The Anti-Humans episode I felt should feature some of the art of Zdzisław Beksiński (born on 24 February 1929 in Sanok, southern Poland) in the show notes. Captures the horror in a way that words have trouble conveying. When I read Bloodlands also, I felt that they missed an opportunity to use a Beksiński painting for the cover.
Epigenetic Eastern European trauma pushing its way out onto a canvas.
I’m getting the same error when I click Listen In Podcast App, BUT the episode is there in the feed on my iTunes, and plays just fine. Is anyone else able to see it?
I don't have a problem with you sharing anything for free. I pay because I've enjoyed your content over the years. If it helps you increase your audience....send it!
This is gonna be good. There's many different paths you can take this and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. A few thoughts...
When comes to the intersection of technology and humans, the book "Technopoly" by Neil Postman has influenced me as a person with a vocation in the tech industry. One of his core tenets is that "technological change is not additive, it is ecological”. In other words, the introduction of a technology into an environment does not mean it is the same environment plus the new tech. It is a *new* environment. The ecosystem is transformed. Is America the same country post-internet/post-smart phone?
The emergence of democratized celebrity seems to validate Postman’s thesis. The internet and the social networking software built on top of it deliver the potential to make anyone a celebrity in a low friction way. When everyone has a feasible route to celebrity, incentives morph social dynamic with with profound 2nd and 3rd order effects. When human interactions become primarily performative with a hyper-focus on presentation, social distortions are inevitable. As celebrity becomes ubiquitous, it is corrosive to traditional human bonding mechanisms. Civilizational chaos follows.
Celebrity as a process of deification seems to be detrimental to humans. Theologically, we are designed to worship. Conversely, when a person becomes the object of worship, bad things happen. It induces madness over time. We can think of examples of this phenomena like Michael Jackson. We all have (latent and realized) pathologies due to genetics, family, and environments. As far as I can tell, celebrity supercharges and amplifies these pathologies in relation to the scale of celebrity. If you get worshipped, your behaviors become increasingly maladaptive over time with corresponding impacts to one’s personal life; broken relationships, destroyed reputations, etc. Heightened human deification rarely has a good ending. Lots to think about considering 1) modern digital technology destroys many barriers to celebrity and 2) the impact of widespread celebrity as it radiates thru our civilization.
Finally, I couldn’t help asking myself after listening to the podcast the following: “Will Darryl break the ‘Fourth Wall’”? I have zero doubt you are keenly aware that the topics you are discussing are tightly coupled to your emerging role as a Public Person via digital technology.
Again, I’m very intrigued by threads you are spinning here and curious to see where they lead. Please keep doing what you are doing.
1. I wonder how much of these crises of identity (i.e. a job, things we surround ourselves with, consumption patterns, etc - "identity" could be anything here), are reducible to the fact that mankind has never been confronted with such an abundance of freedom to do what we want with ourselves on the one hand, and how on the other the sheer breadth of that choice makes it seem paradoxically simultaneously both arbitrary/inconsequential and riddled with FOMO? It is a double-edged sword to not be confined to a handful of possible roles in life.
2. There is a real tension between relative pressure to take our cues on how to comport ourselves from others around us (i.e. follow a certain track of college, job, family, etc) and the tension that we are not only free to construct our identities any which way we want, but that we are somehow selling ourselves short by NOT doing so. In choosing the defined track, we effectively settle into a default "identity rut", within which there is another tension between being comfortable and feeling like we have "settled" for something.
3. While I think in general we very much overestimate the cost of taking such risks with our identity, and place an arbitrary premium on "consistency". HOWEVER, at the same time, there is a very real cultural tendency to look down upon people who frequently change their identities as "inauthentic", "trying too hard" or "insincere" (think of the kid in high school who was a punk rocker one year, a raver the next, a skateboarding after that (yes, I went to highschool in the 90s...)). Celebrities reinventing themselves is a mixed bag, but for private individuals it is usually not a good thing to be regarded as a chameleon; which I think confuses outward & moral integrity to some extent.
