Navigating Late Capitalism

We used to go to the baseball field and sit in a metal chair with nothing but a hotdog to tide us over for a nine-inning pitcher’s duel. That’s no longer entertaining enough, so now we have multiple channels to watch more games, pregame shows, postgame shows, bigger TVs to watch them on, and podcasts to get us through the week. We even bet on games, but for all that, we are not entertained. We are just numb. 

We used to sit in a dark movie theater for two hours. Now we scroll short-form videos on our phone while binge-watching several mini-series across multiple streaming platforms. Our politics has become indistinguishable from entertainment, our entertainment indistinguishable from advertisement. We watch the empire crumble as we buy fast fashion and fast food home delivery. 

We are under the threat of technological dystopia, morally compromised authority, and ideological echo chambers. This is an Andy Warhol dystopian nightmare. Even our scientists consider the simulation hypothesis to explain the complete lack of reality in our world. Little wonder we disassociate and turn to an ever-increasing assortment of self-medication, distraction, and addiction. 

Welcome to late capitalism.

I distrust anyone who thinks their period of history is unique. History rhymes, and we’re never quite as special as we like to think. But only a hundred and twenty years ago, the Wright brothers first took flight on a beach in North Carolina. Since then, we’ve landed on the moon, dropped atomic bombs, and held the universe in the palm of our hand. We don’t know where we are, and there’s no sense thinking about where to go from here because we all know this ride is overdue for an abrupt end. We’ve been off the rails for too long.

The worst part is, we can’t blame someone else for getting us here. We are all culpable. It is greed that leads multi-billionaires to make more money off their money while employees drown in debt. It’s greed that got those employees into debt and it’s fear that keeps them enslaved to the job. It was the greed of CEOs that created Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex, but it’s our fear that sustains it. 

We created this meticulously, one decision at a time. The tragic irony is greed and fear don’t just hurt other people – they undermine the one driven by them. Self-interest hurts self in the end, just as it did others along the way. It is a short-term solution and bad strategy for playing The Game. We got away with it for awhile, but we’ve done it for too long and this is the end of the line.

The collective us is sunk, but we as individuals still retain agency and choice. The question is not how we collectively rewind the clock on late capitalism, but rather what should be our individual role in it? Regardless of what we wish the culture was like or what everyone else would do, you and I are here now. So how do we live well? Can we be relevant and engaged without being complicit? This is the useful question.

Rejection

While we are all more complicit than we’d like to admit, we are also able to change more than we’d like to think. You and I can stop buying stuff online. If we all did, we would make Jeff Bezos the poorest person in the world overnight. Of course, the collective us won’t, but that’s irrelevant. Our interest in changing collective behavior is just taking specks out of other people’s eyes when what we should have been doing all along is taking the log out of our own.* This is the only thing we can do and it matters that we do it, even if we’re the only ones. 

We can throw our phones into the lake. I know our social infrastructure is built around smartphones, and outside of becoming Amish, we can’t live without them. But that’s what they’re counting on, and the fact is, we can. It’s deeply inconvenient, but if these last few years of technological growth have taught us anything, it’s that convenience is overrated. We don’t have to spend three hours of our life every day on our phones. We don’t have to have phones. Neo-Luddites around the world are already showing us the way.

We can stop binge-watching bad content, and instead write a letter to a friend. We can donate our abundance to those in need, be empathetic instead of outraged, pursue community instead of status. We can operate out of love rather than self-interest, and value food, cheer, and song above hoarded gold.**

Revolution

Bo Burnham and Brit Marling, among others, have used technology to attack technocracy. The tools at our disposal are wired to manipulate and exploit human nature, so it is very difficult to use them well. In this sense, neo-Luddism is easier, but those with enough integrity and vision can use the resources of late capitalism to attack its foundation. What would it look like to use Instagram ethically? What are the apps that increase quality of life and how do we get rid of the rest? How do we digest only the content we want without exposing ourselves to the content we don’t? The answers will not be the same for everyone, but they should be answered by everyone.

I know this all sounds impractically idyllic. Maybe we can’t really live the lives we want. But through intentionality, sacrifice, and discipline, we can get a lot closer. What do we want our daily routine to look like, our wardrobe, relationships, habits? If left to inertia, we will eventually do what everyone else is doing. It takes energy and daring to push against it, like salmon swimming upstream, leaping waterfalls and dodging bears. But I think we can make it and it will be worth it.

Let this be our place in late capitalism. As the mad carnival around us burns to the ground, may we neither abdicate our position nor contribute to the problem. Instead, may we do what has always only ever been our job: grow into the people we were made to be, love those around us, and leave our corner of the world better than when we found it. 

J.

*Matthew 7:3-5

**“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

Jan. 23, 2024