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Writer's pictureFred Guerin

The New Opium of the Masses: Social Media




In A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right  Marx said the following: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Of course, in Marx’s day opium was not only valued as a painkiller, it was legal!


According to Marx, religion, like opium, relieves suffering and takes you to a more pleasant place where the horrors of the world are forgotten. The result is a docile, submissive citizenry who is encouraged to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward instead of fighting to change things on earth for the better. There is definitely a critique of religion as illusory and a form of false consciousness, but there is also a kind of sympathetic understanding of why people might turn to religion since the idea of overturning the status quo, through revolution seems no less a kind of utopic wishful thinking.


Two things: First, I’m persuaded that faith is not something easy for thoughtful believers, but rather more like an ongoing inner battle. That’s as it should be. Secondly, I’m also persuaded that the real opium of the masses today is not religion, but rather social media—the addictive drug that encourages you to live in distraction and embrace feel-good delusions that keep you from seeing the truth and reality of what’s going on. In a time of repression and injustice when most people lack political and economic power, social media operates simultaneously as protest and consolation. But here protest is not revolutionary or life-changing. It is mostly a superficial ersatz form of political participation rather than genuine rebellion.


Social media is a time vampire, a dis-imagination machine, the place where narcissism thrives and flourishes. Is it not rather convenient that in Canada very powerful people discourage us from posting news on Facebook? Is it not rather convenient that Facebook algorithms are increasingly disallowing any media outlet deemed pro-Russia, or any criticism leveled at Israel? Facebook doesn’t multiply voices and opinions. Instead, it narrows the range of opinions and debates so users end up only talking to those with whom they already agree. Addiction to social media inevitably dissolves our ability to act in concert in ways that would radically change things.


Real change takes time, courage, ongoing deep deliberation, and commitment across a broad range of different points of view by people committed to the same end. It requires, dare I say it, faith! Not faith in pie-in-the-sky utopias, technology, or social media, but faith in the possibility of resistance, rebellion, and the common struggle for a more just world not dominated or monopolized by the power elite.

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