It means you, alone, are expected to deal with all of your problems yourself, and there is not a community of people for you to fall back on in times of need. This atomization is socially and economically enforced. Unions busted, land trusts dissolved, public transport dismantled, public health denied again and again despite popular support. It means when you run out of money you get thrown onto the street with all the other non-persons.

Atomized refers to being individual, alone, responsible for your own needs. Not a member of a community etc. Sometimes we say siloed off. It’s not just about needs but also about loneliness and feeling shut out.

A non-atomized society are places like Vietnam and Cuba. In Vietnam during Covid lockdowns, they brought you fresh food to eat day to day. You can rely on your neighbours for needs. People are looking out for each other. Contrast this with the American response(s) to covid - Lockdowns but you don’t get anything provisioned to you or fuck it everyone for themselves no response at all.

There’s definitely communities within places like America that aren’t as atomized, mutual aid societies, unions etc. But the dominant character of society in general of the United States is one of deep loneliness and atomization.

I literally do not know any of my neighbors, and that is pretty normal here. That’s a simple way to put atomization, I think.

I think about the ethnic enclaves that immigrant communities made in the US as the opposite of atomization. People brought together due to circumstance who develop a system of support to watch each other’s kids, cook for another during illness, help each other get jobs. Really just the basic concept of community. America is designed to dismantle that stuff. Some of those immigrants’ kids acculturate and assimilate and “move up” in society to be lonely suburb dwellers with more material wealth than their parents, but none of the community.

When I worked/lived in the East Bay in a very working class, diverse neighborhood, the Abuelas would check in on everyone constantly. At least once a week, they’d knock on my door to make sure I’d eaten that day.

It means I don’t have any friends, don’t talk to or know my neighbors, anyone I know well has gone far away to live their own life, and the only people I really home into contact with are my coworkers and cashiers at the grocery store. There is little to no connection between myself and any other person. All beings reduced to individual particles not interacting in the overall system

i cant speak for the us, but in my country, if you are from certain places (namely big cities and apartment buildings) you will most likely live on your own apartment and not even really know your own neighbours. you are likely to hate them for trivial reasons. each on their own concrete box, with their own problems and toys.

there are other ways in which we isolate but i think this is a great example of how the individualism manifests itself, great way to illustrate the physical and emotional distance of it.

about non atomized societies: tribal, indigenous soceties of a couple of hundred of people, small town neighbourhoods are tighter knit too and generally know a lot about and comiscerate with eachother. this type of thing. even then small towns are still capitalist so theres kind of a limit to this

So I’m gonna start with the science definition it came from and go from there:

Atomization refers to breaking bonds in some substance to obtain its constituent atoms in gas phase. By extension, it also means separating something into fine particles, for example: process of breaking bulk liquids into small droplets.

So politically it refers to essentially the same but with people. It’s a breakdown of social and communal bonds that previously existed. It’s the how we refer to the alienation from others that increases under our current structure which casts society as the sum of its individuals and the emphasis on the individual rather than individuals as a product of society and an emphasis on a larger more connected and communal application of policy.

"I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

… [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’

Thatcher, Margaret. 1987. ‘Interview for “Woman’s Own” (“No Such Thing as Society”).’ in Margaret Thatcher Foundation: Speeches, Interviews and Other" - this is essentially the core of atomization phrased as a good thing by one of its architects.

Americans do not generally have a third place where they spend time in common. Sometimes they go to a coffee shop or something. But there’s no such thing as the town square or the neighborhood market where the old people hang out or the weekly potluck. You don’t know your neighbors or, even if you do, you spend no time with them. You do basically nothing as a community.

There are exceptions but they’re very limited and are usually somehow tied to the chamber of commerce or a tourism board or something.

Culturally, when faced with a problem, you’re supposed to just deal with it as best you can, not bring it up as a problem to the community (the community does not exist). Sometimes people try to get together to help others but it inevitably turns into a charity that becomes part of the NGO industrial complex, a way to make money for the “leadership” team and give the people responsible (bourgeois) a nice tax break and a spot on that leadership team for their progeny.

Folks can barely even socialize with each other most of the time. When forced into proximity under amicable terms and with a shared interest, some will eventually get along, at first being surprised at the people around them and discovering that they can talk to them for more than 10 minutes without getting frustrated or needing to pay them for the time. Most of the time they cannot talk about anything without getting heated pretty quickly. No capacity for cooling a situation down, it’s always time to fight.

Also getting Americans to form a union is like pulling teeth. It’s possible but really fucking hard because a critical number of people will have a series of false consciousnesses that are about their own superiority or an ideology that makes all things individualistic.

I don’t think there’s really a non atomized society. I think various societies are going through this process of atomization and are at different stages, which reflects capitalism’s global reach.

More or less how structures such as suburbia have destroyed functional communities and replaced them with synergistic hellscapes meant to serve capital alongside petty fascism/assholism (HOA’s are the devil), society functions at the benefit of a specific subset of society (i.e. capitalists) while doing nothing or actively harming every other subset of society (i.e. workers/everyone else).

Removed by mod

Society that maintains nuclear weapons as a deterrent

The term “public health” in the US now means that you’re on your own, jack.

I notice little mentions of non-atomized societies. Modernity suffers all over to some degrees, but for an example of a typically non-atomized society, think of a stereotypical old timey (maybe up to early or pre medieval) village, or tribe, or any such small community of 10-200 people.

Though they will do some travelling and back and a forth, all the people in those small societies will know each other by name, face, attitude, family, general background. Every person will know who they can rely on for help, who to turn to for every need, who they can speak to, who they can be alone with, and so forth. You knew ~100% of the people in your area.

This kind of society was the “default” because it just happens if all of you spend 90% of your life, outside, in the same two square miles. Though you might get the occasional pariah, basically every person in that village will have help to turn to, places to crash and people to speak with all hours of the day. This engenders strong community, cooperation, friendships, coparenting, tolerance, you know, normal natural human behaviours.

Then contrast with today’s society, where I know my family and friends, but for work reasons they’re scattered around the country. And I only know very few people in my area to small degrees. So although there will no doubt be cool, friendly people just on my road, I have no normal or effective way to meet them, know them, and work out who I can trust and/or spend time with. I know ~0-1% of the people in my area, and there are practically no means for me alone to address that.