October 2026

control, selfhood, technology

The self is too small a thing to confront reality. Experience is a dance between being humbled and asserting control. Social media keeps us locked in narcissistic bubbles where the self, no longer dancing, becomes bigger and more cohesive before it breaks upon the enormity of reality. This may even be true for parents who, when in the past "loved something more than themselves," now commodify their kids as social media tokens, and / or are constantly distracted on their phones. This hardening of the self is dome through the echo chambers and mirrors of social media, but it is also through the thing that the self / ego seeks even more, perhaps, than seeing it's own image reproduced and validated, and that is exercising control. It's not that tech lets most of us to control our realities, rather, it allows us to manufacture "bespoke realities" where in fact we are more dominatead and controlled by our surroundings, and ever more fragile before them.

Law, Harm, and Order

Many would balk at the idea of dealing fentanyl, or shoplifting and reselling items. It’s illegal - but part of this is the idea that it's not socially sanctioned, not the actual harm that is committed by it. So much legal work is deeply harmful. So what's the difference? What society determines is "okay" is out of sync with actual harm caused. When something is legal, it blinds us to how harmful it actually is. It is literally a permission structure. In fact these laws work in a way to neutralize even the idea of push back. What is legal takes on a veneer of credibility, of objectivity.

Why? We may think ititally because laws are a priduct of a social contract, a democratic process — but few believe that anymore. Is it because we fear law enforcement? Or we have blind faith in the elites who make laws? It could be any of these, but an interesting question is — without laws, could there still be order? And is the fear of losing the latter what leads us to excuse the (moral) crimes, of the former.

moral panics and retrospectives

There’s a familiar dialogue that goes like this:

"x is ruining this generation" where "x" could be the internet, social media, smartphones, etc.

The reply, "people have been saying that about younger generations forever. They're moral panics. we had them about TV, and before that about novels. It's just older generations afraid of change, saying 'kids these days.' moral panics.”

This both acknowledges the fact that there really are changes that take place that reshape society, but misses that the full reckoning is hard to measure from inside the society that it creates. The invention of land leasing, for instance, did fundamentally change production, and create labor / capital dual relations in Europe. Instead of feudal lords that collected a portion of a peasants production, land lords would lease lands to private entrepreneurs, which hired labor. There was an incentive to produce more (to profit passed the price of the lease). There was thus an incentive to squeeze the employees. The same restructuring came with the invention of the corporation, where managers reined over a vast number of employees, and the gap between earners widened significantly. Again with scientific management of companies in Ford’s era. Again with the internet and outsourcing, where companies were shaken loose from nations.

Likewise with other changes: tvs really did reduce time families spent talking to each other. Suburbs and automobiles did alienate people further. And phones really are actually addictive and destructive to mental health. It’s important to not have a moral panic and overreact to changes that make people feel uncomfortable when things have been a certain way for awhile. It’s also important to see something that is not just not the same, but also not healthy, not helpful, not ethical—and call it that.