Atomism, Social Media, and Community.  By Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald.  first published on www.medium.com/@kfitz.music on 4 October 2025.  Published by Mnoty Press, Naawan, Philippines.  9 October 2026, 

A disjointed yet hopeful rant on the present state of human affairs

So, ok, there's a bunch of fear going on where I am, and possibly where you are, too, and I don't know. I pray. I use music and writing, and they are spiritual practices for me, and it helps.

This morning I was writing about fear, and the question of where do I turn when I'm scared came up, and whether or not that's working for me, and I confess I have been stuck in a loop, not all the time, but increasingly between posting an essay, seeking approval, and then growing more afraid.

And, so, I don't think I really doom scroll, as I don't look for bad news. I was reading recently a bunch of articles about Gaza with people saying that the whole world is watching, and I don't think that's true. I'm not watching. I'm reading, and it's awful, and the Egyptian government should let those people cross the border…

So, maybe I'm doom scrolling more than I think. But, no, not really. This past month I put a lot of work into a group of essays on post-Soviet heavy metal. I really enjoyed it, and it was a very optimistic project, basically addressing how do and how can we use music to transcend nationalism and work together against tyranny.

This research was not doom scrolling, and the research I've been doing about global fascism and the mining industry is not doom scrolling either, as I'm trying to develop realistic and concrete solutions to a global problem.

Also, I had a lovely thought yesterday morning about how we are more aware of the lies than it seems. By we, I mean humanity. I've been frustrated before that it seems people are buying in to the facade imposed by the dominant fascist ideology of violent exploitation as the greatest good.

As if conditions in mines in the Congo were natural, and a price that's worth paying so we can have our cell phones and electric vehicles. And implied statements that slavery is not so bad, and children are better off working, and it has always been this way cover up the choices behind such violent exploitation.

But the corporate media, which includes social media, including youtube and facebook and twitter and tik tok, are driven by profits on behalf of wealthy global elites who profit on this ideology of violent exploitation as natural and morally right.

So, my thought that most people can see through the lies is a liberating one. For one thing, it means I don't have to try to convince you, which is a real load off my mind. I mean, I didn't really believe I could, but I also felt like I should try. Now, I don't really feel like I should try. I believe my part is more to help inform and encourage the movement as it develops around me.

I honestly believe that a global revolution is at hand. And I'm all for it. The elites are about to start deep sea mining. In the Pacific Ocean. While the Pacific tectonic plates are shifting. Madness.

The Chinese government, in their efforts to modernize their national economy, have built, and continue to build, an infrastructure at a scale that, with a few earthquakes, could be devastating to the people of China, who will hopefully be welcomed by the people of neighboring countries in such an event.

Over 123 million people have been forcibly displaced, either through natural or political disasters, or a combination of the two, from their homes globally (https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/overview/figures-glance).

And it looks to me like we are in for more natural and political disasters. And big oil and mining, and really, deep sea mining?… Really? Trouble seems afoot for real.

So, yeh, the thought that most people can see through the propaganda and see what's really going on is really refreshing, and that it's not only that most people see it, but also that a bunch are working on it, and more and more people are willing to work on it, it seems, when I read between the lines.

Ok, yes, I've been convinced there is validity to astrology. I don't think it's all pre-determined, but I do believe that the planets' alignment in relation to earth has a strong influence on human experience, and as such, on human choices. We are, I believe, spiritual beings. Not from another planet, but having evolved, in a manner described by Darwin, a spiritual sense and a moral compass.

So, we're tuned in differently to the spiritual forces at hand, and the spiritual forces at hand are influenced by the forces of the cosmos.

Three major shifts have happened in the past year. Pluto entered Aquarius, Neptune entered Aries, and Uranus entered Gemini. This is a major realignment and means that things are moving strongly and deeply toward new ideas, community, and a sort of war of the subconscious.

So, yeh, if people think that's false, that's fine. I used to think that way, and we don't have to agree to work together.

There seems to be a polarization, but with more than two camps, in global politics. Well, maybe not really polarization… atomization. Yeh.

So, I read a beauty of a book a while back called 'Beyond the Global Culture Wars' by Adam Webb (https://www.routledge.com/Beyond-the-Global-Culture-War/Webb/p/book/9780415953139?srsltid=AfmBOoqxZkTFqHoenIxahpTI0qzCLu9jcFp-76cR32elpMUQDmgispv2).

Webb wrote about the atomization ethos that gets people, through cultural participation and manipulation, to obsess over themselves and to dismiss the suffering of others as somehow limited to those others. He described this as a global problem crippling and threatening to wipe out humanity.

Webb also came up with a solution, and recognized that it will be an uphill struggle. He suggested a unification of the non-atomist ethos. So, the tribal institutions, the religious institutions… all the ways people think of themselves as part of something bigger than themselves… we should harness the communal power of all these groups so as to combat this atomization process.

