Modern society compels you to sell (yourself)

A further examination of characteristics of modern society that make it so despotic

In my last post, I tried to paint a relatively wholistic picture of our current shared condition on planet Earth. In this one, I’d like to take some time to further expound upon various aspects of modern society that make it so darn despotic.

A metaphor that I feel is quite apt in describing modern society is that it mirrors the environment of a school. School is a place that no one really wants to be (even the teachers), but everyone is compelled to be there; clicks and popularity contests drive the social scene and indeed, consume most youngsters’ attention to a significant degree; young people must complete tasks assigned by others for the sake of external rewards, or else risk various punishments; and so on.

The most obvious corollary between school and wider society is that it seems to be one big ‘status’ contest. Fame and popularity are valued as virtues in and of themselves, whether or not those holding such status are worthy of it in any meaningful way; in other words, whether or not they are ‘good people’ or contribute to the betterment of society. In addition, most people play out the status game on a smaller scale in their own lives, always comparing themselves to family and friends, trying to have the most money, the best house, be the ‘best’ parent (in a ‘statusy’ kind of way), and so on. This phenomenon is expressed in the concept of the rat race, which I actually feel describes our society in a more literal way than most people realize, given the highly centralized construction of modern societies, as discussed in my previous post - society has been turned into a giant rat maze where those who frequently exhibit the most vanity and ruthlessness are rewarded with the biggest pieces of cheese, while those who attempt to help their fellow man usually do so for little benefit at best, or face societal exclusion, as well as jail time and other threats and punishments from the state, at worst.

This tendency to attempt to exalt one’s societal status has only been amplified in the last generation, particularly with the rapid societal adoption of smartphones, which promote just such behavior through social media, dating apps, and other avenues. Social media ‘influencers’ leverage their fame and followings into lucrative deals with advertisers and others, making getting to such a status the goal of many; apps like Tik Tok*, meanwhile, provide a powerful platform through which the app itself and other agendas can create huge changes in perception in the userbase based upon the use of trends and other means. (*I think the purpose of that app is right there in the name - to ‘tik tok’, aka to mechanize, human behavior.)

Of course, corporate America rather directly mirrors the school environment in and of itself, the prime difference of course being that failure to comply leads to the very real and devastating consequence of loss of income; the consequences in school are no doubt devastating, but are not ‘real’ in the sense that they are artificially imposed by parents and administrators to achieve a particular (dastardly) outcome. But you have the clicks, and the unqualified and moronic administrators, and the forced ‘comradery’, and other qualities that are daily facets of life at school.

1984 describes a society in which people have not only lost the ability to organize for their own benefit, but have the lost the ability to even think about themselves and the world around them in that context. I would describe our present day world as a deeper version of this book and Brave New World combined, and one reason why is because the above appears to be true for the majority of the population. With the ever expanding definition of ‘conspiracy theory’, and particularly the way that and similar phrases have been hammered into the younger populations, it seems more difficult than ever for people to be able to question the norms of society in a way that can lead to meaningful change. What’s more, the fact that in most cases people never get an opportunity to think for themselves in a meaningful way means that their ‘critical thinking’ muscle has atrophied to the point of oblivion. There is no reward for critical thinking in our society…quite the opposite, as to do so frequently leans to social exclusion, and to act on critical thought in the form of dissident activity like protesting can carry other penalties. Because true dissident movements have been all but crushed over the past 100 years, and there is no notable face or voice in this regard to carry on a real revolutionary spirit, people feel that their only options are WWE-style tussles of left and right, Democrat and Republican, and so many choose to turn away altogether and focus on personal matters, even as it has become more important than ever for humans to find a way to come together in support of our and planetary freedom, in the face of every increasing assaults on the most basic of our liberties.

One other point I want to elaborate on is the fact that we live in a society in which people can’t even agree on what reality is. Granted, it seems to me that it’s been that way for a long time, particularly in the western capitalist societies, yet there have been concerted efforts to drive this phenomenon further and further, to where an actual understanding of objective reality is seemingly out of reach for many. Those indoctrinated into the respective left and right camps believe their leaders are saviors that can do no wrong, and their respective counterparts are conspiring to destroy free civilization. In the case of the left, rabid Trump supporters are plotting in their underground bunkers to ‘undermine democracy’, while for the right, liberals are plotting in their communist hives to destroy ‘our western values’. You’ll likely notice that both camps are predicated on the premise that ‘we’re free, but our freedom is under attack’, an idea that would ring absurd to any actual free society that were to witness the state of affairs on planet Earth right now.

To bring it back to the article title, one of the biggest issues with modern society is that the mass of humanity, the non-monied and propertied classes, are forced to sell themselves in order to survive. Whether it be through more traditional wage labor, or trying to ‘entrepreneur’ it, if you weren’t born with one of the above assets, the bulk of your time, energy and resources must be concentrated on this task. Indeed, the above dynamic geniously (and insidiously) creates a condition in which the mildly wealthy are invested with their very livelihoods to stand side by side with the absurdly wealthy to defend the system, in spite of the fact that everyone would be better off if the system didn’t exist, because the propertied classes get to enjoy the benefit of living off of others’ labor, while the monied classes have the inherent advantage of having wealth that others have to labor for handed down to them.