind has now settled to be synchronous with the new society. It’s not about awareness, it’s about that feeling of being one of the pack.
Finally, after all the confusion, all the fishing for your vote and your sympathy for other people’s thoughts, you have now stopped thinking or even knowing, now you just feel.
You won the game of life.
The Atlantic has a paywall, so you may not be able to read the article.