There
are four basic reasons for concern about the future of humanity as a result of both
the rapid pace of technological change that we have been experiencing as well
as the direction in which it has been going.
First, there is the sensory distortion that is the result of the
alternation of understimulation and overstimulation that people have been
experiencing in their modern technological fields of experience. In a world in which the areas of organic
natural environments have been diminishing in quantity and in quality, and in
which instead we have an ongoing increase of vacuum and tension-pocket
environments, it has become more and more difficult for the human mammalian
nervous system to adjust to the extremes – both high and low - in the levels of
stimuli to which it is exposed. The
result is the growing manifestations of pathological behavior that are both
self-destructive and/or destructive to the people with whom a person comes into
contact. This is where two basic
categories of mental postures that I have discussed previously, come into play.
First there is conative
acceleration, the speeding up of the will, in which a person tries to generate
a lot of his own stimuli and thus control his own stimuli environment. He does this by accelerating his trajectory
of daily activity and thus blocking out the stimuli from around him, from the vacuum
and tension-pocket environment to which he is constantly being exposed and over
which he has no control. The rapid
intense activity of modern work – of corporate executives, office workers and
factory workers – and the rapid intense activities of many modern recreational
pursuits – intense exercise routines and extreme sports activities like bungee
jumping – are examples of this behavior.
In general, manic behavior demonstrates conative acceleration.
Then there is conative
anesthesia, the numbing of the will, where the person deals with sensory
distortion in his living environment by withdrawing into himself, into a
self-made experiential vacuum over which he again has some control. Examples of this behavior include reclusive
living, yoga, Zen meditation and certain drugs.
In general, depression demonstrates conative anesthesia.
In both of these
behavioral postures, there is a sense that the mammalian human nature of many
people does not permit them to fully adjust to the modern technological fields
of experience. However, there are those
people who seem to be adjusting better in their modern technological fields of
experience. They are adjusting better,
because, as a result of engaging with modern technology, they are becoming more
like modern technology. Modern machines
like computers and robots are complex behavioral entities that mirror the
actions of humans and subtly guide the humans to see modern machines as models
for behavior. And these humans gradually
become more robotized. Somehow, they
become less dependent on organic flowing blendable continual stimuli and more
stimulated to life by the defined discrete stimuli they find on the television,
video game, computer and smartphone screens with which they directly engage as
well as the peripheral defined discrete stimuli that surround them in their
modern technological living environments.
It is not that these people are becoming robots yet, but rather that
they are moving more in that direction.
Psychologically, they are more and more receptive to defined discrete
cognitive stimuli and less and less open to the flowing blendable continual
stimuli found in the sensory, emotional and creative areas of the mind. Many of these people work intimately with
computers, robots and other modern machines – what we commonly call geeks.
Some of these people want to take the next step and
become part machine themselves, what we commonly call cyborgs. Sort of like the bionic man. This represents
the means to one of the ultimate goals of human beings in their development of
modern technology. Instead of being
content to create a surrogate immortality in preparation for death, an
immortality based on preserved imprints that survive long after a person
perishes himself, people who want to become cyborgs see it as a means to become
directly immortal themselves. As a
cyborg, they would be more free from the dangers of organic perishability. If a part of their organic body wears out,
they can replace it with a mechanical part made of metal or plastic. And if the mechanical part wears out, it can
be replaced with still another mechanical part.
So technically, as a cyborg, a person can just go on living forever.
Now it is one thing for a person to get a tooth implant,
an artificial hip or a pacemaker. Such
implants don’t affect too much a person’s sense of organic unity. But when more and more parts start being
replaced, so that a person becomes what we think of as a cyborg, a person’s
sense of organic unity and his sense of a coherent self are going to be
significantly diminished. And a
diminished fractured sense of self will lead to a diminished level of
consciousness. The more a person begins
to feel like and operate like a machine, the less alive and the less aware he
is going to feel as an organic presence.
So a cyborg may be able to live for a long time, but the quality of his
consciousness, of his aliveness is going to be significantly diminished. And a person may ask what the point is of
living forever, if he becomes incapable of fully experiencing himself and his
forever life. He may live forever, but
it will be living forever in a kind of living death.
And this brings us to our
fourth concern: that robots will end up totally replacing humans as the
dominant force on Earth. Whether this
means that humans will become the servants of robots or will completely
disappear at that point, it would be hard to say. If it’s the first, with a loss of power will
come a loss of intensity of aliveness, a loss of intensity of
consciousness. Humans will no longer be
the complex behavioral entities driving the major narratives on the planet.
Of course, I guess it’s
possible that humans could simply be put on the sidelines of major activity and
not be eliminated. They could become
ever more immersed in a spectator posture than they are now. At that point, life would truly be a living
death.
So with all the pressures
today to become robotized, perhaps the healthiest people are paradoxically those
who experience discomfort, pain and suffering from sensory distortion. These symptoms of pathology indicate that the
people who experience them are still sufficiently mammalian to react strongly
when placed in living environments that aren’t conducive to more mammalian
living. The people who suffer a lot from
sensory distortion are the canaries in the coal mine, acting as a warning to
the rest of us of the dangers of embracing too strongly a modern technological
life style. And the real danger to the
human race from modern technology is not the destructive effects of the
behavioral aberrations created by sensory distortion in the people who are the
canaries. Rather it is the destructive
effects occurring in those people who don’t develop such obvious behavioral symptoms
to sensory distortion, the people who seem to be adjusting better to modern
technology. Unless we find a way to
significantly modify the trajectory of technological development, this second
group of people may be signaling the transformation of the human race into
something we would no longer recognize.
© 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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