I'm more and more certain much of this is the result of post-modernism. God is dead. We can no longer expect the fear of hell or desire for heaven to keep us in line, so the state must become the omniscient god watching over us.
I wish more people would see our police state through that lens, because hell and heaven never kept people in line and the state will do no better. It's all just metric-driven management... in the long-run, nothing really keeps the masses in line.
But surely that's a strawman. No one thinks religion would stop all evil or all people, but there certainly seems to be some kind of psychological effect from being brought up in such a framework, which can be observed, for instance, in latent guilt and residual fear of hell and judgement that happens when people leave certain christian sects for instance, which is totally absent and baffling to those not from such a cultural background.
I think its eminently feasible that SOME people are being 'held in line' through explicit or implicit fear of rules/authority/sanctity/hell/punishment/purity/etc provided by religious and social structures.
Even if you use DDG, you go to a site with GA on it, google cdn, maybe facebook too, anything with those icons to share with a social media site.
Even searching for symptoms. I was searching for something my girlfriend mentioned the other day and now wondering if I'll start seeing some kind of ad related to the issue.
It's not good.
I eventually became a moral nihilist in theory, but someone that recognizes the importance of values in practice. (like a classical liberal against gambling.) And to tell you the truth, I don't know the proper, working way to instill values and work ethics (especially the latter) in people or kids. I, for once, suspect that I came to appreciate a respectful manner through seeing others shoot themselves in the foot by maintaining a rebellious attitude and feeling disgusted with poor manners at times.
Right-wing Millenials who aspire to be good parents often came to appreciate family values/religious values through the same way I did. by rejecting "degeneracy".
Note: I am not saying that right-wingers are morally superior.
Every ban invites testing no matter the consequences. Counter-intellectual cultural engineering can mitigate inquisitiveness in the short-term, at the cost of leaving the state blind and vulnerable to disruption.
Amen. What keeps a society stable for a long time is allowing the masses to go out of line on a regular basis without too much collateral damage. It's like letting some steam escape from a boiling pot so it doesn't boil over.
This is essentially what elections are for: to let people revolt against government power without resorting to violence. But if elections are perceived as not valid, or as ineffective, they can no longer release that tension... and to your point, eventually the masses will get out of line one way or another. The longer it takes, the messier it will be.
Authoritarian governments are not even really intended to create long-term stability. They are corrupt in a very essential way: the people running them know they can't last forever, but they don't care as long as they can give themselves a great life, and put off the explosion until after their (natural, comfortable, long-delayed) death.
Yet many of them completely miss the problem that somebody has to objectively decide what's the "right cause" and rarely will most people agree on the causes being "right" or "wrong".
[0] https://medium.com/@nayafia/why-do-millennials-support-gover...
I'm not really sure if it's pressure of social media or post-911, 24/7-breaking-news, always trying to manipulate audiences with emotional triggers.
Not so much support, I'd say - but rather indifferent or "gotten used to it" to the point that it doesn't seem to be a problem in their view. It is much closer to apathy and ignorance.
There is a bit of a generational gap at play here. Most millennials were brought up in rather comfortable conditions. Food, health, stable life, education -- for them this is the world how it always have been and always will be. Fascism, world wars, dictatorships -- all that is a distant news on tv (that they don't even watch or have) or in history books (books? what are those?)
Also, with the never-ending facebook newsfeed, that automagically shows them things that they already agree with, fewer and fewer want to leave that bubble.
In other words, millenials are ok with total surveillance because they do not fathom the real implications of what survelliance state is going to be. They have nothing to "compare it to", no intuition, nothing to relate to. For them it will "never happen".
... which means when it happens, it will be really, really bad. It is akin to having early symptoms of cancer, but if you have never been close to such tragedy in real life, you just go on ignoring the symptoms, go on until it is too late.
I guess it is a fate of every generation, some kind of 3 generational "gap":
1st generation - experiences it, puts in laws and organizations to prevent it from happening in future (examples are United Nations after WW2, nuclear non-proliferation treaties between US and Soviet Union, etc.)
2nd generation - happy / golden generation that still knows remembers the lessons of the 1st one and enjoys the safeguards instituted after the events that are keeping them safe.
3rd generation - decadence and calm before the storm. No one is alive from 1st generation to tell them the horrors of the world wars first hand. 2nd generation are "old timers" and essentially ignored. Personal experience of the 3rd generation is comfort, convenience and never ending entertainment.
For the lack of a better metaphor: Winter is Coming.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/colonysite.php#...
It's called the Three Generation Rule, and it's no small part of why I've personally taken it upon myself to try to find a way to make sure any kids or friends I come in semi-regular contact have acquire appreciation for how current infrastructure was arrived at, and understand that none of it is a given.
Unfortunately, I'm not the most successful at it, because I'm pretty sure taking the time to collate all this information on the infrastructural pedigree of modern life in your head tends to come with a tendency toward hermitude.
Also coincidentally, hardly anyone seems to want to know about it.
1) That would make the previous 3rd generation before this current iteration (one cycle ago) the generation that experienced WW1 - they'd hardly be ignorant of the horrors of world war.
2) Boomers (your 2nd generation) went through Vietnam and the cold war, so I'm not sure they often felt like the UN was safeguarding them from, well, anything.
3) Boomers also seem to be indifferent and apathetic about climate change, so I'm not sure how that really fits into the narrative.
The most likely answer is that most people just feel indifferent about things that feel out of their control. Boomers likely didn't spend every waking minute about how close they were at several points to being ended by thermonuclear war.
Hell, even for the greatest generation (well, except for Murrow obviously) let McCarthy run rampant right after WW2 until he tried to go after the army.
That seems to suggest to me that you're saying that if the primacy of the authoritarian-religious-mindset had stayed around, such an effect wouldn't have happened.
Now, I can respect that there are a minority of relatively liberal religious traditions, but it seems to me that surveillance and monitoring and censorship would be something that you would predict would be pushed by such an authoritarian religious mindset had it stayed around, not caused by a crumbling of its authority.
Surely the common thread here is authoritarianism, and neither religion nor its downfall in the post-modern era, and the reason its happening now is purely because we have the technological means.