4. Fresh off Halloween, it is worth remembering that there IS something profoundly liberating about wearing a costume; about how just a wig or a hat can allow us to step into and inhabit another character or self. It is a small and banal thing on the surface, but properly appreciated, it can unlock a dimension of creativity (and yes, you can see the path to dysfunction or megalomania) not achievable as your "everyday self"), even if you do it just one day a year.
5. People who can thrive in an environment where being a chameleon is valued will probably enjoy the metaverse very much...
6. Skipping Deleuze & Guattari (FOR NOW) - looking forward to coming back to them; I love their concept of identity never being fixed or anchored to anything intrinsic, but always existing in an endless process of becoming.
Also eagerly awaiting Darryl hitting the vape hard on Deleuze & Guattari — philosophy as an act of creation, because it certainly hasn’t been successful in uncovering objective truth… yet.
I could also see some Ernest Becker adding an interesting dimension to the discussion. The lack of a universal heroic project is def a hallmark of the rhizomatic culture we find ourselves in. Without mysticism, there’s no belief. Without belief, there’s no heroism.
This was put together very well. Another ingredient added to the recipe of our current hellish landscape, image vs. self. The part that stuck to me was Patti Smith’s quote that said something like, “I couldn’t connect to God so I connected to images.” Very telling.
I noticed last week the RSS was down for maybe a hour after the email was sent out. But I have suboptimal internet and blamed it in that. It is down today also. So I suppose if others are having issues, it's not just me living in the boondocks.
See, that's how they get ya. So many platforms, so many personalities to manage - it drives you mad. I swerved all that by never developing a personality in the first place. :D
Seriously, though, humans went from never being able to reach anyone farther than shouting distance to being able to communicate with literally billions of individuals. We're not prepared for this. It's no surprise it destroys people's minds.
I've always felt a bit guilty when watching a "public figure" perform. I always hope they can have their personal life away from their public persona, and not have one be a slave to the other.
Contrast this with the thought that you brought up: we oftentimes now have audiences of thousands with no warm up or training. That can be intoxicating, while also being terrifying. I'm not sure most of us have felt the "terrifying" vibe enough.
Authors have often been able to ply their trade and remain fairly inaccessible to the public, but anyone in any visual field is in it up their necks.
Re: public figures having personal lives, one of the few areas in which i exercise optimism is that every time i am reminded of a One Hit Wonder type of artist, i always hope that they just cashed in while the getting was good, then went on to live life, away from fame and prying eyes. I hope that's what all of them did. It's definitely better than imagining that they spent the rest of their lives trying to re-capture the lightning, but i also think it's better than being a slave to the audience, too.
A great anecdote for this topic is the life of Pete Best. He was the drummer for the Beatles and quit right before they hit it big on Ed Sullivan — replaced by Ringo. According to Best, he’s thankful for how things played out. Lived out a normal life happily with a loving family.
100% agree. I'm Canadian, so of course I know some hockey players. I know two who played from a very early age, got scouted/drafted to NHL teams and declined to go pro. I always hope they will enjoy hockey with their buddies instead of it being a job or career that can end suddenly. Many artistic performers are somewhat reluctant to share their work and put their emotions on display, so the fame must be a bit overwhelming. Contrast that with young folks now who regularly, somewhat unconsciously, just let it all hang out for a bunch of followers. I'm not sure it's healthy for so many people to treat their life as a curated or choreographed performance.
It is good to be reminded that the ‘I’ (i.e., the ego) of Descartes’ cogito is not the ‘I’ of his being (the sum) and that both are human and both are finite. What is called humanity, or human nature, is the common understanding of the physical instantiations of human individuals shared among humans. That these instantiations are ever evolved via the introduction of human technologies (of which digital technology is only one) provides little to convince a return to ‘essential’ humanity is possible. This leaves only the occasion to redefine human nature in common understanding. This digital age is ripe opportunity for a redefining. In the novel, emerging environments individuals finds themselves, this redefining introduces new boundaries while removes previous limits of what is human. Most interesting is how these definitions emerge and who adopts them in common understanding. Some definitions can never become part of common understanding.
Thank you Darryl Cooper for helping us with this. As always, remember that more than etymology relates the theological, the theoretical, and the theatrical.
