You know, my reply to the old platitude that socialism is incompatible with human nature is the following: there's so much weird, abstract, convoluted horseshit that people simply accept despite having no grounding in material reality that a socialist economy wouldn't be anywhere near the weirdest thing a society has adapted to. Daily life is full of frightening absurdities and alienating abstractions. While having "too many choices" is in many ways a privilege, the problem these people are facing is one less privileged people are facing as well, just in a different way. Think about it. You finish school. You look for a job. You realize you have no idea what you're actually good at, what you'd enjoy doing and if you're even capable of learning a specific occupation. But all around you there's a society saying "Find a way to get food on the table, because we sure as hell aren't gonna take care of it." You're lost, your afraid, you have no idea what to do. And suddenly every choice that's open to you seems like a trap that might very well lead to a life, or at least a very long period, of suffering.
And that's what it's like, being in your early twenties. A time when most people would do well to work on themselves, in my experience. People say that millenials are immature but that's because they've spent most of their lifes as adults in a state of crushing uncertainty which, I think, actively stifles personal growth. What helps us grow is challenge, not existential dread. The generation growing up no has every reason not to believe in a stable future, neither for themselves, nor for the world at large.
What else is there but to long for a simpler life? Sure you can treat the millenial love for low brow pop culture; video games, super hero movies, cartoons and so on, as symptoms of arrested development but for many of them childhood was the only point in their lifes when they had no reason to be afraid of the near future.
Maybe Pol Pot had the right idea. Maybe we'd all be better off living in primitive communes, chopping wood and ploughing fields until we die of a cold in our early 30s. I'm joking, of course. I think all the wonderful technology we have could help us live a simpler and happier life. But instead it's making us feel even more alienated. It's miserable, that's what it is.
