We are all lonely participants in this atomized world. The anomie of modern life and all that. Isolated by our cars and inhuman urban design and the collapse of organized religion and the algorithmic encouragement of tribalistic politics, we despair at the sensation of our nation descending into warring, alienated factions. All our differences seem to loom larger as time passes, to grow into unclimbable walls: red versus blue, young versus old, urban versus rural, affluent versus just scraping by, socialists versus the god damn fascists. We embed ever deeper into our little categories and assume that this is the natural order of things. We holler about “elites,” who might be anyone at all other than us. We accept this war of identities because we can imagine nothing more pure that exists to compare it to.
Capitalism is like nuclear power. It is a mighty force capable of producing great energy that can be harnessed for human progress—but if you don’t keep it tightly controlled, it will poison everything.