One of the paradoxes of social life in late capitalism is that, even as more and more people abandon certain types of drug -- alcohol, tobacco, ecstasy, sex -- addictions ar on the rise . The number of alcoholics, opioid addicts, gamblers , social media addicts, porn addicts and so forth shows a secular increase. In other words, the drugs of sociability are declining, while the drugs of solitude are gaining ground. What kind of problem is this? Trump says, massacre the dealers . The Duterte option . Liberals, with the soft paternalism of the moral reformer, say treat the disease . So we murder the problem, or we medicalise it. Hard cop or soft cop; either way, the problem is being suppressed . Toxicity in late capitalism
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51