The
kinds of things we touch today are considerably different from the kinds of
things people touched before the coming of modern technology. In more traditional times, the natural
environment was a more integral part of people’s lives, and people’s hands,
bodies and feet were constantly coming into contact with organic textures. When people weren’t walking barefoot directly
on the ground, their foot coverings like sandals and shoes were usually made
out of animal skins and leather. There
were exceptions as with the wooden shoes of the Dutch. But in general, humans, when they wore feet
coverings, used materials that breathed and that provided a variety of organic
sensations. The same holds true for
their clothing and, when appropriate, their hats and their gloves. The flowing blendable continual stimuli that
were the foundation of the organic sensations that humans experienced with
their clothing helped them to feel more fully alive. Without the use of modern technology to
refine the materials, the materials used were often more coarse and rough than
people today are used to. People
obviously lived with these materials, because they had nothing else to which to
compare them. Coarse wool and animal
skins. Sometimes fur was used as lining.
In the tropics, garments could be made
out of leaves and leaf fibers. These were the materials that a lot of people
had. Cotton was a luxury for many people
initially. And before modern technology,
people didn’t have plastic shoes and polyester clothing, items that didn’t
breathe and that didn’t provide organic sensation.
In
the external world, people walked on dirt or cobblestone roads and wooden and
fiber rope bridges. They lived in animal
skin tepees, igloos, mud huts, log cabins, textured stucco homes, wooden
houses, elaborate stone castles. They
rode animals and felt the animals bump against them as the animals walked,
trotted or galloped along. People used
implements made of stone, wood, bone, horn, or shell. And they created all kinds of textured
products that were interesting to touch: pottery, masks, bows and arrows,
spears, baskets, jewelry, musical instruments that had to be plucked or hit
against. And wooden furniture and
plates. Knives, spoons and forks and other
metal implements were developed as metallurgy developed. And rope, hemp, and leather thongs were used
as the organic connections to tie things together.
I
know that I am blurring together different cultures and different historical
stages prior to the impact of modern technology, but what these different
cultures and stages had in common was the great variety of organic tactile
sensations available for people to experience.
What can be said about these diverse tactile sensations is that they are
verbally difficult to describe. This can
also be said for sensations of smell and taste where many different kinds of
flowing blendable continual stimuli blur together to form a particular
sensation or a particular group of sensations.
They are more immediate sensations where the sources of stimuli come
close to us or even inside us. This is
distinct from the more mediated sensations of hearing and vision where the
sources of stimuli can be at a greater distance from us. Because the sources of hearing and vision
stimuli can be more apart from us, we can distinguish and identify them more
easily with defined discrete labels. On
the other hand, touch particularly creates so many unfocused flowing blendable
continual sensations, that it is difficult to effectively label them verbally.
However,
it must be said that, in the modern world, in which the configuration of
stimuli in our modern field of experience is composed of so many defined
discrete stimuli from modern technology and what it fabricates, it is much
easier to find words to define the more simplified tactile sensations that it
produces. Of course, the opportunity to
experience many tactile stimuli has been taken away from us as a result of
modern technology. Because of sensors,
all sorts of mechanical processes occur with no touching at all. Doors open in department stores as we
approach them. Faucets turn on when our
hands approach them. Toilets flush by
themselves. And then there are the
processes that require the minimal touching of pressing a button or
buttons. Press some buttons and get a
car washed or an individual cup of coffee.
Press more buttons and turn on a television to a desired station. Press a button and turn on an air
conditioner. Button touches are defined
discrete stimuli that have none of the interesting texture of more organic
surfaces that are full of flowing blendable continual stimuli.
Then
there are the screen swipes that are an integral part of the interaction of
humans with smartphones and tablets.
Again one is dealing with cold hard smooth textureless surfaces that
don’t breath and don’t commune with the human user of the consumer device. There is no give in a smartphone or tablet
surface, no cushion, no grounding for the fingers of the human user. One slides over the plastic screen and
receives a minimum of tactile stimulation.
