The Comfort of Things
The big fear is that as modern life becomes more ‘modern’ and empowering, it actually fragments society into mere isolated individualisms and loses any sense of purpose or order.
Attempts to combat this have included:
- Nationalism, trying to draw people together under the shared auspices of their relation to a nation (works particularly well in wartime).
- Communism, bringing people together under a global ideology of equality of labour.
- Modernism, bringing people together under a common search for progress.
The liberal market is a threat to society as it reduces us to individuals who merely express ourselves to the degree that we choose a particular commodity. Although perhaps we could be united by the ideological commitment to the market itself?
And then:
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