ienation from human nature is how personalized everything has become in this century. Teenagers can listen to the music they want, when they want, via a set of headphones threaded under their shirt. They can go home to choose their entertainment on 100 channels, or on their Blackberries, or on their PCs, laptops and eBooks, or on their Playstations, or on the Internet, or on their mobiles, or over MSN – none of which require face-to-face interaction with another human being, or the pursuit of anything other than staving off boredom. A recent study claimed that social circles have been steadily declining in size over the last 40 years – that adults of the 1960s claimed a circle of "close friends" in numbers of eight or more, and that for adults of the 21st century, that number has dwindled to "two or three" (Jackson, 121). Many people admit to not even knowing what their neighbors look like, let alone what their names are – a far cry from the 'little communities' that were the suburban streets of the 1950s. One might posit that the future of alienation will be not just emotional, but physical. Two hundred years from now, we might not even need to be face-to-face to procreate, to work, to communicate in any way, to entertain ourselves, or to share experiences.
             Marx wrote extensively about ideology. He believed that the ruling class of a society will dictate everything, including whichever ideology suits its best interests (Marx, 231). An interesting factor here is that the ideology can be manifested in a way which controls others, but not the ruling class. In short, a position of do as I say, not as I do. There is a case to be made for this beginning to groundswe
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