Posts Tagged ‘ Self-Destructive Society ’

A Dysfunctional Global Society

This is something we never imagined in our worst dreams, but something we have worked very hard to get. Historians of the future, if there are any, will be baffled by what went on in the 20th Century. They always assume that people want good societies, but for some reason always get bad ones. I am saying that people (unconsciously) want bad societies – will be satisfied with nothing else – and invent new ones endlessly.

This is a basic dynamic we should recognize before it is too late. But I am afraid it has become too habitual to be visible.

All I can do is continue to live in a little corner of Costa Rica, order my books from Amazon, write on my blog, and cash my Social Security payments. I am still alive, and I keep reminding the world of that. But enough about me, let me return to the main subject – the rest of the world, and what is going on there.

We should be reminding ourselves, over and over, that we are stupid – and stupid in a number of ways. But instead we get reminded, over and over, of how smart we are. People stare at their latest smart device and marvel at how smart they are. Not realizing they are being suckered every time they do this.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against technological progress. After all, spent much of my life doing this. But having been there, I have learned a thing or two. I know how destructive they can be – and how destructive of human life in particular.

By technology, I don’t just mean technical things, all by their little selves. They never exist in isolation – but always coexist with the people who use them. And this combination of humans and nonhumans (as Latour points out) is a potent stew.

Do we recognize this? Absolutely not. We insist, over and over, that we and they are entirely separate beings – and have no effect on each other.

The most outrageous lie ever made. But one entirely consistent with the way we are. We keep saying, with great vehemence, “Pay no attention to the way things really are! Pay attention only to the way you know they are – and nothing else.” And people, being the obedient creatures they are, do what they are told.

They fill their lives with things that make them even more stupid. And think they are getting smarter. This is not a good situation because it makes them not notice the most important fact in their world – that they are destroying the world that made them.

When the Martians come to look at the remains of our society, they will shake their heads in amazement, much like the tourists used to do when they saw the Roman ruins. “Something amazing was going on here,” they will say, “I wonder what went wrong?”

2012
08/29
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History
Philosophy
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We Have a Low Opinion of Ourselves

We have this low opinion for a very good reason – because we have become Awful People. What other opinion could we have?

We have a built-in ability to accurately assess our behavior. This is part of our human heritage – the ability to judge the behavior of others, without which we could not have survived. And, as result, we are very good at this – under normal conditions. But our condition now is far from normal. In fact, it could hardly be worse.

You might ask me “If things are so bad, why don’t we know about them?” And that would be a very good question. Why don’t we?

The answer, in short, is that we have lost our awareness of what is going on – our ability to evaluate our social behavior. And nothing worse could have happened to us.

It’s as though the Devil had reached into all our brains and turned them off. As a result we have started destroying ourselves – because we know we are defective. We know we are no longer human.

At one time I asked myself “When did this start?” But this proved to be an impossible task. It must have started a million years ago (give or take a few) when we separated from the Great Apes and became human. This started a whole chain of events that made us the strange creatures that we are.

By the time we started to think about this (as the Greeks did) our thinking was valuable (and still is) but it could not change our self-destructive behavior. The Roman Empire (to make a long story short) self-destructed.

We should have made a mental note of this – that we are prone to self-destructive behavior. But unfortunately we did not.

Fast-forward another thousand years or so to the beginnings of the Modern World. Things were looking up, and we were finally going to do it right – we thought. But we blew it again.

How we blew it we don’t really know, and at this point we don’t have to know. We only need to know one thing – we blew it. This, in itself, is nothing new. We have done it many times before.

Human social development seems to be an unstable – in need of constant correction. But this should be no problem – after all walking on two legs is an unstable situation, requiring constant correction. Fortunately, our excellent nervous/muscular system does this for us automatically.

What we need is the equivalent for our present global society. If we had these global checks and balances, or were at least working on them, we would have a much higher opinion of ourselves. But we are not doing this, and don’t even want to give it a try.

Instead we say, over and over “We are helpless to tackle any problem this big.”

2012
08/27
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Philosophy
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Computer Science as Politics

I can remember when Computer Science started; but I cannot remember how it started. Now, reading Latour, I can see why – Computer People simply decided what they were doing was a science – and because they had so much political power (because Business had made the computer part of its religion) no one dared contradict them. What was going on was a mixture of science, politics, and religion – a very potent stew – and a completely unconscious one.

