Modern Society Is Failing Men & Women - Mary Harrington | Modern Wisdom Podcast 444

COVID Policies

Mary Harrington critiques the impact of COVID policies on interpersonal relationships, highlighting how these measures favored monetized interactions over spontaneous personal ones. She argues that activities like attending church or visiting family were restricted, while market-driven interactions, such as going to the office or shopping, were permitted 1. This shift, she suggests, has led to a "war on relationships," where organic connections are replaced by commercialized interactions 2.

Everything which was banned came under the heading of spontaneous interpersonal interaction and everything which was somehow made exception for came under the heading of human interaction which in some way serves the market.

--- Mary Harrington

Harrington believes this transformation is not a conspiracy but a byproduct of pandemic policies that prioritized economic imperatives.

   

Economic Mediation

The discussion extends to how economic imperatives redefine human connections, especially during crises like the pandemic. Harrington notes that relationships are increasingly mediated through economic transactions, with dating apps and platforms like OnlyFans replacing traditional interactions 3. This shift, she argues, reflects a broader societal trend where human connections are seen as optimization problems, rather than organic interactions 4.

It's adversarial, right? It's taking the primary, typically the primary source of value that the opposite sex had and then weaponizing your ability to manipulate that.

--- Chris Williamson

Harrington warns that this commodification of relationships could lead to a loss of genuine human connection.