Comment by tolerance

I think what makes this time worse than the past (with respect to the idea that the past was bad too; see the sibling Jim Crow comment) is that in the present everyone is a target.

Was it Marshall McLuhan say something about man devolving into tribalism with the expansion of digital media? The individuation of the literate mind as opposed to the shared vision of the tribal, oral mind; new technology replacing one thing and simultaneously bringing back another from the past.

I want to say that the notion of unity was subsidized by a faith in liberal democracy. Even during the 60s and the 70s, my impression as that the language of activists back then, and consequently the conceptualization of their ideals, didn't stray far from a common dialect of the establishment, rooted in some kind of shared interpretation of democracy during that time. At least in a shared interpretation fundamentally, with conflict stemming from subsidiary ends.

Maybe what we're faced with now is the natural progression of the dissolution of a shared interpretation for social cohesion and whatever's meaningful behind why we want to bond with each other. So we tear away from each other in order to come back together. And it will never be exactly how it was before and maybe that's for the better in the end. Because what it took to get here wasn't great to begin with.