This book was written before social media changed the human social landscape in such dramatic ways. And a lot of when I read online writing is people struggling against this atomism, and getting frustrated that they seem unable to use social media to transcend the atomist ethos into which they have been coerced.

When I was early in college, in the 1990s, we would talk about the 'cult of the individual' as a main, perhaps the main, problem facing the culture of the United States.

Mass shootings and school shootings were a thing, but not like now. There were 34 mass shootings in the US this September (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting). And it's not just because of the easy access to guns. Military contractor google was trying to sell me a gun during the campaign season last year, through youtube commercials, that I could order through the mail, so, there are issues with gun control for sure.

But the culture of the US is deeply sick… spiritually sick, and these mass shootings are more evidence of this sickness than they are a result of bad policy or incendiary rhetoric.

This situation where a person's worth is determined by how effectively they can manipulate cyberspace to their will… how many clicks, thumbs up, and even hostile comments they can get to help them feel, in an atomist way, more important while they ignore their neighbors… this is a cultural projection of US individualism.

An honest hard-working man ought to be able to pull himself up by his bootstraps and climb up the social-economic ladder and achieve financial security for his family. Yeh, 'ought to'… the American dream was built on lies that seemed to be holding true for a while for some, and Hollywood and TV were there to reinforce that illusion, and social media is doing the same thing.

Social media is different, though, in that it the content is made by users, and so as it encourages more atomism, it also encourages more approval seeking. And, so, the US cultural projection of the past century ends up feeding into the atomist ethos on a global scale as people try to maximize their own individual impact on the world through their social media sites.

I'm not saying that all people who use social media do this, but this is the incentive. People are rewarded for clicks and thumbs up… and for hostile comments. There is money in trying to impose the individual's will on the world. Because it's designed that way.

And yet, I'm optimistic. Yanis Varoufakis recently wrote a book titled 'Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism'. In it, he wrote that the global technocratic elites are trying to restore a feudal order by which the vast majority are stuck in little parts of cyberspace making money for the lordly classes who own the means of production. He then argues that what the rest of us should do is rise up and take control of those means of production.

Maybe this is how the revolution will unfold. His optimism certainly is appealing.

There is a bunch of effort to stop this from happening, however, from the technocratic elites. A couple of articles I've read recently about cyber survielance are kind of challenging to wrap my head around… a few, really.

So, if the Egyptian and Indonesian governments are able to monitor what kids are saying in online games, and declare that people are using those games to radicalize these kids, which might be true, and what does radicalize mean… well, that depends on the governments, and I think if I start ranting about sovereignty I risk losing what little thread of a point I might be working toward…

So, if a state is sovereign and it gets to decide what is 'extreme' and the people running the state decide that democracy is 'extreme' and that for the security of the 'nation' they will arrest anything that looks like democracy, see for example Belarus, and there are no forces to challenge that because the state has been declared the ultimate seat of sovereignty… well, so, what are these governments going to do with the technology for internet surveillance other than help local and global elites make more money and wield more power?

I left the US, in part because of the politics, in part because of the gun violence; and the hostile spiritual disease that drives both. The quest for more money and more power is corrosive. It pits people against their neighbors in a competitive scenario, and its spiritual effects compound.

Still, I did not grow up in a hostile neighborhood. Quite the opposite, I grew up in a loving and healthy and safe neighborhood where we ran around on everyone's lawn and even the grumpy people who didn't socialize much were part of the community.

TV and then video games slowly lured me more indoors, and this is perhaps part of a larger cultural shift that kind of paved the way for internet engagement and eventually social media participation.

Anyway, I fall into the trap again and again. Last week I published my monthly journal and tried a new version of the 'day of rest' philosophy, whereby I post and then don't look for a full day to see if I got any approval. Then a bunch of fear kicked in in my local community, valid fear, and I quckly published two, and completely forgot about my day of rest policy, and kept checking to see if I got any approval. And when I wasn't checking, I was thinking about it.

So, I don't know if this is my own problem or if others have a similar experience. It seems, however, that this is how the system is rigged to manipulate our minds and our spirits to fear and crave and keep logging in and feel like we are participating in something greater while we are mostly fueling our fear and craving.

Again, maybe it's just me. Maybe everyone else is simply having fun and not worried. And maybe that's enough to help the revolution get some traction. Maybe I should worry less and have more fun. Yeh, that part is surely true.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with earthquake preparedness here. Whether or not the people can take over the internet and establish an egalitarian regime that helps us overcome this atomist spiritual disease, I've got some heavy spiritual work ahead of me, and I'll do my best to sing and pray and write while I do it.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a lovely day with good spiritual health. I hope you connect with community in a loving and respectful way.

Power to the People

Freedom of the Soul