Perhaps it is not so much the internet "thinking" and using us to kill ourselves - note, however, that this post is by no means a denial of that possibility. An alternative take on this is that the internet simply exacerbates the inadequacies of individuals; inadequacies that, in other times, would have just driven the individual to an early death or general social ostracization - the pull your kids away from the crazy guy walking down the street kind of thing.
The internet and social media was built on hacking the insecurities of individuals; if there is a reason why the checking of the social media feed has become a reflex, that would be one. What this has led to, it seems, is the internet intervention of personal development. My generation, and most definitely the generations that comes after mine, never had the environment to develop a strong sense of self or meaning before being thrown into the world of internet judgement and extreme opinions. Such things infiltrated our thinking from an early age. I remember that even in elementary school and middle school, our social hierarchy as kids was tied directly to our online profile - how many followers we had, how popular we looked on our social media posts, etc. Thus, my generation has no foundation of self, making us all the more susceptible to ideologies that provide any kind of sense of certainty. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, those ideologies end up being the heavily reductionist concepts that we see today.
The psychological issues that you bring up in this episode are in us all. We are all partially schizophrenic, narcissistic, and egocentric. It is really just a matter of who hides it better; or more optimistically, whether those around us "check" us before we wreck ourselves. In the online sphere, however, where you can be whoever you want, your reality can become world. I live on a college campus right now. It's one hell of a bubble, particularly when you combine this with the topis that I mentioned above.
Every once in a while, some Gen Z'ers can escape and throw away their social media. This is almost a sisyphean task, given the fact that a majority of our social interaction is done via messaging apps like Snapchat. I think that my generation is one of the last generations that still has this chance, however unlikely that it generally occurs. The rest that come after us will have too much of this ingrained into their environment, particularity when you consider that many of their parents would have bought into this as well.
Very well articulated, zoomer. I wouldn’t have made it being born 15 years later. I could always escape into loner musical pursuits in high school and early college and I just adjusted a few years late— I turned out great with a family, career, and building decent wealth. Today my insufficient social standing would’ve followed me everywhere I went. I don’t envy the youth like I thought I would.
Is everyone else in this thread as scared of Zucks “meta” as I am? The absurd amount of time the majority of the population spends on social media is absurd. When a full virtual reality version of that is introduced to this society, many will succumb to its draw and remove themselves from society entirely. Some speculate this is the plan of the global elite, removing that portion of undesirables from general society, placing them in what I can only compare to “the matrix”, which would allow the elite to control the real world as they see fit. This may seem paranoid, but changes in what it means to be a free American have dramatically changed in the past 2 years making me think this could be truth. I’d love to hear the thoughts of this group.
I wouldn’t give tech companies too much power in your head. On the inside they’re mostly unorganized chaos. Their behavior is usually built around a keystone “drive”. Facebook = growth, Google = data classification, Apple = marketing, Amazon = connecting geographically disparate systems into a supply chain.
People within these organizations act upon very shallow personal goals that all lead back to the kernel of the companies DNA that allowed it to grow and survive in the first place. That goes even for leadership. For them, the company eclipses every aspect of their lives and they’re already living in a “matrix” so to speak. My colleagues and I used to jokingly call full time employment at any of these organizations being “in the Matrix”. There is no plan. The people that make up these corporations are like thousands of ants who just keep making the ant hill bigger, because that’s just what you’re supposed to do when you’re an ant.
Free will is delegated to the super organism. That’s even more so for founders and CEOs. Keep in mind that someone like Zuck has been living this bizarre reality since he was 19 years old. It IS their identity. There’s people working at these places that could retire and do anything they wanted but they don’t know what else to do.
They’re trapped because there’s no identity outside. There’s always the fear (and truth) that any “success” is a fluke.
This is what happens when the middle class tells an entire generation that you’re essentially a loser if you don’t go to college, get a prestigious job, become known. I pity most of them. Truly.
This isn't going to sound pretty, but anyone who lets these assholes into their head kind of deserves it. Anyone who lets a "friend" or "follower" into their head via some idiotic, petty argument kind of deserves it. There are plenty of sources of inspiration for people to draw on to fortify their own resilience and resistance to the encroachment of the Big Tech bogeyman. Whether folks are aware enough to choose to step away from it is on them, not Zuckerberg, or the most vile douche of them all, Dorsey.
