I
spend so much time focusing on the negative in this column and not enough
focusing on the positive, on the potential solutions to many of our emotional
and behavioral problems today. I guess I
have felt that many of our problems lie in areas of life that are not usually
taken into account in trying to deal with the problems and, therefore, these
areas had to be unpacked as thoroughly and as extensively as possible. Nevertheless, I feel that now is a moment to
dedicate some time to the type of life experience to which we should aspire in
terms of making our lives more healthy.
The
terms organic experience, natural experience, immediate experience and primary
experience have been used to describe the kind of life experience we are
increasingly losing as natural environments and more traditional living
environments get converted to farms, as farmland gets converted to shopping
centers, housing developments and other kinds of more heavily inhabited areas,
and most important as more and more of what we do gets mediated by modern
technology. What we have lost is not
only primary sources of organic stimulation - what I have also call flowing
blendable continual stimuli - but also opportunities for intense interactions
with the organic phenomena that surround us in the external world. These sources of organic stimulation require
a sense of surrender and immersion on the part of people in order to absorb
them and experience them. But people in
modern technological society are so used to the modalities of control and
manipulation and so afraid of the sense of vulnerability that would come with
the postures of surrender and immersion, that it is very difficult for them to
fully open up to this posture even when organic stimulation and opportunities
for intense intimate interactions are available. People today feel much more comfortable with
postures of control and manipulation that come with the defined discrete
technological stimuli that they have created in order to protect themselves
from the dangers of organic perishability that are found in nature. All the natural catastrophes: the hurricanes,
earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and famines; the wild animals and
diseases – these are what have motivated human beings to create the technology
that protects them from these random dangerous natural experiences.
Unfortunately,
the protections that humans have developed have led to throwing the baby out
with the bath waters. Humans are
becoming increasingly incapable of and uncomfortable with the intense intimate
interactions that are the means by which they apprehend primary experience, the
organic experience that is something they so desperately crave because it forms
such an integral part of their life narratives as human beings. It is almost as if humans have developed an
auto-immune response to something that is intrinsically a part of their lives,
turning against an aspect of their lives that they need in order to survive.
In
other words, our superficial adaptation to modern technology has come at a
significant price. We no longer feel
very comfortable with that with which we should feel comfortable. So re-adjusting to that which used to be the
foundation of human existence will not be easy.
Yet if we want to survive as a human race, it has to be done. If there aren’t a lot of opportunities for
organic experience, they have to somehow be created. Not only more patches of nature and more
traditional architecture in which to move around, but also more physical
activities that involve simple tools and simple toys. Gradually weaning ourselves from the mediated
frictionless screen realities of movies, television, video games, computers,
smartphones and tablets. And also the increasingly
prevalent mediated frictionless virtual reality games. Little by little, getting more and more
involved in sports, gardening, art, music, hiking, social clubs, community
service groups and other kinds of hobbies and avocations. Activities that help us to pull out of the
sensory distortion that is so much a part of our living environments today and
our daily lives.
Changing
our states of mind, our consciousnesses, won’t happen all at once. And anyway we aren’t going to be able to get
to the levels of primary experience that our ancestors had, if only because
primary experience is probably not going to create any kind of foundation for
the economic survival of most of us in the foreseeable future. Our desire to immerse ourselves more in organic
experience will be based on free choice and not necessity.
One
could imagine at least one way in which the mediated experience of technology
may even ultimately lead to our immersing ourselves in new kinds of immediate
experience. I am thinking of how
technology in the form of space ships could lead to an extensive exploration of
outer space, our solar system and other solar systems. Humans have already gone to the moon and
lived on space stations. Soon we will go
to Mars and who knows where else. Maybe
we will end up destroying our planet in the process of protecting ourselves
from the organic perishability of nature.
And then we will have to move to other faraway planets, in order to
survive. Ideally, we will try to find
planets with similar atmospheres and similar climates, so that we don’t have to
walk around in space suits all the time, which, of course, we would have to use
on Mars.
Maybe
humans, in order to escape a dying earth, will have to fly around in the
mediated experience of large space ships that are ample enough to serve as
space communities, as we search for hospitable planets. Sort of like what we see on science fiction
movies and television series. This would
be one of the uses of modern technology that I would strongly applaud. Mediated experiences in the service of
primary experience. Not something that
is possible very often.
In
the meantime, we have to get creative in generating good sources of primary
experience here on good old planet earth.
Our survival depends on it.
© 2019 Laurence Mesirow
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