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Screens Are Breaking Our Brains
Addictive technologies have fundamentally altered who we are, how we live, and how we relate to each other — with disastrous results.
To be American is to be angry. You can imagine the defiant indignation of the Native-clad Tea Partiers as they dumped chests of loose-leaf into the Boston Harbor back in 1774. You saw on early CNN the car-burning righteous fury of the Black community during the 1992 L.A. Riots. The throughline is clear, if not always obvious: to be American is to be hopping mad at something, to carry two axes — one to grind and another to swing.
We direct our anger at an authority, an “other”, a foreign adversary, a domestic nuisance, our parents, or ourselves. And whether your anger is primarily focused inward or outward, upward or downward, your anger feels like you. It is your strongest, scariest, most sacred emotion, and therefore it is both your guide and source of shame. From mass shooters to mass demonstrators, from our gridiron gladiators to our boardroom sharks. It is the fierce desire to overcome, vanquish, abolish, or admonish that marks Americanism at its most exceptional. That is — unless you’ve got another, better explanation for all the goddamned guns.
