Far from “Jaw-Dropping,” Will Facebook Revelation Make Us Face Our Serious Systemic Sickness?

Last week The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles exposing the information that Facebook’s ain interior probe concluded that their Instagram level was causing terrible intelligence harm to its teenage users, peculiarly teenage girls. The communications the probe uncovered highlighted links betwixt usage of the level and accrued depression, suicidal ideation, and the exacerbation antagonistic feelings astir their bodies galore young girls conflict with successful U.S. culture.

And yet Facebook persisted, doing thing to code this harmful interaction of the level portion reaping $100 cardinal successful nett and promoting outer studies that denied immoderate correlation betwixt societal media usage and depression.

Reporting for CNN Business, Allison Morrow described immoderate of the moments successful the Facebook interior probe arsenic ‘”jaw-dropping.”

Without a doubt, the behaviour is heinously corrupt and inhumane, but to telephone it “jaw-dropping” risks glossing implicit the prevalence and, frankly, wide acceptance, adjacent celebration, of this benignant of behaviour successful U.S. politics, economics, and society.

If we respond with surprise, arsenic if this behaviour is someway retired of the ordinary, a departure from the paths connected which our ascendant motivation and taste compasses usher america successful America, we miss the accidental to diagnose precisely and intelligibly the superior and deleterious information from we endure arsenic a radical and a societal system.

As we diagnose this condition, it volition assistance to underscore the prevalence of cardinal symptoms of the illness, the dynamic of putting nett implicit radical and of knowingly engaging successful our social, political, and economical endeavors successful destroying the precise ground connected which our quality lives depend.

The baccy manufacture is possibly the astir infamous grounds of this disease. It is wide known that large cigaret companies were alert of the unsafe and deadly effects of the merchandise they were peddling to consumers good earlier the surgeon wide required they enactment a informing connected cigaret packages. And adjacent aft the damaging effects and addictiveness of cigarettes were nationalist and communal knowledge, the manufacture inactive targeted teens, seeking to grow their markets and summation profits astatine the disbursal of quality health.

And instrumentality the information that the lipid industry, we person learned, has known for immoderate clip that the burning of fossil fuels was contributing to the warming of the environment, portending catastrophic consequences.

These are conscionable 2 examples of a overmuch much widespread, so thoroughgoing, dynamic that is symptomatic of a deeper unwellness successful our quality condition.

The philosopher Karl Marx named this malignant information “alienation.” And portion the almighty anti-communist tendencies successful American civilization mightiness impulse america to disregard Marx’s reasoning connected elemental ad hominem grounds, we mightiness beryllium omniscient to see what Marx was reasoning erstwhile helium diagnosed this basal information plaguing peoples surviving successful people societies passim quality history.

While the conception of alienation Marx developed has galore layers and dimensions, 1 main mode helium seeks to get america to recognize it is by asking america to spot that we, arsenic quality beings, mostly make and collectively nutrient the satellite successful which we live, and yet galore who instrumentality portion successful making the satellite and contributing to its time to time functioning nevertheless acquisition that satellite arsenic an outer entity that is alien and hostile to them.  One mightiness enactment successful a afloat enactment week picking effect oregon gathering homes but past not person the means to spend to adequately provender oregon location one’s family, for example. Or, portion we nutrient the satellite and, collectively successful immoderate consciousness marque decisions astir however to nutrient the world, signifier our societal systems, and truthful forth, we make a satellite that poisonous for us, hostile to quality beingness and hard to inhabit.

We, arsenic humans, collectively speaking (obviously immoderate individuals and groups person much powerfulness successful making decisions than others—for Marx those typically connected highest rungs of the ladder of people society), determine however to signifier our governmental systems and societal relationships, however to usage and administer resources, and truthful forth.

And yet, we enactment similar Dr. Frankenstein who has created a monster helium cannot control, an alien unit that present acts connected him.

While Facebook has knowingly created a level harmful to its users, don’t our governmental and economical leaders bash this each time?

We tin entree the means to assistance folks successful dire request during the economical shutdown the pandemic necessitated, but Republicans wanted to withhold funding, challenging the America Rescue Act. Let Americans suffer.

We cognize our economical strategy generates gross and ever-increasing inequality. So, let’s springiness the wealthiest individuals and corporations a trillion dollar taxation chopped portion millions of radical can’t conscionable their basal needs, adjacent erstwhile moving a full-time job.

To prevention money, let’s change the h2o strategy successful Flint, Michigan, poisoning the section colonisation successful the sanction of fiscal responsibility.

And these larger dynamics of alienation, for Marx, interaction america connected the idiosyncratic level. We acquisition alienation from our ain halfway humanity, which alienates america from others. We tin longer decipher our existent and worldly narration to others successful society, seeing them arsenic alien. Racism and sexism are specified forces of alienation, prompting achromatic radical to spot radical of colour arsenic different oregon alien oregon the antheral colonisation to spot women arsenic such, legitimating unit and oppression against them. Or, it mightiness punctual idiosyncratic to say, “I don’t person to deterioration a disguise oregon get a vaccine, but it’s conscionable astir my idiosyncratic freedom.” These individuals don’t recognize that they unrecorded successful narration to different radical and that what happens successful that narration impacts them.

So, Facebook’s behaviour is simply a grounds of alienation, and it shouldn’t beryllium immoderate benignant of “jaw-dropping” surprise.

The much we are surprised, the further we are from knowing and intimately studying and addressing the cardinal information plaguing us.