this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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It feels like social media fakeness is seeping through into real life more and more. and every one is working harder on perfecting their façade ?

what do you think ?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

From Graeber's The Dawn of Everything:

For instance, if Pinker is correct, then any sane person who had to choose between (a) the violent chaos and abject poverty of the ‘tribal’ stage in human development and (b) the relative security and prosperity of Western civilization would not hesitate to leap for safety. But empirical data is available here, and it suggests something is very wrong with Pinker’s conclusions.

Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice – and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted. Some have left us clear, rational explanations for why they made the choices they did.

Graeber goes on to give a couple of these accounts. They tend to mention a loneliness associated with "western civilization," as well as a feeling that I think lines up very well with what Marx described as alienation.

Some emphasized the virtues of freedom they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and wealth.

Later in the book, and I apologize that I can't find the reference right now, he comes back to this topic for a little bit, and talks about the depths of relationships that these people describe, and how their relationships in the "civilized" world are more shallow and less satisfying. Deep human relationships are the opposite of fake, so I think here we have a point in favor of "yes."

Add to that that the concept of "privacy" as we know it is relatively new. It's been 10+ years since I read a book about this, the title of which I can't even remember, but it argued that the expectation of domestic privacy, even from one's own family, is a phenomenon from the last few hundred years, especially outside the elite. People lived far, far more communally, with the expectation that they just were in each other's business more. I'd argue that it's a lot harder to be fake if you can't hide who you really are.

Between those two things, I think it's reasonable to argue that yes, society has gotten more fake.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Anyone can watch videos of some african villages being visited by outsiders and how happy the local population generally appear. There's a ton of negative stuff for those people to deal with, but I think there's something to be said about the benefits of communal living no matter how much I try to convince myself it's fine being by myself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

What if, let's say, that person has something to hide... nothing dangerous or that might cause harm to others, something that society frowns upon. My reasoning is that, it would be OK to be "fake" in those circumstances.