Is being addicted to media not something close to functional hypervigilance? If I am clicking every five minutes to check, to check, to check, is that not functional OCD?
This world may spin out of control, and that spinning out of control could easily take the form of the world becoming a gigantic prison. Centralized authority is less orderly than formal Complexity. It subtracts as much information as possible. That is its nature.
But if we survive with goodness intact, with working hearts in addition to the adding machines on our shoulders, then we will come to view all of this as madness.
History has seen wave after wave after wave of madness. Christianity, as it was deployed historically by the Church, is madness. Low fat diets are madness. Lockdowns and masks are madness.
History has seen a few people, here and there, who made a difference; and in their own times, most of them were hated.
No matter what happens, I think I am going to walk away from this continual storm. I think I have developed the resources emotionally to do it, finally.