It's scary to think about how real-life, in-person human relational skills might further deteriorate down this path. I also worry about the further loss of connection to the body and the inner world on a mass scale. I don't know if this new 'matrix' might be a plan of the global elite, but I'm sure there'll be those who will seek to take advantage of the new state of affairs.
My only issue with this example is that if these undesirables would willingly give up normal life to live in a virtual reality, what is stopping the global elite from taking control now? Surely if they would give up reality for an artificial replacement then they would pose no threat without it. I think in this situation the real undesirables would be those who refuse "the matrix" because we show a penchant for free thought and expression, hard to control. But you are absolutely correct in that the tech oligarchs and government, especially when working hand in hand, are no friend to you or I.
This leads to many questions. Sorry if this ends up being a long post. Is Poulos' book an overall pessimistic take on human ability (inability) to control and master the technology it creates? I am reminded of David Deutch's book "Beginning of Infinity" which is a more optimistic look in that we invent technology to address a problem only to create new problems which forces us to create new technology. Is Poulos' book a refutation of that optimism?
I am framing this in a pessimistic/optimistic framework as I have recently read the general views and philosophical work of Cioran, Kierkegaard, Mainlander, Schopenhauer, and Eugene Thacker among a few others. These individuals are noted for their pessimistic take on the nature of human existence. Given the issues humans seem to have with the rapid acceleration of their technologies (most particularly the speed of information generation and dissemination) and our repeated descents into madness (just listen to history podcasts!), would this book fall into the realm of existential philosophy? Is being pessimistic about human existence immoral? Or just realistic given our known history? Or maybe, just maybe, I am a simple-minded Gen Xer having a garden-variety mid-life crisis and should just shut up?
As a pessimist I envy the optimist. I think being pessimistic is often times the easy route to go, you just pick up a history book or turn on the news and more often than not your world view is justified. However there are plenty of positive news stories (they bury them on purpose) and an equal amount of good throughout history, it just takes more thought and effort than many are willing to put in, such as myself. It's all about perspective and your own way of thinking.
Thank you. It seems this will be another human conundrum. Both the pessimist and the optimist have much supporting evidence. I was more on the optimist side (although cautiously) up until a few years ago. Something changed or emerged. Oh well. Thanks again.
Interesting how streaming video does not have the same effect. We never loose awareness that Dexter is fictitious but for some reason think the Instagram account is real.
Good setup, you almost lost me in the middle there, sometimes it's hard to follow smarter people. Was thinking I would have to listen twice, but you finished strong.
Nothing wrong with listening twice or even thrice. I took an intro to philosophy course once and the prof recommended reading works of philosophy three times in a row. The first time you get a sense of the narrative structure, the second you tease out the point that the author is trying to make and the third flushes out the minutia (or something like that. I only audited the course, tried twice actually, and could only make it halfway through Plato’s Republic before fading out). https://youtu.be/jD1V5hDvAP0
I will sort out what’s up with the RSS.
I’d buy a Martyrmade coffee cup with this quote on it.
I definitely need a MM coffee mug.
Getting some momentum here. Proposed artwork for said coffee mug. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/865/828/6a1
I still like the tin angel with the rifle from the original web site.
The Anti-Humans episode I felt should feature some of the art of Zdzisław Beksiński (born on 24 February 1929 in Sanok, southern Poland) in the show notes. Captures the horror in a way that words have trouble conveying. When I read Bloodlands also, I felt that they missed an opportunity to use a Beksiński painting for the cover.
Epigenetic Eastern European trauma pushing its way out onto a canvas.
Interested to see if y’all see it: https://www.iamag.co/the-art-of-zdzislaw-beksinski/
I’m getting the same error when I click Listen In Podcast App, BUT the episode is there in the feed on my iTunes, and plays just fine. Is anyone else able to see it?
On podcast addict I'm getting "Broken RSS feed: at line 1, column 6082: unbound prefix"
Hey babe it's workin!
Same. android v11. I have another subscriber podcast that is refreshing, no problem.
