When I was in college, the last thing I thought about was politics. Even more so in high school. Sure, there was election hype during the primaries. However, to try and say I ordered my identity and everyday consciousness around politics would have been absurd. That was too busy skateboarding playing video games and having fun.
When did this shift happen where people’s lack of religious attendance slowly shifted into the political realm and their morality and politics became one? Why are there people right now below the age of 30 obsessing about politics nonstop? Why not choose happiness and have fun?
In high school, but not much party politics, I mostly read old anarchists. At college you kinda have to go through the post-structuralist course, but it was then that I got more into reading economy and post/neokeynesianism - which wasn’t even part of the stuff I had to study…
I used to care about arguing about politics and economy, but since my 30s politics became “not my thing” because I watched American politics being spread through Twitter and young people reading more trending American internet liberal activists instead of their local union newspapers, and then I watched all the biggest media conglomerates of my country raising the flag of those activists and they believing they are “winning” without realizing they became so harmless they are being mocked. Nowadays, I just believe we absolutely deserve everything that we get.
I’m particularly tired of the echo chambers social media created that turned everything in an “us vs them” mentality that when you don’t agree 100% on every topic you are a them and an enemy and everyone is under that homogenizing peer-pressure to conform… and I include the Fediverse on that, it’s the same crap. I don’t feel like being a part of any “us”, especially because I see everything corrupted by the American WASP-culture addiction to guilty and shaming that equally encompass conservatives and liberals, as the “us vs them” slowly kills all the real transgressive. I want distance from all the “us”.