Technology is a double edged sword. While it makes life easier and more convenient; it is also isolating. People no longer gather in groups in their spare time. People no longer go into the office. You no longer have to leave your home for almost anything.
Origins of totalitarian (1951). While she referred to men in the text, it was common to refer to people overall in this way and that was what she meant here.
Recent developments made me revisit Crises of the Republic (1972), it is a great read. Especially the way she highlights the American right, bordering on duty, to protest against oppressive majorities.
What's wild is that like... I have never been more connected to community and friends than I have been right now.... A lot of us are holding each other closer as the world around us grows cold and fascist....
counterpoint: Arendt was wrong about more than one thing and her works’ perduring influence toward the obfuscation and mystification of FASCISM has probably cost lives
At face value I do not completely oppose this argument in our present context. However, was there similar periods of downwards social interaction trends leading up to authoritarianism 100-10 000 years ago? Perhaps loneliness is one of _many_ possible gasolinas for the far right?
Me too. I find myself withdrawing completely from this society that’s based on a slave paradigm. This neo-liberal gas-lighting that says I should be happy slaving away for a peanut. Still, I wish happiness and love and free healthcare and education for everyone around me.
i'd argue that cars, cell phones, internet play a huge part of loneliness. I know when i started biking my kids to school it was all of a sudden the world was more alive again, there were people around, and i wasn't just isolated in a car. Feels like a big thing we should change is transit
I see it as an ouroboros. Technology and social media algorithms stole our attention away from personal interactions, which birthed the opportunity for grifters to hawk their fringe bullshit, which men ate up out of a sense of lost patriarchal power, which makes them unappealing to women, (1)
So they go back to the grifters who fill them with a sense of connection they perceive is missing because of our obsession with technology and because society isn't solely catered towards men's needs any more, who fill men with an escalating feed of fascistic bullshit, and the cycle continues on...
While all of this may be true, the "male loneliness epidemic" still largely exists because a lot of men just REFUSE to not suck. But the internet era makes us all lonelier because genuine human connection is exceedingly difficult in a world that's increasingly digital.
The “male loneliness epidemic” doesn’t even exist! Women are more socially isolated *except* when it comes to household & family socialization, and I wonder why that might be!
Couldn’t be that women are so often the kin keepers & caregivers!
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Fight Fascism with everything you have.
Freedom, Liberty,
and Democracy will Prevail.
Have You Prepared For The Occupation?
#Resist #Occupation #Preparation
#Consolidation #Climax #Resolution
By this, and many other aspects, her work about totatalirism is very lowly regarded outside the global north.
https://bsky.app/profile/automax.bsky.social/post/3lk4gfhfo2s2z
For most of my life, (Age 27) I've had nobody outside of close relatives to engage with.
But that loneliness taught me that love, platonic or romantic is earned, not taken.
Love each other, hold everyone accountable.
I never took it out on other people. At least not to the point of "I should be in charge and they'll all be sorry!"
That would be pathetic. Fuck them.
How about just growing/learning and not being a fucking bigot?
Couldn’t be that women are so often the kin keepers & caregivers!