Date: July 9th, 2016 12:19 AM
Author: transparent point
the point wasn't just that chaplin was enslaved by those machines in the factory - that would be trite. everyone since william blake's dark satanic mills in the (18)00's had harped on that point, and marx even based an economic system on it.
but he was also FASCINATED and even a bit ENAMORED by the machines. they captivated him. they were cruel and mechanistic, but they were also incredible devices. he wanted to crawl around in them and risk death to explore them.
"modernity" to a large degree is the creation and deployment of systems which are capable of entrancement.
that, too, has been noted a lot, but i would add that the demise of these systems does not "free" people to "return" to their prior selves, or to what would have been their selves in the absence of those systems.
the evidence from recent times is that it actually unmoors and depresses them, and does not cause the spontaneous/organic reformation of things like social ties.
it's more like a bunch of transmission towers whose cables fell down, rising together in an untouching file of monoliths.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3279618&forum_id=2).#30886256)