People acted like puppets – the puppet-masters were pulling all their strings in unison, making them all agree. At the same time, it was also true that everyone felt that he (and only he) was in complete control of his actions. No one could see any contradiction here. Being completely out of control and completely in control were the same state of being. There were no in-between states.

Even the mechanism for doing this was well known – Television, the latest and most powerful of the mass media. This is what was pulling the invisible strings. And Television was not just another technology – it was also a power structure – and a very powerful one.

People caught in this web were helpless. But they turned this into a virtue, and competed to see who could be the most helpless.

The race to the bottom was on, and those closest to the bottom would seem to have an advantage. But they lacked the momentum those closer to the top (such as American and Europe) were building up.

They were going to hit bottom and bounce into another state we cannot imagine.

2012
08/18
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Being Nothing

This is mankind’s supreme achievement; the ultimate one being his ability to not notice it.

When I refer to this as an achievement, I mean just that – it was a goal we formulated unconsciously and then followed through on. That it was unconscious does not make it less real.

Another way of looking at this would be to look at the rise of the unconscious. Freud brought it to our attention, but avoided seeing how important and pervasive it was.

It was one of the ways the Modern World ended – by making it unaware (or unconscious) of itself. The result is people who demonstrate endlessly that they are not there - and destroy any people who are there.

This is a remarkable achievement because being is so simple. Even the clouds in the sky know how to be – to say nothing of the innumerable living beings. Only man knows how not to be – which takes a desperate, final effort.

And it was a desperate final effort. And we have to look at it this way – as cultural suicide, where only the husk is left. Just enough to say over and over “I do not exist!”

What caused this desperation? It was simple: we (as people) were being ignored. The world’s attention was focused elsewhere. And not on the most precious beings in that world – us. As far as it was concerned, we no longer existed. This was enough to drive us to despair – and beyond it.

Instead we hear, over and over “Nothing bad is going on!” Which is true, in a way – it has already gone on.

2012
08/15
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Philosophy
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Things vs People

We must be clear about this. We have ignored this problem too long – and as a result, have gotten nowhere.

First, some definitions. I will not define humans, a task best left to the artists and philosophers. But things can be defined fairly easily. They are everything we have made - and which in turn have made us.

In other words, we are a process, a process that started when we differentiated ourselves from the other animals. We know next to nothing about how this happened. But at one point some of the more observant of us realized that we were here, and that we were different. The ability to recognize this was, in itself, quite an achievement. And we have never been quite sure what to make of ourselves.

But we did not stop to ponder long, We set to work making things – including above all, ideas. If we didn’t know where we came from – no problem, we made up an answer – one that varied from people to people. Just as with our languages – we made them up. There was never a pure people – we were always a mixture of our biology and our many inventions. The nature or nurture question never came up – we were obviously both.

Time went on and our most successful inventions were those that enabled killing – of other species and of each other. We also invented cooperative behavior – no small matter, and that helped us to help each other to survive.

Our most potent idea was that of the machine – an assembly of identical parts working to accomplish a task – such as making the pyramids, or any military organization. Anyone who was one of those parts, was a person and a part (or a thing) simultaneously. Few thought about this, and those who did were mostly ignored.

Meanwhile, however, we became combinations of people and things (both ideas and material artifacts). The domestication of plants and animals, for example, made us inseparable from them.

Then we invented something really big (literally) – empires, which were the embodiment of super-egos (and usually not the best of egos). Here again, this development was alarming to the more perceptive among us (including the Old Testament prophets). But they were only voices crying in the wilderness.

In the West, this resulted in the Roman Empire – and its collapse. And after a lapse of a thousand years or so, the Modern Era – which had one overriding problem – how to think about and manage our things? In an intensely religious world this was no small problem.

We solved this problem – but the solution was faulty. We gave too much power to our things – thinking (incorrectly) that they could be used without them using us.

I suppose most of my readers will agree with this analysis – but immediately ask “What can we do?” The answer is “Nothing.” Some developments only go one way, and we are on that one-way track.

2012
08/12
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Sudden Overwhelming Social Change

You can see this happening in the way flocks of birds or schools of fish can suddenly change their direction, as if the whole flock were one. One of the biggest thrills of my life was watching colorful schools of fish doing this while scuba diving in the Maldives. You could feel their group feeling for yourself. For them, of course, it was just simple and natural – although the mechanisms involved must be very sophisticated – and obviously well-coordinated.

In that sense, man as a social animal is no different. Fashions sweep through our populations irresistibly – for no apparent reason. And these fashions come in complexes, each affecting the other. The biggest one, of course, was what we now call civilization – a complex of technologies, including agriculture, writing, and metallurgy – that caused the rise of empires, militaries, and religions – that changed us completely and irreversibly.

