This is not just a reference to hexbear, but the (western) world at large. I’ve noticed so many people in my life slowly lose their ability to exist in relationship with others. Lose their ability to be social - one of the most basic tenants of humanity. One of the most obvious symptoms is less empathy, but it extends to the bounds of human-human relationships. Humor, conflict resolution, eye-contact, finding babies cute, casual conversation, holding the door for people, whatever. I see it all withering. People are just fucking losing it man.
I know that most people here understand this intuitively, but I guess I’m suggesting to broaden the take. Everyone knows that atomization + high stress society --> anti-social behaviors. But I think that because humankind is so based on existing in relation to other humans, that we (at least on this forum) tend to downplay how far these effects go. I’m saying that beyond being grumpy, we’re losing really basic parts of being human. Most of my friends struggle to communicate normally anymore (and my friends are pretty normal, representative people - not a particularly isolated subgroup of gamers or something). They are no longer able to consider other people’s perspectives, their memories are weaker, and their entire personalities dull over. Those are all symptoms of depression, yes, but I think it’s also related to the fact that our collective humanities are relational. Many people are actually losing innate human qualities because of their atomization. Here’s why:
You cannot be fully human by yourself - the human experience requires interpersonal relation. Humans aren’t just social animals, we literally need community to understand ourselves. Your sense of self depends on validation, corroboration, correction, and guidance from others. E.g., you can’t be a “nice person” without people to be nice to. You can’t be a funny person unless you make other humans laugh. People deeply identify with terms like “smart” or “tall”, and both are completely relational: you can only be smart if there are people you are smarter than. How do you see yourself? Most terms necessitate other people. You can’t even see your own personality without the mirror of community. You couldn’t know if you were smart or kind or funny if you lived in pure isolation. Less theoretically, you can’t understand your personal growth without the notation of people around you. You need outside perspectives because our self-perception is flawed. It is primarily through our friends that we can get a clear understanding of how far we have come, or how deeply we have fallen. You can’t understand it accurately on your own Our dependence on other humans is so deep that our entire essence is rooted in others. We can’t exist in this atomized way. It shreds apart anyone’s humanity.
And so I think a lot of what leftists conclude is the result of society is misplaced- it’s not just the stress of “late-stage capitalism” that causes people to mentally deteriorate in this way. It’s that, in this interpretation of capitalist imperialism, we don’t have any semblance of real community to withstand any of this stress. People in different cultures (even capitalist ones) are able to handle comparatively harder lifestyles in a much more robust way because of that relational perseverance that community affords your psyche. I come from a different country, not America, with significantly worse material conditions. Yet the people are able to cope significantly easier because we have really strong community bonds there. I think that people perceive atomization as purely a symptom of this society, but it’s actually really causal. Of course, capitalism causes the atomization (even weaponizes it!). But I think we do a disservice to our own analysis by over simplifying the psychological effects of atomization to just capitalism = lonely and sad.
Even on this forum, it’s kind of ridiculous how much people are unable to resolve conflict or engage in productive dialectic discourse. I’ve been a lurker for a while and it’s sad to see how much toxicity has been created by virtue of change in algorithm. I think that speaks to the lil cyclical thing going on with losing community/losing humanity/losing community. Yeah, idk. Just drunk thoughts from a lurker who used to be on here more. I hope y’all receive it with kindness or whatever <3
I’m very well-acquainted with how stress and depression can absolutely destroy your capacity for empathy in the short-term, but it is by no means a permanent thing. When people are pushed to their limits psychologically, they’ll go into self-preservation mode, and they can start to view all other people as potential threats, or else simply begin to focus on their own survival to the exclusion of others. It can be reversed through integration with a community, or even just taking the stress off long enough for someone to even out, heal, and start focusing on others again.
As for your assertion that it’s not “just capitalism” but a dissolution of communities that is to blame, what exactly do you think dissolved these communal ties? That was the entire point Marx made with alienation: the things you use become abstracted because your primary relation is now to money, which is ostensibly just the means to acquire the things you need to live, but is now the actual thing you need to live. And your entire apparatus of social relation is fundamentally altered as a result. You become a tool for others to use to make more money, and that’s exactly how most people live their lives. No shit I have no community ties. I’ve lost faith in every organization I once bought into and been forced to endure excruciating pain as a result of not being able to afford medical care, never at any point able to stop going to my meaningless thankless job even in the midst of a fucking pandemic that is still killing people three years later.
Sorry, that probably came across as really angry and hostile. But I been through some shit. The whole point of dismantling capitalism is that it creates the incentives and social structures that lead to this alienation and exploitation and feeding of people through the meat grinder. Create a world where one dipshit can’t ruin thousands of lives and still have his primary concern being that not enough people are seeing his bullshit Tweets where he just says “looking into this.” The community follows. Or rather, returns.
