| At some point, we as a society are going to have to seriously engage the fact that we are now fully capable of manufacturing addiction, and at the moment, do so, both in adults and in children. "Their own decisions" is not a stable concept. Setting aside esoteric philosophy of mind, you need look no further than your own relationship to your phone—tested out for many of us at the Thanksgiving table last week, as duly noted by Chris Ware's cover of last week's New Yorker magazine—to confirm this. The mechanisms of surveillance captialism and a foundation of decades of consumer psychology (etc ad nausuem) have quite literally left us adrift in a world of stochastic mind control. At that same table many of us encountered the inexplicable world views of relatives whose propoganda bubbles did not intersect our own. And we all have such bubbles, not least as a result of the cheerful professionalism of many who browse here. Your decisions, just like teenagers' decisions, are not "your own" in the sense someone might have meant c. 1923. And before one cries, it has ever been thus, to that I say: no, it absolutely has not. The technologies for behavioral steering of today are as unalike what people contended with in advertising (etc.) a hundred years ago, as our logistic transport and energy industries are, amongst others. Until we take this on, head on, as a society, the problem will just get worse. |