You'd expect that, of course, from a New York Post writer. Kyle Smith, indifferent film critic and even lesser political observer, here promotes David Brooks' book "The Social Animal," in which Brooks describes the human need for intimacy and challenges. Smith attempts to fling this critic in the face of young America, comparing their obsessions with technology and social mobility to the characters in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
Of course, if Smith was willing to look beyond the boundaries of his own biases, he'd realize that it's the people who rely on Rupert Murdoch to keep them in power who exploit the priciest technologies and are the quickest to shed their own "contacts," whether those contacts are workers or wives. As for young people, it's precisely the economic limits of their own lives that limits their social mobility to social networks, in between multiple shifts at fast-food restaurants.
That's the dilemma of Victorian virtues: maintaining them costs money, and often requires public investment that the privately privileged feel (understandably) threatened by. And until we as a society can accept that fact, we won't make any progress toward becoming more virtuous.
Incidentally, Kyle, Huxley was a socialist who found struggle and social connection through advocating a better society for everyone. Wonder what Rupert would think of that? Tap his phone for me, will ya?
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