[D66] Withdrawal & Re-Entry - Alone in Mass Society

[R.O.]

Withdrawal & Re-Entry
Alone in Mass Society
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 406, Spring, 2020

Maybe the best single word that describes things today is withdrawal.

 From less sexual intimacy to NASCAR attendance, there’s just little 
interest. Clubs are closing as people retreat further into their little 
screens. When people go out, they are so very likely to be at their 
tables on their phones. Might as well be at home on the couch. (As 
obesity rates shoot up in an ever more sedentary culture.)

We do less socializing, have fewer friends. At anarchist websites almost 
the only one who posts is “anon.” The technosphere means more trolling, 
less human connection.

More and more is delivered to one’s door. Even the act of shopping is 
physically curtailed. Everything is available online, even cars.

Hikikimori, a Japanese withdrawal phenomenon around for decades now, 
means that over a million, mostly young, take to their rooms and may 
never come out.

In their “The Development of Shyness and Social Withdrawal” study, Rubin 
and Coptan refer to “a veritable explosion of research into…social 
withdrawal in childhood” since the 1990s. The withdrawal phenomenon has 
been that pronounced. About 20 years ago, Michel Houellebeq’s breakout 
novel, The Elementary Particles, depicted a world devoid of energy or 
hope. Like elementary particles in physics, individuals are separate and 
alone. Fashion models’ faces, women and men, are sullen or blank. Nobody 
home.

The unfolding catastrophe of the physical world and its flip-side, 
social existence, are equally imperiled, caught in the same totalizing 
reality. Mass shootings and rising suicide rates are not only 
spectacular forms of withdrawal, they speak loudly as to the very nature 
of society in late civilization.

It is the totality that accounts for the ongoing, accelerating disaster. 
Every civilization so far has failed. Now, there’s a unitary, global 
civilization that is visibly, grandly failing that threatens to take all 
life with it.

The liberal politics of vote-for-Bernie and the leftist antifa obsession 
each miss the point horribly. The reality is there for all to see. It is 
a cold epoch of withdrawal, but conceivably the hibernation will end. 
That may be when we are able to come to grips with the real depth of the 
engulfing crisis.

John Zerzan writes frequently for the Fifth Estate. He lives in Eugene, 
Ore. where he has a weekly radio show.