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All rationalistic, scientistic, cultures, are in fact, fundamentally irrational and mythical. The great bourgeoisie culture of 19th century Europe, confident in its presumption of ameliorism, exploded in the strange, mythical civil war otherwise known as World War I. The tremendous initial fuss over the election of President Trump, and his seemingly fascist tribe of MAGA followers, was really rooted in this deep, collective, subconscious admission that our own seemingly progressive and progressing society was actually charged with violent and destructive impulses — as indeed, it is. As of now, we may consider ourselves lucky that Trump seems to have been mostly sound and fury — that Trump was more of an omen than the promised end. What’s more worrisome, however, is that we have not really internalized, and thus learned, from the data our political process has provided us: we still trust the shamanistic nexus of digital media to tell us how the world works (and should work), operating under the assumption that human brains, harnessing the power of algorithms, illuminate.
I watch as a fashionable Dad swipes through the Instagram of other fashionable dads (I see #DILF) — while his kids sit, totally ignored, next to him, on the subway.