Not refreshing in Pocketcast right now. 😔 I can listen online though. Just excited for the content.
And like magic it's working now. Yay, technology.
To invent the RSS feed is to invent the WTF is up with the RSS feed-wreck.
I don't have a problem with you sharing anything for free. I pay because I've enjoyed your content over the years. If it helps you increase your audience....send it!
I concur.
Darryl-
This is gonna be good. There's many different paths you can take this and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. A few thoughts...
When comes to the intersection of technology and humans, the book "Technopoly" by Neil Postman has influenced me as a person with a vocation in the tech industry. One of his core tenets is that "technological change is not additive, it is ecological”. In other words, the introduction of a technology into an environment does not mean it is the same environment plus the new tech. It is a *new* environment. The ecosystem is transformed. Is America the same country post-internet/post-smart phone?
The emergence of democratized celebrity seems to validate Postman’s thesis. The internet and the social networking software built on top of it deliver the potential to make anyone a celebrity in a low friction way. When everyone has a feasible route to celebrity, incentives morph social dynamic with with profound 2nd and 3rd order effects. When human interactions become primarily performative with a hyper-focus on presentation, social distortions are inevitable. As celebrity becomes ubiquitous, it is corrosive to traditional human bonding mechanisms. Civilizational chaos follows.
Celebrity as a process of deification seems to be detrimental to humans. Theologically, we are designed to worship. Conversely, when a person becomes the object of worship, bad things happen. It induces madness over time. We can think of examples of this phenomena like Michael Jackson. We all have (latent and realized) pathologies due to genetics, family, and environments. As far as I can tell, celebrity supercharges and amplifies these pathologies in relation to the scale of celebrity. If you get worshipped, your behaviors become increasingly maladaptive over time with corresponding impacts to one’s personal life; broken relationships, destroyed reputations, etc. Heightened human deification rarely has a good ending. Lots to think about considering 1) modern digital technology destroys many barriers to celebrity and 2) the impact of widespread celebrity as it radiates thru our civilization.
Finally, I couldn’t help asking myself after listening to the podcast the following: “Will Darryl break the ‘Fourth Wall’”? I have zero doubt you are keenly aware that the topics you are discussing are tightly coupled to your emerging role as a Public Person via digital technology.
Again, I’m very intrigued by threads you are spinning here and curious to see where they lead. Please keep doing what you are doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall
Reminds me of the Morpheus conversation in Deus Ex.
I'm fine with you sharing anything you want with the Free Shit Army. They're people too. Supposedly.
We were once them. And we are people too, right? 😁
A few random thoughts this jogged:
1. I wonder how much of these crises of identity (i.e. a job, things we surround ourselves with, consumption patterns, etc - "identity" could be anything here), are reducible to the fact that mankind has never been confronted with such an abundance of freedom to do what we want with ourselves on the one hand, and how on the other the sheer breadth of that choice makes it seem paradoxically simultaneously both arbitrary/inconsequential and riddled with FOMO? It is a double-edged sword to not be confined to a handful of possible roles in life.
2. There is a real tension between relative pressure to take our cues on how to comport ourselves from others around us (i.e. follow a certain track of college, job, family, etc) and the tension that we are not only free to construct our identities any which way we want, but that we are somehow selling ourselves short by NOT doing so. In choosing the defined track, we effectively settle into a default "identity rut", within which there is another tension between being comfortable and feeling like we have "settled" for something.
3. While I think in general we very much overestimate the cost of taking such risks with our identity, and place an arbitrary premium on "consistency". HOWEVER, at the same time, there is a very real cultural tendency to look down upon people who frequently change their identities as "inauthentic", "trying too hard" or "insincere" (think of the kid in high school who was a punk rocker one year, a raver the next, a skateboarding after that (yes, I went to highschool in the 90s...)). Celebrities reinventing themselves is a mixed bag, but for private individuals it is usually not a good thing to be regarded as a chameleon; which I think confuses outward & moral integrity to some extent.
4. Fresh off Halloween, it is worth remembering that there IS something profoundly liberating about wearing a costume; about how just a wig or a hat can allow us to step into and inhabit another character or self. It is a small and banal thing on the surface, but properly appreciated, it can unlock a dimension of creativity (and yes, you can see the path to dysfunction or megalomania) not achievable as your "everyday self"), even if you do it just one day a year.
