In
previous articles, I have discussed the accelerating rate of technological
change in the modern world. I have
pointed out that this accelerating rate is dangerous, because we are losing
control of how our society is evolving as a whole. The growing control from and complexity of
this technology is creating a seductive model and mirror for humans, such that
they are becoming more and more like the advanced machines they use.
As
a result, just as modern machines are doing things quicker and quicker, so human
activity is speeding up as well. And
human expectations now for results of their activities are such that people
expect things to be done practically instantaneously. There is little tolerance for slow careful
movements. People more and more want
things done right now. They want to move
from point a to point b without having to traverse the space that separates
them. And, of course, much that happens
on the computer does occur in this instantaneous way. Make a few clicks on a shopping website, put
in your credit card number, and you’ve bought something. Go to a travel website, make a few clicks, put
in your credit card number, and you’ve got yourself a plane ticket. This is the nature of digital activity. Go from the discrete entity of point a to the
discrete entity of point b without having to participate in one organic
blendable continual flow of activity over continual time. The human journey is eliminated. All that matters is the goal. In cyberspace, this has a particular importance,
because if one has to wait too long between point a and point b, one ends up in
a numbing experiential vacuum. There is
no real opportunity for organic participation in a process, the way that there
would be in normal primary experience in the external world.
In
the digital world, process is seemingly eliminated or, at best, it is cut up
into discrete moments. And this has a
profound effect on the minds of young humans as they grow up and evolve and
configure in such a world. Young people
are becoming very, very different from what humans have been up until now.
If
a person becomes accustomed to going from point a to point b without any
flowing process in between, then he becomes addicted to immediate
gratification. He wants everything
now. He wants to go from wish to results
without any primary experience journey in between. And this applies to more than just purchasing
books and shirts and plane tickets online.
It applies to doing research online without having any reason to do
research exploration in a real world university library. Click on the fact or idea that you are
looking for and then get out of the website.
And this attitude applies to wanting a person to do something for you
when you want it done, and not when it is convenient for the other person to do
it for you. It certainly applies to a
person looking at another person as an object that satisfies short-term sexual
needs, rather than as a person who can be a long-term romantic partner. In a larger sense, it means thinking of
always satisfying all personal needs directly and immediately rather than
bothering to include the needs of other people in the loop.
People
who have grown up with computers have modeled themselves after computers and
have developed wants and expectations based on the speed and effortlessness of
digital processes. The only problem with
this is that part of the joy and satisfaction with reaching a goal is the
potentially rich vibrant flowing process that has been traditionally necessary
to achieving it. This rich vibrant
flowing process, which often includes discomfort and even pain, becomes a rich
vibrant experience in which the person who goes through it has the opportunity
to make, preserve and receive organic imprints.
These organic imprints are much more important in supplying deep
fulfilling satisfaction than the products, services and life situations that
are the ostensive goals of the wants and expectations. Without the journey, one is in an
experiential vacuum, with the products, services and life situations that are
the objects of our wants and expectations being just free-floating figures –
physical and mental – that are ungrounded in any important life contexts or
meanings. Without these contexts and
meanings, our goals don’t really satisfy.
Because
our digitized goals don’t satisfy, people feel a need to reach them over and
over again in order to finally experience satisfaction from the attainment of
the goal. This is the foundation of an
addiction. There is no making or
receiving of imprints buying a new sweater
online the way there is from going to a store, trying on sweaters, and asking
the opinion of the salesperson or of a friend or family member one has brought
along. There is no real journey to the
sweater.
When
one buys a book online, one gives up the opportunity of strolling through the
aisles of a book store, thumbing through the pages of different books, and
talking with a bookseller (in a smaller store) about what his recommendations
might be. Such an experience in a
bookstore becomes a form of intellectual hunt.
As
discussed in previous articles, an addiction is a way to get kicks from the
overstimulation of tension pockets in the living environment, from static
stimulation that pulls a person out of the numbness that comes from the vacuum
foundation of modern technological environments. Living on a smartphone, tablet or computer as many young people do, in order to
constantly shoot texts back and forth or post shocking pictures back and forth,
precludes their having the opportunity to take meaningful life journeys in the
real world of primary experiences. These journeys form the foundation for
meaningful life stories, meaningful preserved organic imprints. Repeatedly clicking on the goals of products,
services or life situations like online
groups gives a person a kind of kicks that replaces the lack of
meaningful imprints from primary experience.
No
wonder that so many young people today seem spoiled. What I’m talking about is not the kind of
spoiled that comes from a parent giving their child everything he wants except
the love he craves, although perhaps there is a parallel. It is not the parent that is in a position to
directly give a child everything he wants today. Although the parent may pay for things, it is
the computer that gives them. And the
computer gives a child all the free-floating figures of products, services, and
life situations that he wants, but not the organic grounding that he craves. With organic grounding, there is the
possibility of meaningful imprints within the framework of meaningful life
journeys.
So
many of our goals today have become the equivalent of digital “ones” that exist
against a vacuum backdrop of digital “zeroes”.
The need exists for immediate gratification, because we are searching
for goals that exist apart from the grounding of organic life experiences.
And
this brings us back to the experience of time in the digital age. If life activity consists of jumping from
point a to point b with no flowing process in between, then life is experienced
as chopped-up moments with no meaningful coherence to the activity. And because our senses of self exist over
time and are experienced over time, chopped-up activity over time leads to a
chopped-up sense of self. The easy use
of a computer to obtain everything leads to the loss of the flowing journeys of
life which are fundamental to the strong flowing continual coherence of a sense
of self over time. The very experience
of the broken up digital kicks of momentary satisfactions separated by
emptiness, the basis of a digital addiction, leads to a fragmented sense of
self.
So, in the long run, the
predisposition to immediate gratification engendered by today’s digital technology
results in a dangerous threat to the psychological survival of human
beings. Without coherence of self,
humans become vulnerable to being transformed into the very kind of machines
that at present serve them. People
become what they use.
(c) 2014 Laurence Mesirow
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