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Zachary Siegel's avatar

I've been trying to figure out how to think about this for a while so I very much appreciate your analysis of the individual and group psychological architecture. Another place my mind goes to is how/why/what in our culture/politics produces/contributes to this dynamic. It seems to me that the ultra-moralistic, hyper-individualized worldview has (de?)-evolved among our generation (millennial/gen-Z) because we are profoundly disempowered and politically unepresented. In a very real and very felt sense, we cannot (yet) affect material change through our vote or mass organizing; instead we are led by a hollowed out civil infrastructure and a sclerotic gerontocracy that operates in a brazenly cynical fashion. I think of Colombia's first leftwing president or Chile's young, millennial leftwing presdient, or even Ukraine's Zelensky, a young-ish guy who is very effective at using the media and has created super compelling pro-Ukraine propaganda. I wonder about the young-ish people in these countries where there is actual dynamic movement, where the horizon appears wide open and not so determined, where it feels like they're part of a project that is actually building a future rather than conducting an exhausting daily psychic maintenence to cope with an awful present. Are the young people in other places also taking this "toxic" turn inward that cuts off mutual-understanding?

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Moona m's avatar

I like to call it carceral culture, because it is also derived from our need to punish ostracize those we think are Bad and Wrong.

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