Comment by ReDeiPirati
3 days ago
I don't have faith that this is something we can fix in the short term because most of us have been educated in a very competitive environment where individuals come first. I'm not saying that the opposite is good either, but we should find a balance in between. I also feel like that we are all becoming more disconnected, alone, and where the center of gravity is only ourself. Despite my premise, I still have some hopes for future generations, but unfortunately I think that things will get way worse before correcting.
> most of us have been educated in a very competitive environment where individuals come first
This is definitely intertwined with rampant individualism, but I don't think it's just our education or lack thereof that's to blame. It's also the environment we're born into and therefore never really question where it leads us and why. Century of the Self [0] makes an excellent case for where/how things went wrong, and we never deviated from this path because capitalism and its consumption-first economies would never permit such a thing.
For those comparing post-WWII to now, the only real difference seems to be capitalism becoming ever more desperate to squeeze all remaining profits. Capital concentrates [1] and profits continue to trend toward zero as Marx warned they would. It's a fundamental contradiction built into capitalism that has yet to be addressed except for by those few who are already disproportionately benefiting from the arrangement at everyone else's expense.
Consider how the average baby boomer was treated by their company of employment compared to the average worker in the 21st century. Employers now make it painfully obvious that everybody is disposable, and the only thing that matters are the metrics tied to their own compensation, no matter how disconnected that is from producing results that are actually good for society. The workers are all incentivized to become back-stabbing careerist wolves fighting and hoarding secrets instead of cooperating to build actual Good Things. The best way to get a raise is to jump ship to another company. Etc.
Given all of the above, it'd be very strange if we didn't end up in the hellscape that we are currently in.
[0] https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-h...
> we never deviated from this path because capitalism and its consumption-first economies would never permit such a thing.
While I haven't read Century of the Self, I will say that most of East Asia outside of China and NK are fiercely capitalistic. Ads are everywhere and obvious. There's a huge focus on consumption and status. There's generally much looser restrictions on zoning, gambling, and prostitution than the West. And yet the cultures continue being a lot more collective and understanding of their fellow person. South Asia is less capitalistic (having transitioned from more socialistic modes of economic organization somewhat recently), but is still quite capitalistic.
I think capitalism might exacerbate this in the West but it is fundamentally a Western problem. Most of East and South Asia still operates on an extended family model where there's an expectation that when a person or a family is having a hard time they take resources from their family and when they're in a position to do well they give resources to their struggling family members. Lots of extended families have family members who are ... problematic. Many of these folks have gambling issues, can't hold down jobs, have mental health problems, etc. But families support them. They never really thrive but they usually have food, shelter, companionship, and understanding around them. I think this creates a level of empathy that's just absent from Western society.
My partner and I are Asian but we have caucasian friends. Many of our caucasian friends will cut off problematic family members immediately. Indeed a lot of caucasians I know are very quick to cut people they don't like or who don't align with their values out of their life. This culture of individual supremacy is what I think really plagues the west which used to at one time have a less individualistic nature and now finds its hyper atomization eating away at the foundations of its societies.
Yes, this is the correct understanding of the problem. The thing is, correctly understanding the problem is highly disincentivized, much less doing anything about it.