This should have taught us that we were subject to these sudden overwhelming social changes. But we did not comprehend this any more than the birds or fishes. Since we did not, I will say it now – we are a strange combination: part human and part animal – and the two interact strangely.

This is not a new observation, the Greeks were well aware of it – but unfortunately, they could not use their knowledge, and were overwhelmed by the Romans, who eventually self-destructed. Once again, we failed to notice – this time that entire cultures could self-destruct. Which is what ours is doing now.

And here is where I want to begin my story – in the Eighties. In the Sixties a counterculture sprang up in America, which everyone was aware of, and even participated in, to some degree or another – but mostly as spectators. Those who were really with it, joined communes or other movements – and were very active in them (to the horror of those in authority).

I participated, but only on the margins, since I also had a job as an engineer in the Cold War – which was also going on. We were weekend hippies – although I did do a little time in a Mexican jail during this period.

The counterculture continued, as various new sub-movements were invented (such as Gestalt Therapy, Co-Dependency, and Shamanism) until sometime in the Eighties – when it stopped suddenly. So suddenly, in fact, we were left in a social vacuum, wondering where we were.

What caused this sudden change? The Computer – which had finally hit the mainstream, after a long process of development (including the development of its software). Business latched onto it, and didn’t let go. Conventional Wisdom only saw the Computer as a tool – but it was much more than that – it caused an overwhelming social change, a sea change – that few wanted to see because it was so destructive.

I was right in the middle of this change. I bought the first portable computer and used it in my job as a technical writer. And then became a programmer myself. I was surfing the latest change, and profiting from it. But I also became uneasy – I could see this new technology would be taken over by business and used against us – as indeed it was.

Then the Personal Computer came out and changed everything. Then the Internet came out and changed that. Then the Wireless Revolution happened and is in the process of changing everything again. Sudden Overwhelming Social Change has become an epidemic. But people are completely unaware of this, and pretend nothing has happened at all.

When in fact we are self-destructing – and putting ourselves out of business.

2012
06/15
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Internet
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Just Too Many Things

People cannot compete with things, because they will win every time. How this came to happen interests me intensely, since this is one of my addictions – an addiction to things. People I can do without, but I have to have my things.

I am reading two books. The first is Sophocles’ tragedies – which are about people. The second is about the American Cyberculture and Counterculture in the second half of the last century. It is about people too, but also about how their things attracted them, and then overwhelmed them. In that sense it is a tragedy too.

After WWII we started off with the best of intentions – indeed, we were going to make a better world, using the latest scientific inventions and techniques. We believed in Science – very much so – but Science bit us in the ass. Everyone knows this now, to different degrees and in different ways, but we have been changed so much ourselves we have no idea what hit us.

And we are striking out blindly in all directions at all kinds of things, thinking them the Enemy – when, as, always, the enemy is much closer to home: out fatal attraction to our things. And I don’t mean just our attraction to luxury goods of every description. Our addiction is now much more serious – we have become addicted to the process of addiction, embodied in our Computers.

They are sucking the life blood out of us, like vampires, while we are blissfully ignorant of their presence. I don’t know how to put it any stronger than that – but that hardly matters, since there is nothing I can say that would make any difference. All I can do is shed a little light on the process.

The process I want to highlight is the development of the computer – or actually the computer/software/internet/wireless complex. This process happened so rapidly, and so powerfully, people should have been aware of it. But they weren’t – they just laid down and asked to be run over by (buy) it – because it made them feel so wonderful.

The process contained its own anesthesia and mood-enhancing drugs. We were being executed while feeling no pain. This is an improvement over the older methods (including crucifixion) which were intended to be painful. But the end result was the same: death – this time a living death.

I promised to shed some light on this process. My source here is From Counterculture to Cyberculture. The key figure here is Stewart Brand, a contemporary of mine, we both got married in 1965. Brand eventually published the Whole Earth Catalog, which I remember clearly, because it embodied the ethos of the time. Now that time is past, people looking at copies of it are no doubt baffled by what they see.

But all I have to do is look at the bookshelves  lining my bedroom/living room (with books such as Micro-Hydropower Sourcebook) to see the same thing – dreams of technical utopia. These were left by an American family who came to Costa Rica expecting a bright new future that failed to materialize. The husband’s bones rest in the cemetery just up the hill.

