Deep Drivers Behind Today's World
Reflections on Derek Thompson's essay in the Atlantic
Washington DC 9 JAN 2025
Loneliness. Isolation. Atomization. All feed totalitarianism. Hannah Arendt's enduring explanation of what today we call Trumpism, has an updated source code for 2025 in Derek Thompson’s compelling new essay in the Atlantic.
Drawing on interdisciplinary research as well as adroit personal observations, Thompson explains some of the deeper and slow moving changes in society that have masked some extraordinary outcomes that only come into sharp relief when drawn together in a portrait such as this.
As I listened to this article, I heard echos of my own existence and that of my friends. One has a son whose life is totally different to mine at the same point in my chronology. As Thompson painted his picture I suddenly realized that was my friends son - whose life I did not understand.
For example, being late to getting a driver's license and then infrequently using it, preferring instead to stay at home with no visitors, playing computer games late into the night. He even got a scholarship to play games, adding some respectability to what is in reality the life of a shut in.
As soon as I could drive solo, I disappeared into Sydney's bright lights, on adventurous expeditions with different social groups in which I was an active member. It was a busy roster of different activities that appealed to the different groups. Often ending up on a beach with the sense of freedom that comes from being young with a car and enough cash to enjoy the basics offered by a carefree coastal city.
My friends son does not live that way at all.
I remember doing a PhD at a young age and wrestling with the necessary conversion to a monastic lifestyle. I got used to it in the end. The partying of a Cambridge college offset the downsides, providing the diverse social outlets I craved from the Sydney days, but with synchronization with my fellow monks study timetables so none of us felt FOMO.
Our enjoyments were of, and in, the moment. I think we all realized both in Sydney and Cambridge that there was little chance someone else was having a better time than us! If they were - good luck to them!
I don't get out and go camping and hiking like I did back then. I should.
Thompson writes about people in social settings stuck to their phones suffering FOMO anxiety and thus separated from their lived experience. An eternal waiting room for better days, places and people. Classic examples of this are people on holiday in Venice watching real housewives tv shows on their gondolas and photographing the great artworks before them in a checklist to post to insta, instead of as actually looking at the art and contemplating it - in situ.
I remember visiting Poland in 1988. The people were dirt poor but had a ton of fun behind the razor wire and AK47s. The sense of community was amazing. Perhaps an upside of the coming oppression of Trumpism is a return to community? I doubt it, but one can hope.
If Arendt is right, and she is, then Thompson's excavation of our crumbling “civilization” holds extremely dark portends.
Social isolation is preferable for those of us who have seen the bottom of the human condition. Escapism is the only way to keep from drooling at the mouth and going insane.