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Notes -
It might be helpful to break down different angles to attack symptoms of the rift.
Interpersonal Exit Veto (aka flight or fight, aka sorting, aka freedom of association)
I. Exit as Meme
"If Bush wins, I'm moving to Canada." We can trace the heritage of our modern Culture War to 1968. Young, progressive people really did flee to Canada to dodge the draft and exercise an exit. This exit was practical, so as to avoid the draft, but also a valuable tribal signal.
This meme, and the war that made it possible, cleaved open generational and tribal faults. Moving to Canada was a way for the professorate to escape imperialism, but it was also perceived as a giant middle finger to any remaining post-war American unity.
Move to Canada, as I experienced it, was not interpreted as a rebellious taboo. It was a light weapon in the culture war. A voice of snark that returned to national distribution for Bush 2, Election 1. One would find the meme in light hearted barbs on late night talk shows, the punch line in SNL skits, and among the sneer class in earlier internet forums. German publications even misquoted famous people's wives, because meme. The meme could be taken neither literally, nor seriously.
A bump in usage was captured by Google Trends during Bush 2, Election 2. Shown in the graphs are all the following elections where a Republican won, but notably absent in those where they did not. Its value to tabloids was double. When Famous Person didn't leave, writers got to generate a second, even snarkier article on how silly it was for Famous Person to say they were going to do a thing they didn't do. An unserious, performative part of a virus.
II. Exit as Illness
A virus which mutates and adapts as the individuals within a culture degrades. Anxious people loathe confrontation. Anxious people like the internet. The spaces a person congregates and the ideas and beliefs they soak. allow them to generate profits in the form of moral gains based valued at the spectacle.
One might protest to a Racist Uncle at Thanksgiving, "Racist Uncle, if you don't stop racism'ing at Thanksgiving I'm not coming." This escalates, and somewhere along the unforgivable takes hold. I have to imagine this, so I imagine this this is a or rationalized as a moral act of self-preservation. Once it's done once, doing so again is easier. Until you're giving the Racist Uncle treatment to your former acquaintance or your friend from high school. I wonder if Lana thought about this as a sacrifice, a necessity, or thought about it much at all.
It is easy to sneer at redditors who appear to want to give advice for the Lana's to cut off relationships. Alienation, isolation, and fatalism are all symptoms and expressions of depression. In addition, our perceived enemies can easily surround us -- even threaten us -- at all times through a small, 6" screen. The interpersonal exit veto is a product of our time, more normalized by some types than others.
I don't consider the practice of isolation, alienation, or intentionally destroying relations as a genetic inheritance for the progressive psyche to pass down. Lana experienced a life-sized collapse. To us readers, the psychological immune system she found comfort in consumed her. There's a lot of coherence and stability in ideas, even if those ideas are a false sort of immune system. As written, they consumed her. There is comfort is in praxis.
III. Exit as Veto
The choice to reciprocate a withdrawal and accept a detente is a natural resolution. There's no parity in this anecdote until the end where there is a parity of no-contact. The parity must be maintained by culture with status backing the position. Being personally caring, considerate, and reaching out can positively help in that respect, but it's a medicine. It also requires reciprocity. The model of a decent person, as I was raised, included the idea to extend if not care, then at least consideration and decency beyond the walls of our own beliefs. That's powerful, and I believe that's why I was inspired to write a response with a strange focus on an old meme. Prognosis is not positive, but I don't believe a moderately comfortable standard of living is all that supports the structure.
In my experience, most people are not so principled or ideological. They are persuadable. They are responsive. Memes like Move to Canada have influence on their behavior. This could be more worrying if it weren't such an old observation. The is fear that we sort until we will share nothing in common, and we become so comfortable that we have no interesting in commonality.
The resigned don't see a way to sustainably apply triage to strained relationships. I don't see it either. The fully resigned don't see a way to even share a government. What if all the associated sorting and vetoes protects us from a point of no return? The sides of the horseshoe that drive the poles get heavy and bends, but it doesn't break. We sort as much as is needed, as much as is convenient, and it works.
I think interpersonal exit is an evolved form of the teenage door slam. It’s almost always done publicly, either online or in person, and if done online and the program doesn’t generate a satisfying message that tells the audience that they’re blocking people who say or do X, don’t worry, they’ll announce it. As such Theres a certain level of narcissistic behavior involved — the person must be validated in some way for “having the courage of their convictions” to remove someone from their lives.
To me, I think that at least a partial answer among friend groups is to not give them the narcissistic supply. Don’t support them, don’t acknowledge it happened, make a point of including the shunned in group activities. After a while it stops being fun because nobody’s calling them “stunning and brave anti-racist.” They’re just throwing a teenage girl temper tantrum, and they’ll get over it once they realize that they’re not getting their way.
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What happened with your post? I found it kind of hard to read in an "am I getting a stroke or is sleep deprivation finally getting to me" way from the start, but then halfway in it seems to reach the point where words are actually unambiguously rearranged out of their proper places, like in
Gas, and the fact the writing and ideas are underdeveloped.
I wrote until I ran out of time. I pressed send. If I had hated it, then I would have deleted it. If I liked it more I may have dumped it on you today in improved form, or worked on it further for a future a top-level. Is there any part you consider interesting or worth reading besides the stroke?
I sense there is something in that mass of mush, but I've been wrong before.
I don't think Sentence 1 is stroke-y? It's missing a the. Sorry. Sentence 2 is repulsive, I agree. A form of Sentence 2 was written first, then I added more words, words, words in another pass. That's bad. We don't need those sentences at all. Try now.
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We're all just actors in a play. We enter stage, say our lines, and exit stage. The surest way to be disappointed with this is to try to direct from the stage.
I demand a full accounting of the stage!*
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