5. People who can thrive in an environment where being a chameleon is valued will probably enjoy the metaverse very much...
6. Skipping Deleuze & Guattari (FOR NOW) - looking forward to coming back to them; I love their concept of identity never being fixed or anchored to anything intrinsic, but always existing in an endless process of becoming.
Nailed it. Especially pt 2.
Also eagerly awaiting Darryl hitting the vape hard on Deleuze & Guattari — philosophy as an act of creation, because it certainly hasn’t been successful in uncovering objective truth… yet.
I could also see some Ernest Becker adding an interesting dimension to the discussion. The lack of a universal heroic project is def a hallmark of the rhizomatic culture we find ourselves in. Without mysticism, there’s no belief. Without belief, there’s no heroism.
Ah, I've read 'The Denial of Death,' but nothing else by Becker; any further recommendations there?
Death And The Birth Of Meaning is pretty good as well. Similar takes but through less of a Terror Management lens.
Awesome - thank you! I shall add it to the (already unmanageable) list.
This was put together very well. Another ingredient added to the recipe of our current hellish landscape, image vs. self. The part that stuck to me was Patti Smith’s quote that said something like, “I couldn’t connect to God so I connected to images.” Very telling.
Damn, Darryl, great stuff again.
You’re kind of like a shaman. You wrestle with all of this demanding material and your listeners bask in the afterglow.
Anyone else having trouble with the RSS feed?
Hmm…
Yep :(
I noticed last week the RSS was down for maybe a hour after the email was sent out. But I have suboptimal internet and blamed it in that. It is down today also. So I suppose if others are having issues, it's not just me living in the boondocks.
Yes, but I'm also not exactly smart. Could be me.
See, that's how they get ya. So many platforms, so many personalities to manage - it drives you mad. I swerved all that by never developing a personality in the first place. :D
Seriously, though, humans went from never being able to reach anyone farther than shouting distance to being able to communicate with literally billions of individuals. We're not prepared for this. It's no surprise it destroys people's minds.
I've always felt a bit guilty when watching a "public figure" perform. I always hope they can have their personal life away from their public persona, and not have one be a slave to the other.
Contrast this with the thought that you brought up: we oftentimes now have audiences of thousands with no warm up or training. That can be intoxicating, while also being terrifying. I'm not sure most of us have felt the "terrifying" vibe enough.
Authors have often been able to ply their trade and remain fairly inaccessible to the public, but anyone in any visual field is in it up their necks.
Re: public figures having personal lives, one of the few areas in which i exercise optimism is that every time i am reminded of a One Hit Wonder type of artist, i always hope that they just cashed in while the getting was good, then went on to live life, away from fame and prying eyes. I hope that's what all of them did. It's definitely better than imagining that they spent the rest of their lives trying to re-capture the lightning, but i also think it's better than being a slave to the audience, too.
A great anecdote for this topic is the life of Pete Best. He was the drummer for the Beatles and quit right before they hit it big on Ed Sullivan — replaced by Ringo. According to Best, he’s thankful for how things played out. Lived out a normal life happily with a loving family.
100% agree. I'm Canadian, so of course I know some hockey players. I know two who played from a very early age, got scouted/drafted to NHL teams and declined to go pro. I always hope they will enjoy hockey with their buddies instead of it being a job or career that can end suddenly. Many artistic performers are somewhat reluctant to share their work and put their emotions on display, so the fame must be a bit overwhelming. Contrast that with young folks now who regularly, somewhat unconsciously, just let it all hang out for a bunch of followers. I'm not sure it's healthy for so many people to treat their life as a curated or choreographed performance.
It is good to be reminded that the ‘I’ (i.e., the ego) of Descartes’ cogito is not the ‘I’ of his being (the sum) and that both are human and both are finite. What is called humanity, or human nature, is the common understanding of the physical instantiations of human individuals shared among humans. That these instantiations are ever evolved via the introduction of human technologies (of which digital technology is only one) provides little to convince a return to ‘essential’ humanity is possible. This leaves only the occasion to redefine human nature in common understanding. This digital age is ripe opportunity for a redefining. In the novel, emerging environments individuals finds themselves, this redefining introduces new boundaries while removes previous limits of what is human. Most interesting is how these definitions emerge and who adopts them in common understanding. Some definitions can never become part of common understanding.
