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  • Americans do not generally have a third place where they spend time in common. Sometimes they go to a coffee shop or something. But there's no such thing as the town square or the neighborhood market where the old people hang out or the weekly potluck. You don't know your neighbors or, even if you do, you spend no time with them. You do basically nothing as a community.

    There are exceptions but they're very limited and are usually somehow tied to the chamber of commerce or a tourism board or something.

    Culturally, when faced with a problem, you're supposed to just deal with it as best you can, not bring it up as a problem to the community (the community does not exist). Sometimes people try to get together to help others but it inevitably turns into a charity that becomes part of the NGO industrial complex, a way to make money for the "leadership" team and give the people responsible (bourgeois) a nice tax break and a spot on that leadership team for their progeny.

    Folks can barely even socialize with each other most of the time. When forced into proximity under amicable terms and with a shared interest, some will eventually get along, at first being surprised at the people around them and discovering that they can talk to them for more than 10 minutes without getting frustrated or needing to pay them for the time. Most of the time they cannot talk about anything without getting heated pretty quickly. No capacity for cooling a situation down, it's always time to fight.

    Also getting Americans to form a union is like pulling teeth. It's possible but really fucking hard because a critical number of people will have a series of false consciousnesses that are about their own superiority or an ideology that makes all things individualistic.

    • Sometimes they go to a coffee shop or something.

      There's not even anything good like that where I live. It's so pathetic having 0 places to go besides the gym (almost nobody socially interacting there) and places where you buy stuff.

  • So I'm gonna start with the science definition it came from and go from there:

    Atomization refers to breaking bonds in some substance to obtain its constituent atoms in gas phase. By extension, it also means separating something into fine particles, for example: process of breaking bulk liquids into small droplets.

    So politically it refers to essentially the same but with people. It's a breakdown of social and communal bonds that previously existed. It's the how we refer to the alienation from others that increases under our current structure which casts society as the sum of its individuals and the emphasis on the individual rather than individuals as a product of society and an emphasis on a larger more connected and communal application of policy.

    "I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

    … [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’

    Thatcher, Margaret. 1987. ‘Interview for “Woman’s Own” (“No Such Thing as Society”).’ in Margaret Thatcher Foundation: Speeches, Interviews and Other" - this is essentially the core of atomization phrased as a good thing by one of its architects.

  • I don't think there's really a non atomized society. I think various societies are going through this process of atomization and are at different stages, which reflects capitalism's global reach.

      • I assume from reading the modlog that this person isn't genuinely interested in learning our perspective on the problems facing human civilization. It's a shame because I wanted to attempt to give an honest answer but. On the other hand, my responses tend to read like logorrhea. Nevertheless.

        I guess I can say to liberals: The only thing they have left to appeal to people, after shearing themselves of all their progressive features in a desperate attempt to protect the status quo of capitalism, is this atomizing individualism that makes any kind of political organizing impossible to do. We do indeed live in the future of Margaret Thatcher, where only individuals competing in markets against one another exist. This even applies to technologies that are supposedly made to promote socializing (ie the ubiquitous "social" media), where the pursuit of status amongst peers prevents any meaningful collaboration on political projects meant to build a just society. There are plenty of factors related to technology that I guess could be lumped into a broader category of changing material conditions, with most of it being linked back to a capitalist drive for greater efficiency for the pursuit of profit.

        This atomization is to our detriment, as such a perilous time in human history requires international cooperation to prevent the sort of suffering we are seeing unfold over the course of this 21st century polycrisis, with anthropogenic climate change being the chiefest of those concerns.

        My concern for the future is that in this atomized society, as conditions of this polycrisis spread, with the most vulnerable parts of society being jettisoned as "unnecessary" by those who manage capital. Those on the left who criticize these actions will be stigmatized as "fascists" and "terrorists" by the liberal and far right defenders of capitalism. In some ways we see this with the current attacks on those protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is one of the places where the West develops the technology used in controlling its own restive vulnerable populations near the heart of empire.

  • I notice little mentions of non-atomized societies. Modernity suffers all over to some degrees, but for an example of a typically non-atomized society, think of a stereotypical old timey (maybe up to early or pre medieval) village, or tribe, or any such small community of 10-200 people.

    Though they will do some travelling and back and a forth, all the people in those small societies will know each other by name, face, attitude, family, general background. Every person will know who they can rely on for help, who to turn to for every need, who they can speak to, who they can be alone with, and so forth. You knew ~100% of the people in your area.

    This kind of society was the "default" because it just happens if all of you spend 90% of your life, outside, in the same two square miles. Though you might get the occasional pariah, basically every person in that village will have help to turn to, places to crash and people to speak with all hours of the day. This engenders strong community, cooperation, friendships, coparenting, tolerance, you know, normal natural human behaviours.

    Then contrast with today's society, where I know my family and friends, but for work reasons they're scattered around the country. And I only know very few people in my area to small degrees. So although there will no doubt be cool, friendly people just on my road, I have no normal or effective way to meet them, know them, and work out who I can trust and/or spend time with. I know ~0-1% of the people in my area, and there are practically no means for me alone to address that.

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