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Capitalism / Laissez faire capitalism proposed by adam smith and Fredich…

- - - - techonology connects people globally, emphasizing a shared sense of humanity and global responsibility - Cosmopolitanism
        
        Globalization : cross-border interactions, transactions, and relations
        
        Global market pursuit of
        
        Liberalism
        
        liberalism promotes the separation of religious institutions from political governance
        
        secularism
        
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        Social manifestation of liberalism
        
        Democracy - stemming from the Greek words, ‘demos’ and ‘kratos’ etymologically translates to ‘people’s rule’; which emphasises the power vested in the collective.
        
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        Social media is a platform which enables individuals to exercise their individual liberties -Freedom of speech and expression
        
        Led to the creation of a
        
        Global technocracy: an ominous network of top-down rule by global elites
        
        GAFA Tetrarchy
        
        Driven by a profit-making incentive
        
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        megopolies (GAFA Tetrarchy) are a democratic threat
        
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      - Social media
        
        is central to the dissemination of information
        
        Media/ Information
        
        The Free Press- allows for the dissemination of information that is independent and unrestricted by government bodies
        
        The opinions sections of media outlets have shifted towards tailoring to a specific subset of the population
        
        Polarization and Sensationalism: In the quest for user attention, sensational and polarizing content tends to perform well on social media. --> affecting social cohesion & comments on society
        
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        Post-truth and relativism
        
        Social media algorithms are not neutral; they reflect biases present in the data used to train them.
        
        Echochambers
        
        a threat to digital democracy
        
        led to the creation of the Attention economy - Commodification of a users attention - exploitations and manipulation
        
        affects transparency of the
        
        Truth
        
        capitalist propaganda industry' can simply bury the truth in an avalanche of the trivial, the salacious and the manufactured.
        
        When you take them all together you get a situation where you cannot give heart to that which is so rightly deserving of your attention.
        
        - Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism."
        
        "Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information
        
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- - - - in a neoliberal society, elites and their allies will tend to expand the powers of government and bureaucracy for their own interests. This expansion comes at the expense of us, civilians. Thereby also contradicting the core tenets of neoliberalism.
        
        In such a class-stratified society, capitalists not only make the important investment decisions that guide our society’s overall direction, but they are also effectively private dictators telling their workers - what to do, when to do it, what to wear, when to pee, and what to post online. In this way we are no longer a democracy but and oligarchy.
        
        Anticipating the economist Thomas Piketty’s claim in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) that capitalist societies ‘drift toward oligarchy’,
- - - - leads to a lack of authenticity
        
        Mass culture and consumerism can contribute to social alienation. The standardized nature of mass-produced goods and cultural products can lead to a loss of individuality and genuine human experience.
        
        Max Horkheimer, - "The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them."
        
        Theodor Adorno:- "Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity."
        
        The commodification of culture and the standardization of goods result in a paradoxical situation where the pursuit of enlightenment and liberation can lead to conformity and a loss of authentic human experience.
      - leads to the commodification of culture
        
        In a consumer-driven society, cultural products, including art, entertainment, and even social values, are commodities (CULTURE INDUSTRY). This commodification serves the interests of the ruling class by perpetuating a consumer culture where people are defined by what they consume.
        
        Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci- "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
        
        Using their influence, these prominent individuals have etched their beliefs into economic, political, and social values. For example, the capitalist ethos of Western societies, with its emphasis on competition and individual success, is often championed by the ruling class. In the United States, the espoused ‘The American Dream’, is the embodiment of the belief that any individual can achieve prosperity and success through hard work and determination, if they adhere to the capitalist creed.
        
        The ruling elites don’t solely uphold their authority through traditional sovereignty but also through the dissemination of their grounded ideology. They shape the cultural norms, values and beliefs of a society that appears to be so easily influenced and moulded. They have essentially created a system where the interests of the ruling class are perceived as the 'common sense' of society – a true cultural hegemony.
        
        In essence, post-modern society has reverted back to a now ‘modernised’ aristocracy; a class of people who cannot be argued with, reasoned with or compromised with. They feel as if they are owed, obedience, sorrow, repentance and submission which is a threat to the democratic conditions of our common life.
        
        Eventually, we become homo machinus - the empty shell.
      - Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil. They’re just people ‘doing their job’, serving a system that wants to commodify any aspect of our lives that remains un-commodified and un-automated. ordinary individuals, often acting without malicious intent, can become agents of significant harm due to their thoughtlessness, conformity, and lack of moral reflection.
      - "Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." - John F. Kennedy
  - - - However, in contemporary society, particularly within the realm of social media, this profound idea has been systematically disregarded in pursuit of aesthetics (or conformity). With an emphasis being placed solely on outward aesthetics (or conformity) the person's soul, the person's true self has relocated or migrated to the superficial realm of the skin. Consequently, individuals become enslaved to an incessant pursuit of beauty, lacking the spiritual resilience to transcend this fixation. This phenomenon contributes to the widespread prevalence of dysmorphia and related disorders.