Socialism, then, is a creed which inherently rejects individual moral growth. Rather than uplifting it, it replaces it. It is necessarily, then, an assault on the individual ego, sense of agency and choice in matters of importance, and an agent of infantilism, learned helplessness, and ultimately of despair. These facts are clothed over by two current processes: the sense of mission in implementing Socialism, with no capacity for reflecting on what that means; and pervasive distraction.
If all electronics crashed tomorrow, I think half of America would lapse instantly into overt mental illness. Erich Fromm said this of newspapers half a century ago. But nobody, then, read their papers all day and into the night.
I read Zuckerberg wants people to be able to convey their thoughts instantly: http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/01/zuckerberg-facebook-qna/
My thought is: who has anything worth saying anymore? What can people discuss? Other people–who themselves have nothing interesting to say–or current cultural productions of very questionable ultimate value.
But this sort of thing meets a very real need of CONSTANT CONTACT, constant reconciliation. If you don’t know who you are, if all inner direction has been eradicated through effective long term social propaganda and imbecilic lack of skill in structured thought on the part of our alleged thought leaders, then you MUST “refresh” yourself constantly. You must be told all day every day that you exist, that this person with your name is in fact known to others. Your thoughts are not your own. Your actions are not your own. But every time you ping the world, something comes back, so there must be something or someone they are responding to.
I am not sanguine about the future. I wish I could be. I wish I could be all sunshine and rainbows. But I have spent most of my life depressed, and the one clear positive of this is that it improves reality testing (although one could of course dispute that this is a positive here).
We all must do our work. Doing work without a reasonable hope of success is harder. But I have always persevered, and I always will, and history–while filled with preventable and idiotic tragedy–does also furnish occasional examples of triumphs against all odds, and a rebirth of good things via good people.