Thank you Darryl Cooper for helping us with this. As always, remember that more than etymology relates the theological, the theoretical, and the theatrical.
College kid here. Loved episode.
Perhaps it is not so much the internet "thinking" and using us to kill ourselves - note, however, that this post is by no means a denial of that possibility. An alternative take on this is that the internet simply exacerbates the inadequacies of individuals; inadequacies that, in other times, would have just driven the individual to an early death or general social ostracization - the pull your kids away from the crazy guy walking down the street kind of thing.
The internet and social media was built on hacking the insecurities of individuals; if there is a reason why the checking of the social media feed has become a reflex, that would be one. What this has led to, it seems, is the internet intervention of personal development. My generation, and most definitely the generations that comes after mine, never had the environment to develop a strong sense of self or meaning before being thrown into the world of internet judgement and extreme opinions. Such things infiltrated our thinking from an early age. I remember that even in elementary school and middle school, our social hierarchy as kids was tied directly to our online profile - how many followers we had, how popular we looked on our social media posts, etc. Thus, my generation has no foundation of self, making us all the more susceptible to ideologies that provide any kind of sense of certainty. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, those ideologies end up being the heavily reductionist concepts that we see today.
The psychological issues that you bring up in this episode are in us all. We are all partially schizophrenic, narcissistic, and egocentric. It is really just a matter of who hides it better; or more optimistically, whether those around us "check" us before we wreck ourselves. In the online sphere, however, where you can be whoever you want, your reality can become world. I live on a college campus right now. It's one hell of a bubble, particularly when you combine this with the topis that I mentioned above.
Every once in a while, some Gen Z'ers can escape and throw away their social media. This is almost a sisyphean task, given the fact that a majority of our social interaction is done via messaging apps like Snapchat. I think that my generation is one of the last generations that still has this chance, however unlikely that it generally occurs. The rest that come after us will have too much of this ingrained into their environment, particularity when you consider that many of their parents would have bought into this as well.
Looking forward to the coming episodes.
Jerry
Very well articulated, zoomer. I wouldn’t have made it being born 15 years later. I could always escape into loner musical pursuits in high school and early college and I just adjusted a few years late— I turned out great with a family, career, and building decent wealth. Today my insufficient social standing would’ve followed me everywhere I went. I don’t envy the youth like I thought I would.
Look up The Lonely Crowd, this mindset was predicted back in the fifties.
Timely topic that doesn't get enough attention, ironically. The democratization of the double?
Is everyone else in this thread as scared of Zucks “meta” as I am? The absurd amount of time the majority of the population spends on social media is absurd. When a full virtual reality version of that is introduced to this society, many will succumb to its draw and remove themselves from society entirely. Some speculate this is the plan of the global elite, removing that portion of undesirables from general society, placing them in what I can only compare to “the matrix”, which would allow the elite to control the real world as they see fit. This may seem paranoid, but changes in what it means to be a free American have dramatically changed in the past 2 years making me think this could be truth. I’d love to hear the thoughts of this group.
I wouldn’t give tech companies too much power in your head. On the inside they’re mostly unorganized chaos. Their behavior is usually built around a keystone “drive”. Facebook = growth, Google = data classification, Apple = marketing, Amazon = connecting geographically disparate systems into a supply chain.
People within these organizations act upon very shallow personal goals that all lead back to the kernel of the companies DNA that allowed it to grow and survive in the first place. That goes even for leadership. For them, the company eclipses every aspect of their lives and they’re already living in a “matrix” so to speak. My colleagues and I used to jokingly call full time employment at any of these organizations being “in the Matrix”. There is no plan. The people that make up these corporations are like thousands of ants who just keep making the ant hill bigger, because that’s just what you’re supposed to do when you’re an ant.