That whole generation was buried by something they didn’t see – their infatuation and absorption by their things. I just barely escaped from it myself – and by pure luck ended up alive, but with an aged body and mind.

As I type this, my newest technology sits on the self next to my notebook computer – a chromebook computer. This, according to Google’s hype, is supposed to be the newest and greatest. But it is completely useless; a software bug in the log in routine has made it nothing but a 400 dollar paperweight. I can only sit and marvel at two things – how well high-tech hype works, and how people (like me) swallow this hype.

I should have known better, after all I have worked for 20 years in the high-tech world, where this happened all the time – but like everyone else I didn’t. The unwritten rule was: It (unspecified) is wonderful! It was always the way things were. This is nothing but a religious belief, and is often integrated with the religion of success so common in America – and being exported vigorously down here as evangelicalism.

The Orosi Valley seems to attract these types – people who come here expecting the most wonderful things – when all there is is scenic beauty. I can enjoy just being, but for many this is impossible – as it was for me for most of my life. Somehow or other I ended up with a run of luck – scenic beauty with a fast Internet connection.

2012
06/14
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The Effect of WWII on America

The Americans who won WWII have been labeled the Great Generation. But I see it differently. I was ten years old when the war ended, and the post-war America I experienced as a child has left deep scars. Americans began the process of destroying America then, a process that has never failed to horrify me. But no one else has seemed to notice this – at least not consciously.

Now that I have arranged the stage for the play I am going to describe, let we introduce the players – foremost of which is Science, who is going to play the villain – not the part it usually plays.

WWII allowed Science to play a much larger role than it ever had before. Before the war began, it was used to create decisive new weapons – including the tank, modern aircraft, electronics, and eventually the Atomic Bomb. Electronics evolved eventually into TV and the computer – technologies from which we will never recover.

But more importantly – Science created a method of waging war. One that could be used in peacetime. This altered Business, and made it war too – a war that never ended.

What happened to the people in the midst of all this frantic activity? They disappeared, and were never missed.

2012
06/12
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History
Science
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The Two Faces of Progress

The Big Question, as I see it, is “What hit us?” The immediate answer from most is “Nothing. Nothing has hit us, and any talk of this big, bad nothing must be suppressed!” Progress is part of our new religion, and it defends itself against heresies violently, like any other religion.

Which immediately gives me a toe-hold on what I am struggling to define – Technological Progress can be (and should be) seen as a religion. But an entirely new kind of religion that has no limits.

Its open-endedness (to form a new word) is a critical attribute of what it is. Progress will inevitably get better and better. This is a staggering idea, one that has flattened us like a steam-roller.

It is also, as the slightest reflection should convince anyone – crazy and destructive. And destructive of people especially.

This last part, its destructiveness of people, is its dark side that no one wants to look at. People keep saying (at the top of their lungs) “Progress is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and must not be questioned!” And Business enforces this by making such people unemployable – the worst fate imaginable, since it not only means starvation, but social ostracism.

To summarize:  the good face of Progress promises infinite riches to its followers. While the bad face of Progress destroys them.

To its followers (the vast majority) this is no problem – they are sure they will end up on top, and they do not care about those who end up on the bottom.

But this is not all. Those on the bottom also believe in Progress, and in the destruction of themselves. This is unbelievable, but easy to see in operation. Destructiveness (the dark face of Progress) has universal appeal.

Jeremiads, such as me, can say all they want. To no effect at all.

2012
06/10
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A Constipated Mind

I have been a big fan of Manuel Castells, and I was eager to get his latest communication power (note the lower-case title, which he evidently takes (incorrectly) to be the way things are done now).

The subjects he tackles in this book are subjects I am interested in also – such as power. But, unfortunately, he is not helping me. Instead of pre-digesting his material, as a thinker should, and producing something useful – he seems to be suffering from intellectual diarrhea.

He thinks we are now a networked society – when this is just the usual hype. I speak as an expert here – if anyone is networked, it is me. But this networking for most is superficial. Only the business world is now networked. One could argue that this is all that matters – but this is only partly right.

He ignores a basic fact – the human world has collapsed under its own weight. And his own writing is proof of that.

One part of the book I can recommend: the Opening, where he talks directly, person to person. His final sentence here:

And this is my way, my only real way to challenge the powers that be by unveiling their presence in the working of our minds.

An excellent project! But not a new one. Every great thinker (and some not so great) has tried to do this.

Perhaps someone else will come along and condense Castells’ writing for us. But I doubt it.

2012
06/09
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