One of the left's accusations is that our economically imposed habituation patterns, labor structures, as well as the pervasive consumerism that comes with aggressive advertising and PR, is largely responsible for the ongoing social fragmentation of our times. I think this is true to an extent, but there is more.
For example, advertising is ultimately an appeal to the consumer, it is an act of communication (however asymmetrical and perverse that act is) to attempt to get the consumer to complete an action, that is to buy so and so's product or service. The act presupposes a social state that is already present, though it does aggravate and extend that state.
Our suburbs, cars, workspaces, and our advertising are an appeal to the atomized individual, the ego of the individual, alone in the world to take what the individual can get. It is an appeal that has sociopathic underpinnings, but it is an appeal that speaks to many people. There is something far greater, subterranean, that these appeals are attempting to speak to, to attempt to harness and control, but which eventually will lose control of.
Up until now a majority of our society supported and even condoned the filthy rich and their solipsistic world view, because many of us wanted to be one of them. Even today, I was listening to a radio program where callers were talking about what they would do with vast riches - and these were grown adults, not just children goofing around - and virtually all of the callers enlisted the power of their imaginations to conceive of scenarios of vast material waste, of lavish expenditures of useless amusements which only benefited them and perhaps their close family. One sole caller came out with a touching and hilarious idea: he would throw all the money in his dad's face to see whether his dad wanted to fight him, or be glad there was money flying all over him. However all of these scenarios betray a stunning absence of social consciousness. Then you look at the way many people drive: they pilot a large mass that can easily kill another human being with incredible recklessness, as if they are the only intelligences that exist.
These attitudes reflect the attitudes of the super rich certainly, and these attitudes are transmitted through much of the mainstream media like cable TV, because this class has access to and control over the infrastructure and modes of production of such entertainment, though exceptions always make it through. And the indie and avant garde sector can always relieve us with antidotes.
But no class can ever achieve absolute control. Civilized society is much too complex. This is why many conspiracy theories tend to be false at their face. Ruling elites do know how to manipulate and control the masses, keeping them atomized and ignorant, but it also takes the active participation of said masses to sustain the illusion.
What is this subterranean social state? How do we go from social solidarity and communal feeling to the vast atomization of today? Social entropy? Deliberate aggravation? The traumatic effects of war and economic depression? Perhaps all of this. There is no clear answer, except to construct a limited narrative that decently captures bare reality. The narrative will survive if it helps a population move forward.
