The loosening of reason’s grip upon people and their politics has been coming for decades and follows a perverse moral mathematics that resulted in both BREXIT and TRUMP.
AGE of ANXIETY
I discovered the prime moving force that generates the heightened awareness and constant state of anxiety that animates citizen-movements from “Black Lives Matter” to “Build a Wall.”
The loosening of reason’s grip upon people and their politics has been coming for decades and follows a perverse moral mathematics that resulted in both BREXIT and TRUMP.
I discovered the prime moving force that generates the heightened awareness and constant state of anxiety that animates citizen-movements from “Black Lives Matter” to “Build a Wall.”
I found it is prison. Prison operates on lines of force and principles unacknowledged on the outside. Much to my surprise, prison life has brought into focus many of the mysteries I see in modern society as it lives through this Age of Anxiety. We do it ‘old school’ here with the tools of tribal life recreated on the prison yard. The same dynamics are at work in the real world, driven by electronic media delivered by smartphone.
All the horrors media presents as news or entertainment are real if rare. In prison, claims of extreme violence and depravity are over-blown. As on the street, to hyper-ventilate about real but rare racial animus and hate crimes only exacerbates society’s challenges.
I discovered the resurgence of tribal values in prison. It is where folk communities bound together by deep cultural, geographic and ethnic ties are the organizing entities. In prison, we call them gangs. On the outside, they call them identity politics constituencies. This populism is the evil twin of multiculturalism. One such community has orchestrated the takeover of the Republican Party, Jacksonian America, evidenced by Donald J. Trump’s election.
The true force behind populism’s recent rise, however, is unrecognized by pundits or politicians. Those who see deep into time have tried to warn us of the coming empathy trap that enthralls the world and has birthed our Age of Anxiety.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction. Pope Pius XII, 2/17/50
To assess realistically the modern age and prospects for the future, we must recognize the environment spawned by our electronic technology. We live in it. It is the principal organizing force of our lives, the GESTALT or unifying form of our modern existence.
Our electronic media controls us and we have lost the ability to judge for ourselves. Emotional empathy has replaced cognitive empathy and we wear all humankind as our skin.
Marshall McLuhan recognized the potential impact of modern media over 50 years ago. He identified its “lines of force” and the cataclysmic conflict it would generate. Also, he hoped society could learn to “moderate the fierceness of this conflict by understanding the media that extend us and raise these wars within and without us.”
To see these social forces, we need metaphorical tools. By characterizing electronic media as a technological extension of our senses, we can study its impacts.
I seek such a tool and will present what I find on Medium. Please join me in this endeavor to explain our Age of Anxiety.
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