Free will is delegated to the super organism. That’s even more so for founders and CEOs. Keep in mind that someone like Zuck has been living this bizarre reality since he was 19 years old. It IS their identity. There’s people working at these places that could retire and do anything they wanted but they don’t know what else to do.
They’re trapped because there’s no identity outside. There’s always the fear (and truth) that any “success” is a fluke.
This is what happens when the middle class tells an entire generation that you’re essentially a loser if you don’t go to college, get a prestigious job, become known. I pity most of them. Truly.
Reminds me of a shirt I once saw: "I went outside once.... The graphics weren't that good."
This isn't going to sound pretty, but anyone who lets these assholes into their head kind of deserves it. Anyone who lets a "friend" or "follower" into their head via some idiotic, petty argument kind of deserves it. There are plenty of sources of inspiration for people to draw on to fortify their own resilience and resistance to the encroachment of the Big Tech bogeyman. Whether folks are aware enough to choose to step away from it is on them, not Zuckerberg, or the most vile douche of them all, Dorsey.
It's scary to think about how real-life, in-person human relational skills might further deteriorate down this path. I also worry about the further loss of connection to the body and the inner world on a mass scale. I don't know if this new 'matrix' might be a plan of the global elite, but I'm sure there'll be those who will seek to take advantage of the new state of affairs.
My only issue with this example is that if these undesirables would willingly give up normal life to live in a virtual reality, what is stopping the global elite from taking control now? Surely if they would give up reality for an artificial replacement then they would pose no threat without it. I think in this situation the real undesirables would be those who refuse "the matrix" because we show a penchant for free thought and expression, hard to control. But you are absolutely correct in that the tech oligarchs and government, especially when working hand in hand, are no friend to you or I.
This leads to many questions. Sorry if this ends up being a long post. Is Poulos' book an overall pessimistic take on human ability (inability) to control and master the technology it creates? I am reminded of David Deutch's book "Beginning of Infinity" which is a more optimistic look in that we invent technology to address a problem only to create new problems which forces us to create new technology. Is Poulos' book a refutation of that optimism?
I am framing this in a pessimistic/optimistic framework as I have recently read the general views and philosophical work of Cioran, Kierkegaard, Mainlander, Schopenhauer, and Eugene Thacker among a few others. These individuals are noted for their pessimistic take on the nature of human existence. Given the issues humans seem to have with the rapid acceleration of their technologies (most particularly the speed of information generation and dissemination) and our repeated descents into madness (just listen to history podcasts!), would this book fall into the realm of existential philosophy? Is being pessimistic about human existence immoral? Or just realistic given our known history? Or maybe, just maybe, I am a simple-minded Gen Xer having a garden-variety mid-life crisis and should just shut up?
Never apologize to this crowd for a "long post". We are obviously all fans of The Almighty Tangent of Context.
As a pessimist I envy the optimist. I think being pessimistic is often times the easy route to go, you just pick up a history book or turn on the news and more often than not your world view is justified. However there are plenty of positive news stories (they bury them on purpose) and an equal amount of good throughout history, it just takes more thought and effort than many are willing to put in, such as myself. It's all about perspective and your own way of thinking.
Thank you. It seems this will be another human conundrum. Both the pessimist and the optimist have much supporting evidence. I was more on the optimist side (although cautiously) up until a few years ago. Something changed or emerged. Oh well. Thanks again.
Interesting how streaming video does not have the same effect. We never loose awareness that Dexter is fictitious but for some reason think the Instagram account is real.
Good setup, you almost lost me in the middle there, sometimes it's hard to follow smarter people. Was thinking I would have to listen twice, but you finished strong.
Yeah, that’s it… it’s because I’m so smart… catch up, why don’t ya…
Nothing wrong with listening twice or even thrice. I took an intro to philosophy course once and the prof recommended reading works of philosophy three times in a row. The first time you get a sense of the narrative structure, the second you tease out the point that the author is trying to make and the third flushes out the minutia (or something like that. I only audited the course, tried twice actually, and could only make it halfway through Plato’s Republic before fading out). https://youtu.be/jD1V5hDvAP0
I find upon rereading books or a second run through a podcast I will find information that I can't believe I was distracted from or otherwise forgot.