Now by sliding over the plastic screen, one does generate a kind of
two-dimensional flowing blendable continual stimulation from the pressure of
the movement of the fingers, but this is only a pressure stimulation. This is done over a cold hard smooth surface
which maintains very strong figure boundaries, so the flowing, blendable
continual stimuli from the swipe don’t generate any bonding with the plastic
screen or the device upon which the fingers pass over. These smartphones and tablets are devices
upon which many of today’s humans spend hours on end. These are the phenomena in the world which
many of today’s humans touch the most.
Passing fingers on a cold hard smooth ungiving surface is a metaphor for
being behind a clear wall, and on the other side of the wall there seems to be
life which one can’t really touch.
But
at least with a plastic screen, one is touching something. When one deals with sensor devices, one ends
up touching nothing. One is in a tactile
experiential vacuum that contributes to making a person feel numb. Numb and incapable of leaving a tactile
organic imprint on some experiential surface in the world. Not only do these sensor devices make one feel
numb at the moment and unable to leave organic imprints at the moment, but they
contribute to an ongoing numbness and incapacity to leave organic imprints even
when organic surfaces should present themselves. To a kind of generalized psychic impotence
that contributes to reactions like the desperate murderous rage of certain
young men that has been discussed in a previous article.
Another
tactile phenomenon in the modern world is the attempt to imitate organic
sensation through technology. I am
talking about the chairs, beds, and other machines that give massages and, of
course, vibrators. Disconnected from
their organic bonds with other people, so many humans today have to rely on
machines to give them intimate organic sensations both of nurturance and
excitement. But machines are limited to
doing what machines can do. They display
a predictable discrete rhythm of stimulation that makes human response
predictably mechanical as well. None of
the great variation in human hand movement or human bodily movement is
available in these devices. We gradually and subtly become programmed to the
focused defined discrete pattern and rhythm of movement and touch in these
devices, and even as we attain different degrees of tactile satisfaction from
them, we become as robotically predictable in our consumer responses as the
devices are mechanically predictable in their methods of stimulation. The hybrid mechanical organic stimulation
that is produced leads to hybrid mechanical organic people. But as these devices represent among the few
sources of even quasi-organic stimulation around, people flock to them as
though they were sources of sensory enlightenment.
One
final areas has to be touched (no pun intended) and that is what our feet feel
today. In the old days, people used to
feel the pressure of their feet sinking into the ground a little, every time
they took a step on dirt paths and floors.
They would actually feel the dirt through their toes if they walked
barefoot. Furthermore, they would feel
either directly the touch or indirectly the pressure when they walked on
pebbles and stones and grass and branches as they passed through forests and
fields. They would feel directly or
indirectly the uneven surfaces of cobblestone, when they walked on cobblestone
roads. In short, there used to be a
great deal of sensory variety for the feet.
Today,
people primarily walk on the smooth, even, ungiving surfaces of concrete and
asphalt. It is basically a frictionless
sensory vacuum that does not leave a person feeling bonded with or grounded in
the world. One could just as easily walk
off the surface of the world.
In
terms of floors, dirt floors, for all their imperfections, certainly led a
person to feel grounded in the floor.
Wood floors are smooth, but they give a little, they breathe, and they
creak when one walks on them. Carpeting
and rugs, of course, provide a great deal of texture and give. But more public buildings have concrete, tile
or marble floors – smooth, cold and ungiving.
For
the most part, organic tactile sensation is very scarce today compared to the
past. And as has also been pointed out
in previous articles, sex has become practically the only reliable source for
organic tactile sensation in modern technological society. With the lack of organic tactile sensation in
their fields of experience, it is no wonder that so many people today seem to
unconsciously look at serial sexual relationships as the only possible solution
for organic sensory variety. But even
serial sex cannot really substitute for the global variety of tactile
stimulation that existed before modern technological society. It becomes a challenge in today’s world to
find even some of the variety of organic tactile stimulation that we used to
have and that we truly need to keep us human.
(c) 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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