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For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

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Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#11

Post by Matticus_Rex »

keiferski wrote: post #6

What this analysis misses is the role of individualism. Probably because individualism = unquestionably good is perhaps the single most foundational belief of modern Western civilization. Twentieth-century totalitarianism could only have arisen from an industrial world in which the local social networks of family, village, and church were destroyed in the process of urbanization. Subsequently the less local social bo…

The American style of individualism in its traditional form is hardly anti-family/village/church. In fact, one of its notable characteristics for early observers used to European values was that Americans were prolific joiners. Want to do something? Start a club for it! That has broken down over the last decades, but blaming it on individualism seems questionable at best.

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#12

Post by Bakary »

8fhdkjw039hd wrote: post #8

Growing up, the internet did not feel real to me. Just a collection of memes fighting each other, fire-walled from reality. It seemed like an entertaining farce but not real. This was relatively true for the internet I grew up with, but it is certainly not true now. What happened in the capital was quite a wake up call. And much of the blame for it does look to be the result of things like click-through maximization…

You are making a political statement and following a defined political outlook without realizing it.

In any case, I would not worry as the chance of being in a situation where political opinions actually matter is quite low for most people

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#13

Post by pavlov »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #9
aphextron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That aspect of her thesis was called political "atomization," which was the creation of this lonely state by isolating people from each other, and ultimately from truth, so that they become neutralized to the totalitarian agenda. The destruction of communities, families, and social connections is a totalitarian process and agenda. You can see this so clearly in any video of Trump rallies, or their protests. There is…

That is not what I've seen from the crowd except during speeches. I, too, naturally tend to believe the worst about these people but there's definitely a sense of Trump supporter community there.

There is a community there, but for many the process of joining this new community has involved the destruction of their existing links to family and local society. QAnon is the most extreme example of this kind of cultish separation among Trumpists.

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#14

Post by keiferski »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #11
keiferski wrote: post #6

What this analysis misses is the role of individualism. Probably because individualism = unquestionably good is perhaps the single most foundational belief of modern Western civilization. Twentieth-century totalitarianism could only have arisen from an industrial world in which the local social networks of family, village, and church were destroyed in the process of urbanization. Subsequently the less local social bo…

The American style of individualism in its traditional form is hardly anti-family/village/church. In fact, one of its notable characteristics for early observers used to European values was that Americans were prolific joiners. Want to do something? Start a club for it! That has broken down over the last decades, but blaming it on individualism seems questionable at best.

Nowhere in my comment did I say American.

The point is that urbanization and industrialization encouraged individualism. Today, the market itself does so.

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#15

Post by hexxiiiz »

"But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment"

As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign is needed for this first step to already take hold of people through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully living a normal life.

Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#18

Post by [deleted] »

hexxiiiz wrote: post #15

"But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment" As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life…

[deleted]

Re: For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

#19

Post by jacobobryant »

8fhdkjw039hd wrote: post #8

Growing up, the internet did not feel real to me. Just a collection of memes fighting each other, fire-walled from reality. It seemed like an entertaining farce but not real. This was relatively true for the internet I grew up with, but it is certainly not true now. What happened in the capital was quite a wake up call. And much of the blame for it does look to be the result of things like click-through maximization…

> Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the need for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation from corporate AIs maximizing engagement.

This reminds me of The Big Promise of Recommender Systems (2011) [1]:

> However, when we look at the current recommender systems generation from the point of view of the “recommendee” (users’ side) we can see that recommender systems are more inclined toward achieving short-term sales and business goals. Instead of helping their users to cope with the problem of information overload they can actually contribute to information overload by proposing recommendations that do not meet the users’ current needs or interests. ...

> The window of opportunity is now open to innovate in a third generation of recommender systems that act directly on behalf of their users and help them cope with information overload.

I'm working on something in this space myself[2] (an essay recommender system). I think part of the solution is having recommender systems that are decoupled from publishing; e.g. a video recommender that suggests videos across multiple, unaffiliated sites, instead of the recommender that's built into YouTube.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Torrens/publicatio...

[2] https://essays.findka.com

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