Surviving the Modern Age

That is the other novel quality. Not only are modern people constantly rustled by the endless flow of mass media, but they are also hooked on it. There is a segment of the population that gets visibly angry when you point out that most mass media is just laughable nonsense. The people pushing it don’t even believe it. The response is similar to when you try to intervene with an alcoholic.

Marx famously said that “religion is the opium of the people,” by which he meant that people seek comfort in religion. It suppresses their natural desire to be free, preventing the masses from revolting against those in power. He was wrong, in that religion protects the soul of man from the cruel reality of the human condition, a condition that is immutable, despite the utopian dreams of men like Marx.

Mass media, however, is proving to be something vastly more potent than the drugs with which Marx was personally familiar. Mass media is the fentanyl of the masses that eats at their soul, depriving them of their liberty. Like the man-made narcotic, mass media is highly addictive, causing the addict to crave that which he knows is enslaving him by causing him to distrust his own mind.

Whether by design or by accident, mass media is a form of menticide, a systematic destruction of the conscious mind of the people. Instead of the quiet predictability of familiar routines, the modern mind is a riot of chaos, doubt, and outrage. The natural human desire to live a peaceful life is drowned out by a riot in the head, triggered by the constant stream of insanity from the mass media.

It is reasonable to wonder if such a world can exist for very long. Modern America seems to be shaking itself to bits. All of the ways we measure the health of a society are pointing in the wrong direction. Perhaps like an addict, the ragged and broken end of a society is just the final chapter of a story that started much earlier. The addiction is just a symptom of other pathologies.